WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Mike Nicolls

SCREENWRITER: Ernest Lehman

FILM STARS: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis, Agnes Flanagan (uncredited), Frank Flanagan (uncredited)

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Edward Albee

TYPE: Play

PUBLISHER: Penguin

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1984

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1962

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS:  A great play and a great film. Films of plays, inevitably, especially if domestic dramas tend to follow their source material pretty closely. No hate mail from theatre lovers please but plays are dialogue and directions for film, errr screenplays, so they are easily realised. Having said that, historically,  theatre could be more confronting than film because it reached fewer people.  Though there are (were) limits … the more confronting a play the more it was called “experimental” and it existed outside of the theatre mainstream. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee should have been shuffled into the ‘experimental” because of its profanity. But, despite controversy, it was mainstream, and it was a big hit.

Films inevitably follow hit plays.

The film (like the play) is both funny and tragic as a bitter, aging married couple, with the help of alcohol, use their young houseguests to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other over the course of a distressing and emotionally draining night. In some ways the play (and the film) follow the usual lines of people coming together, clashing, and secrets being revealed but it works here because the dialogue is so pointed and honest. Of course the bickering reveals things about societal expectations on marriage and commitment, reality and illusion, convention and rebellion. Albee, like a north eastern Tennessee Williams, has the knack for capturing domestic dialogue revealing hidden meanings underneath.

I’m not sure what screenwriter Ernest Lehman did but he isn’t a slouch (Executive Suite (1954), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (with Clifford Odets) (1957), North by Northwest (1959), From the Terrace (1960)). I assume he just massaged the stage directions into film directions and made the play “filmic”.

In the film Nick (played by the always underrated George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis), are invited for drinks at the home of henpecked professor George (Richard Burton) and his vulgar, sexually aggressive wife, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor). All the cast are wonderful but, no doubt, the pairing of Burton and Taylor who were married in real life (they had married in 1964) is genius. They were, very much so,  the Brad and Angelina, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore err the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard of their time. Everyone followed them, or followed them as much as they could in pre internet days. They had already starred in films together and their pre marriage affair was well known. The thought of them playing a married couple spitting insults at each other rather than gazing at each other through a romantic comedy was too much. It works in spades. They were so convincing I assume that people thought the characters on screen were the real Burton and Taylor. And in part they were, but perhaps, we all have a little George and Martha in us?

Former actor and comedian Mike Nichols had become by 1965 one of the most in-demand stage directors in the American theatre. He had not directed a film. There is a tendency , especially in drams, to have a static camera and have the characters move around the scene (not quite a “filmed play” – where you literally film the play rather than make a film) but Nichols has his camera up close and at a distance (within a room) when necessary. It’s never boring (and it’s 132 minutes long (the play ran for almost 3 hours)). Nichols went on to direct more literate dramas (Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Fortune (1975)), more dramas based on nooks, (The Graduate (1967),  Primary Colours (1998)), more films from plays (Biloxi Blues (1988), Closer (2004 )) and even some iterate action films (Catch 22 (1970), Day of the Dolphin (1973)) which were less successful. The key word is “literate” … what would George and Martha make of that?

Wikipedia talks about the differences between play and film (why bother to word salad it as my own when I can quote? … “The film adaptation differs slightly from the play, which has only four characters. The minor characters of the roadhouse owner, who has only a few lines of dialogue, and his wife, who serves a tray of drinks and leaves silently, were played by the film’s gaffer, Frank Flanagan, and his wife, Agnes… The play is set entirely in Martha and George’s house. In the film, one scene takes place at the roadhouse, one in George and Martha’s yard, and one in their car. Despite these minor deviations, however, the film is extremely faithful to the play. The filmmakers used the original play as the screenplay and, aside from toning down some of the profanity slightly—Martha’s “Screw you!” (which, in the 2005 Broadway revival, is “Fuck you!”) becomes “God damn you!”—virtually all of the original dialogue remains intact, although a major monologue by Martha is cut. (In the version released in the UK, “Screw you” is kept intact. In an interview at the time of the release, Taylor referred to this phrase as pushing boundaries) … Nick is never referred to or addressed by name during the film or the play”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F_(film)

The play’s title, which alludes to the English novelist Virginia Woolf, is also a reference to the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” from Walt Disney’s animated version of The Three Little Pigs.  Writer Woolf, a big bad wolf, three little pigs all fit in with the social and intellectual milieu of the films characters and their personalities, though someone else came up with it. Albee described the inspiration for the title … “I was in there [a saloon in New York] having a beer one night, and I saw “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf … who’s afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual  joke”.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F

A great play, a great film but above all great casting in the leads.

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