![]() ![]() Much has been made of the directness of speech and the situations in Virginia Woolf. But the surface is enough and will be fascinating. It is there, put there by a writer, director and actors of extraordinary acumen and ability. But a complete understanding to all this is not necessary. To take a word from Albee, the plot is almost unbelievably “convoluted.” Meanings beneath meanings are repeatedly exposed as one layer after another is peeled away. They have been through the thick and thin of a tumultuous marriage, and it has been very thick and very thin at times. That is what the play is, a long, long night of conflict between two people locked in a not quite hopeless embrace. Having broken the rules for their private game, George and Martha then begin a bare-knuckled, knee-and-groin duologue that breaks them both before the night is out. “Truth and illusion,” one character or another remarks. A real son to Martha and George? The point is moot until Albee and Lehman spin out their story. With the visiting couple, Nick and Honey, present, she introduces mention of a son. The temper changes when Martha breaks one of the rules that they have tacitly established for their combat. ![]() George and Martha begin the late night - and early morning - with one of their customary rows, fairly good-natured, only occasionally drawing blood. Lehman and Nichols have retained the rhythm, and in a delicate way, the separation of the moods. Just “blood under the bridge,” Burton remarks of one incident, accurately, summing up the married life he has endured and fostered.Īlbee divided his play into three acts, giving each act a title, respectively: Fun and Games, Walpurgisnacht and The Exorcism. There has been no more brilliant and scathing dialogue in any American play. That is a mild example of their fencing and probably unfair to quote out of context. “You’re going bald,” she says to him cheerlessly at another point. “There isn’t an abomination award you have won,” says George to Martha at one point. The action of the story is almost continuous, or seems so, beginning early in the morning after a faculty party and lasting until the cold dawn, with icy fingertips, climbs again over the rim of the day, and with chill blue light restores reality.ĭuring the night, George and Martha have exchanged badinage of a particularly lethal nature. They are called Nick and Honey, and are played by George Segal and Sandy Dennis. On the fateful night when the action of the movie occurs, it crosses the path of another young couple. Their marriage, too, is a magnificent wreck, a hulk that drifts like the flying Dutchman, a menace to navigation and travelers on the uncertain seas. He is a failure, as Martha reminds him “bogged down in the history department,” she says, calling him, with some oblique affection, “Old Swampy.” George is a history teacher in father’s college. Martha is the daughter of a college president. Their names are George and Martha, and they are played by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Such types, in essence, are the hero and heroine of our film. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a mixture of pop art and pedantry of the sort indulged in by scholastic types. To clear away one subtlety immediately, Virginia Woolf refers, of course, to the late English writer. Nichols makes a stunning film bow with Virginia Woolf. And the greatest credit for the implacable engagement that the film creates for its audience must go to the director, Mike Nichols. It is a hard play to kill, as a reviewer who has seen it in six or eight productions, from Broadway to Long Beach, can testify. Virginia Woolf is not a play that is hard to bring to life it bursts with vitality. A screenplay is not all dialogue, a hard fact to remember, but this is Lehman’s most potent contribution. Although it is a true screenplay, he has wisely preserved almost all the Albee language, using his own gifts at making it viable as film. Ernest Lehman, who produced the picture, also wrote the screenplay. Virginia Woolf is a drama that encompasses the whole relationship of man and woman love and hate, tenderness and cruelty, sad and funny. deserves the highest credit for making it a movie without compromise. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is an instant film classic, and Warner Bros. It will tote up an equally impressive score at the boxoffice. It will be nominated for every category it fits in next year’s Academy Awards, and it deserves to win them all. The makers of this film have created from it a motion picture masterpiece. The screen has never held a more shattering and indelible drama than Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee’s stage play was a masterpiece. ![]() The review, originally titled “‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ Is a Motion Picture Masterpiece,” is below: On June 22, 1966, The Hollywood Reporter appraised the directorial debut of Mike Nichols, giving high marks to every aspect of the drama. ![]()
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