Directed by Mike Nichols
Written by Ernest Lehman from a play by Edward Albee
1966/USA
Warner Bros./Chenault Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
[box] George: And that’s how you play “Get the Guests”.[/box]
This goes immediately on top of my Best New-to- Me Films of 2019 list. I don’t see how the play could have been adapted any better.
It is 2 AM and all concerned have been drinking since 9 PM at a party. George (Richard Burton) is an Assoicate Professor in the History Department at a private college. His wife Martha is the college president’s daughter. George evidently has been a major disappointment to both his wife and her father. Martha has invited a younger couple to their home for after party drinks. Nick (George Segal) is the new guy in the Biology Department. His wife Honey (Sandy) is a ditzy blonde with a weak stomach.
Even before the guests arrive, George and Martha are at each other’s throats. They declare “total war” and the barbs and insults continue in full force before their embarrassed guests.
When Martha reveals a family secret, the usually mild-mannered George goes into maximum overdrive.
I don’t generally enjoy watching people being cruel to each other – one reason I have avoided watching this for so long. But I do love clever, penetrating dialogue and the film is jam-packed with it. This really must be the apex of the career of both Burton and Taylor. The actors wouldn’t come to mind as exactly right for the parts, yet they carry off their roles brilliantly. The ending got me really thinking which is always a major bonus. Highly recommended.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress; Best Supporting Actress; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Black-and-Whte; and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White. It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; Best Actor; Best Supporting Actor; Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium; Best Sound; Best Film Editing; Best Music, Original Movie Score. This was the last year in which the Academy divided the technical awards between black-and-white and color films.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was the first film to require that children under 18 be accompanied by a parent.
Trailer
Liz Taylor’s awesome Bette Davis impression
I love this movie so much! I used to have a roommate who loved this movie. I had never seen it. (But I had read the play.) My roommate rented it and kept it for eight days and watched it at least once every day. (Yeah, the late fees would have probably almost paid for a brand-new VHS copy.)
I watched it the first day and I also watched it the day before he took it back. But the rest of the week, I felt like I lived it. It was always on! I heard Martha intoning “What a dump!” in my sleep. And George’s party games “Hump the hostess!” and “Get the guests!” And the Bergen story. And the puff that went poof.
I love it! I watch it every two or three years. If I get it from Netflix, I watch it and keep it a few days and watch it one more time before I send it back.
One of my favorites!
You know I think my last exposure was reading the play in my late teens or early twenties and I still remembered so many of the lines. If you rent it again from Netfix check out the commentaries. The one with Nichols is really insightful,
I do not think I remember any other movie where the dialogue was the carrying element to this extent. It totally rests on the actors and lift the challenge so well.
The last person on earth I would have cast as Martha would have been Elizabeth Taylor. Too young, too pretty, and in this period making a bunch of pretty bad romantic melodramas with Burton. I would have been so wrong. She absolutely deserved her Oscar.
The funniest thing about Martha’s Bette Davis impression is that Davis doesn’t say “What a dump!” anywhere near the way Martha says it.
The second funniest thing about it is that they never say what movie it is. (But you do get a short summary of “In Old Chicago” with Alice Faye, even though they get the name wrong.)
The Bette Davis movie is “Beyond the Forest.”
LOL. It was in the play but I thought it was funny that they worked in a couple of mentions of Warner Brothers, which was paying everybody’s salary on Woolf.
As luck would have it, my first viewing of WOOLF was on the big screen in a retrospective house in the San Fernando Valley. I was blown away. It sealed my life-long crush on Mike Nichols and confirmed that the movies had FINALLY grown up, crashing through years of Production Code domination. I remember walking out into the dark parking lot, a bit on edge, expecting George and Martha to come crashing through the night, screaming a top of their lungs. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. A perfect movie.
Agree totally! I have a question about the ending. Do you think there is hope for George and Martha? According to the Nichols commentary he conceived of George and Martha as the couple that really loved each other whereas Honey and Nick not so much. I was wondering if we can read it as Martha has basically been waiting for George to show some gumption. Of course they may have fought like that every day of the week1
Hope? They are pretty far gone, though I agree with Nichols, there is real tenderness and caring in their relationship. If we can judge by Liz and Dick’s behavior, perhaps, they will divorce, marry each other again, divorce, and never really get over each other. Harder to pull off in a small college town than in Hollywood…. Death by umbrella might come first!
I can’t decide whether killing the son is the beginning of a new relationship or the death knell for the marriage.