In lieu of the passing of director Mike Nichols, Lorna Irvine reflects on one of his greatest films: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
Only the ones we love most can hurt us the most- a cliche, perhaps, but true.
Mike Nichols' debut feature film as director was the stunning adaptation of Edward Albee's play, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? And what a film to debut with. To my mind, it is not a domestic drama, as it is billed, but, rather, a western.
Sourer than a round of whisky sours, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor, giving an Oscar-winning performance) and George (Richard Burton) have a marriage that is at once sexually-charged and crumbling. Swaggering like Dodge City's sheriff, Martha systematically sets about completely emasculating George with one flash of those feline eyes, now more red than violet. 'I am the earth mother, and you... are all flops,' she snarls.
Then, two novices roll into town, a young, blonde couple brilliantly portrayed by Sandy Dennis (Oscar-winner for Best Supporting Actress) and George Segal, whose character names we never learn in the film but are named Honey and Nick in the play. They initially seem like innocents, virginal, awkward and gauche, sharing banal chit-chat but are harbouring their own secrets, which of course Martha and George blow wide open, shooting targets for their twisted mind games.
It doesn't end prettily, suffice to say.
It is interesting that this masterpiece, a landmark in its tackling of motifs like alcoholism, marital conflict, domestic violence and sexual liberation, collided with the new rock 'n' roll explosion, arriving as it did in 1966 when social mores were shifting: this was, after all, the year when race riots loomed large, opposition to America's role in the Vietnam War, Dylan went electric and the Stones picked up a sitar on Paint it Black.
The bar room scene is the turning point where our two gunslingers, who famously had a fractious on-off relationship in real life, face off. Martha is nearly strangled when she reveals the roots of George's first novel. 'You gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are,’ quips George bitterly, a broken man.
It's a Western, spit-flecked with sadness—the only sadness that comes from a lifetime of disappointment, magnified at the bottom of a glass.
"Clink!'
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