Desire Under the Elms

Set on a hardscrabble New England farm in the mid-19th century, the story centers on elderly widower Ephraim Cabot, a man of fearsome physical vitality whose entire identity is bound up in his land. He has already worked two wives to early graves in service of this obsession. His three sons — two older half-brothers and the youngest, Eben — all hate him and covet the farm, though for different reasons. Eben's bitterness is the deepest: he believes the property rightfully belongs to him because it originally came from his mother, Ephraim's second wife, whom the old man effectively destroyed. When Eben learns that his two older half-brothers are thinking of leaving, he steals money that Ephraim had hidden — money that had belonged to Eben's mother — and uses it to buy out the brothers' shares of the farm, sending them off to California. This leaves Eben as the sole remaining son and, in his mind, the rightful heir. Ephraim, however, returns from a trip with a surprise: a new, much younger Italian wife named Anna. She arrives as a calculating outsider, equally determined to secure her own stake in the farm through Ephraim's favor. The household simmers with jealousy and suspicion. Over time, Anna and Eben are drawn into a passionate, guilt-ridden affair. Anna becomes pregnant, and a son is born whom Ephraim proudly claims as his own, while in truth the child is Eben's. The situation grows unbearable. Ephraim, delighted with the heir he believes he has sired, taunts Eben — even revealing that he had originally planned to will the farm to this new son rather than to Eben. Devastated and furious, Eben rages at Anna, accusing her of having seduced him only to produce an heir and cut him out of his inheritance. Desperate to prove that her feelings for Eben are genuine and not a calculated scheme, Anna kills the infant. When Eben discovers what she has done, he is horrified and threatens to go to the sheriff to report her. He follows through and alerts the authorities, but almost immediately the full weight of his own love and guilt overtakes him. He returns and confesses his own role, insisting on sharing in whatever punishment awaits her. Both Anna and Eben are arrested together. As they are led away, a deputy sheriff admires the farm and remarks that he wishes he could own a place like it. The aging Ephraim, stripped of wife, sons, and heir, is left alone — yet takes bitter comfort in the fact that no one else will ever have what he has spent his life possessing.

Sources: Wikipedia, TMDb overview