Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | | Cast : | Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton | | Director : | Mike Nichols | | Studio : | Warner Studios | | Format : | Black & White, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | June 22, 1966 | | DVD Released Date : | September 15, 1998 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | NR (Not Rated) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 11, 2005 | | Summary | Masterpiece Look Into Human Relationship | Content
 | I believe that this is the only movie to ever be nominated in every single category at the Academy Awards. It was for good reason as well. It is, in a way, a perfect movie. It's an extrememly well done version of the play about a married couple who has an extremely vicious argument for the entirety of the film. All four credited actors in the movie receive Oscar nominations and for good reason. Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis all give fantastic performances. Taylor and Burton are the drunk, argumentative couple who were actually married at the time of the film. Taylor is the daughter of the president of a small college and Burton is a history teacher. Very late at night after a faculty party a couple has been invited over to their house by Taylor unbeknownst to Burton who would prefer to sleep. The husband is a young biology teacher at the college and the woman is his rich young wife. They are all extremely drunk and over the course of the party all of their very personal secrets come out quite embarrasingly in a series of elaborate and ridiculous games. It is a great film about human nature. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 02, 2005 | | Summary | "There's still time for one more game, Martha!" | Content
| It would be a dull mind indeed that would respond to this film with anything but respect, awe, and terror. Unlike many "classics" that the AFI has rated as Tried and True, most of which are dry as bone and lacking any relevance to the present time, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" explores, through the lens of a demented union between a man and a woman locked in psychical mortal combat, questions (truth/illusion, unhappiness, et al) that will never leave the human mind untouched.
Performances on the part of Burton and Taylor are nothing less than bone chilling. George and Martha are aging members of a prestigious, unnamed University: George is a History teacher, and Martha is the daughter of the University's dean. A true monster of a human being, she takes a inexplicable delight in tearing George to pieces, reducing him to the sum of his failures with her shrill, bratty voice. George does not suffer quietly for long, as we sense he has been doing for years as the film opens. His razor sharp tongue and amusing capacity for exposing Martha for what she really is--a spoiled drunk with a lot of undeserved pull--is drop dead funny at times, and ruthless at others. Ultimately George wins because of his thoughtful, literate nature: Martha's brutality, which is considerable, is finally conquered by his decision to take it all the way, strip all the illusions "right down to the bone".
George is no saint, however; he is built on many of the same animalistic impulses that Martha is, only we detect a shred of something human in him as the nightmarish evening rolls on.
Two guests arive late in the night, and almost immediately things go from 0-60. The moment that the "tall, well built" Nick (George Segal) opens the door, Martha yells "goddamn you!" to George. For a moment the camera fixes on the young man's eyes, as the beginnings of realization take hold that he is walking into a borderline-psychotic household. His wife, a secretly mentally ill, delicate, and (as it turns out, victimized) young woman, is the one who suffers the most from the "night of fun and games with George and Martha".
More than George or Martha, I found Nick the most repulsive character. Amidst the madness and the unbelievably vicious psychological games that Martha and George inflict on each other, more out of need than irritation, he keeps his mind on his career as a professor. The constantly flowing alcohol fuels the madness, as all of the very nasty warts George and Martha have fermented over the miserable years are exposed. The mystery of this film is that despite absolute mayhem of their relations, George and Martha are held together by something that seems real.
In the hopeless night that Martha and George inhabit, the question of whether truth even exists is raised not out of any academic intellectuality, but out of the overwhelming pain and bitterness of their lies. The ending implies that while they may seem fearless indulging their pathos;they do fear the direction in which they are headed: absolute insanity.
The atmosphere can only be classified as horror coupled with black humor. You feel like you are actually there.
It is far, far better than "Citizen Kane", leaves "Bonnie and Clyde" in the dust, and, above all, makes one wonder what Richard Burton could have done with his extraordinary talent if he could have let the booze alone and stopped getting involved in failed marriages and ridiculous movies. Burton as George, the bookish, alcoholic husband of Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), is as sadly fitting a role in the personal sense as Rock Hudson's in "Seconds". Burton was often known to say "Wherever the books are, home is" and had extreme potential. Like George, though, he couldn't catch a break with the Oscars or women.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 28, 2005 | | Summary | Elizabeth Taylor Bares Her Talent | Content
| Others have detailed the genius of Edward Albee's play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" I would only add that for those of you who doubt that Elizabeth taylor was once a superb actress, watch this movie! Ms. Taylor shines as does Burton, Segal and Dennis. Be prepared to be totally drained when the crdits roll. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 14, 2005 | | Summary | Famous --- but for what? | Content
| Sometimes a work of literature appears which is right for its time, but not for subsequent ages. This is one of those. I'm not afraid of Virginia Woolf, but I am afraid that this is a very boring play. It is dull, long-drawn out, repetitive and wholly unedifying. Marriages aren't like this any more, if they ever were, although they might have been in the early 60s. The people are completely unbelievable, quite unreal. The production is extremely stagy, contrived, mechanical and clunky, although it's obvious that a lot of work went into it. I never saw what was supposed to be so fantastic about Elizabeth Taylor, who seems to me a plain and dumpy little person and a mediocre actress --- at best. The dialogue lacks wit and imagination: four very ordinary academics get drunk and irritate each other, and the audience. They display nothing of their assumed erudition in history and biology; in fact, they might as well have been high-school teachers, or management accountants. There is no plot, and very little character development. A sensation in 1966, merely numbing forty years on. Watch it once if you must (I thought I was going to see something remarkable) and then consign it to historic oblivion, along with Proust, Henry James and the rest of the tedious crew. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 11, 2005 | | Summary | Alex North's brilliant score is one of his best. | Content
| This Oscar-nominated 1966 film score ranks with some of the finest of the 1960s including "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Psycho", "A Patch of Blue", "The Chase", "Two for the Road", "In Cold Blood", "Bullitt" and "The Wild Bunch". The dramatic intensity of it is matched by North's earlier scores for "A Streetcar Named Desire", "The Bad Seed", "Spartacus", "The Misfits", "Cleopatra" and "The Agony and the Ecstasy". His genius as a composer has never been fully appreciated as one has only to listen to the soundtrack of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to be deeply moved by this splendid score. Newly recorded by the late, great Jerry Goldsmith, he pays a magnificent tribute to the brilliance of Alex North. After 15 unsuccessful Academy Award nominations (including his last for "Dragonslayer"), North was finally recognized by the Academy with a special Oscar in 1985. [filmfactsman] |
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