Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Directed by Mike Nichols. Starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal, Sandy Dennis.

Mike Nichols makes his feature directorial debut with this film version of Edward Albee’s boundary-pushing stage play of a young couple (Segal, Dennis) who are “hostages” for a night of acidic, intense conversation with George and Martha, an evasive middle-aged couple who rope their visitors into their “fun and games.” A talky affair, even a touch long-winded—as faithful theater translations tend to be—but Nichols opens things up by periodically moving the action to new locations, and livening up the static confines with showy camera angles, flourishes, and smash-cuts, a technique that heightens the drama even further…but also exposes his rookie status in cinematic strategy. Fortunately, shortcomings in the visual grammar and screenplay editing are nearly negated altogether by the sheer strength of the acting from performers who prove to be versatile and compulsively watchable no matter how cynical, spiteful or loathsome they become. Burton and Taylor are both as good here as they ever were before and after, while Segal and Dennis react with a cautious balance of sympathy, politeness, and befuddlement, judiciously waiting for their moments to shine. The two women won Academy Awards, as did Haskell Wexler’s camerawork, Richard Sylbert and George James Hopkins’ art direction, and (quite inexplicably) Irene Sharaff’s costume design. Producer Ernest Lehman is credited for the script adaptation despite the fact that, aside from a few additional lines of dialogue, it all comes straight from Albee’s original text. The first film to ever carry a notice from the MPAA that no one under a certain age would be admitted unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.

89/100