Movie – Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Movie – Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Score : 9/10
Year : 1966
Director: Mike Nichols
Country : USA. Latin. Spanish
Language : English
Duration: 2h11 (IMDB) ; 2h05 (dvd)
Writers : Ernest Lehman (screenplay) ; Edward Albee (play) 

Mature audience : don't put your kid in front of it. 

A couple days ago, I tried watching ‘’who’s afraid’’ but after about 20 minutes, I felt emotionally uneasy and not ready to finish it, especially since it was quite late when I started it. Therefore, I had to divide watching this movie and continued tonight. I was blown away by the amazing performance by Richard Burton (George) and Elizabeth Taylor (Martha), portraying very realistically an old, bitter couple, drinking and bickering throughout one night, until dawn – and taking away in their private little war, a younger couple they invited to party at their home. 

The dialogues are harsh, cruel, and even sadistic. They are full of innuendos, double entendre, and some dark humour. Stay tuned till the very end, there's a major twist...

Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, adapting Edward Albee’s play of the same name, released 4 years prior to the movie. From what I understand, the movie differs from the play very slightly, remaining faithful in majority. They both deal with marital strife, and thus most dialogues are shouted by the cast – especially Burton and Taylor, and less so from Sandy Dennis (Honey), and a very young George Segal (Nick), whom I’ve seen in only one other role , Jack Gallo, in the sitcom Just shoot me. I had no idea he could actually be dramatic, kudos!

As it takes place at night, and mostly at George & Martha’s house, it was bound to be dark. Indeed, the scenes are all shot in a very dark mood, to accompany the tension released from the four characters – and hold the audience as witnesses to the horrors each of them spews. This is emphasised through filming in b&w - when color was available -  a very well made, personal decision by director of photography, amongst others. 

The score wasn’t too intrusive, letting many moments with only a shallow hint – thus we could concentrate on the delivery of each sentence.

Even though I’m fluent in English, I had to turn the subtitles on, for two reasons: first, the lines are fast paced, and second, with a bit of an accent I wasn’t attuned to listen at this particular moment after watching a tv show the past few days – the voices of these 4 actors are completely different.

The only things I didn’t like in the movie are, off course as a vegan, animal food (chicken, ate once by Taylor), fur and some ‘’hunting trophies’’ displayed in the background at some bar they end up in; but that’s not specific to this movie as most aren’t veg-friendly – especially in 1966… 



 Who's afraid.... in the media 

I rented this movie at the media library, in a double dvd, French collector edition, EAN 7321950124145 released in 2007. These dvd are zone 2.

On the first dvd : Who's afraid in its original 16//9 1.85:1 aspect ratio, sound dolby digital 2.0 mono for original English, as well as French and Italian dubs. There are subtitles for these 3 langauges as well as Dutch, Roumanian, and... Islandic of all... I never met an Islandic person in France... anyways. 
There are 2 audio commentary tracks : director Mike Nichols & Steven Soderbergh, and director oh photography Haskell Wexler. I haven't had the opportunity to listen to them yet.

On second dvd, several documentaries :


Elizabeth Taylor: Intimate portrait. Is 1h06 docu, interviews with people who worked with Elizabeth, and her mother ; partially informative about her career and some of her life. There are some passages I felt the interviewes were bordering with misogyny...The docu does show many excerts from Liz's film carrer.

Who's afraid... a Daring work (20'12) and who's afraid... too shocking for its time (10'36') are two documentaries about the movie, its writting challenges as it pushed the limits of censorship rulles which had been established since the 1930's and helped to change into what became the MPAA's system of rating, used to this day. You learn, for instance, that the racy dialogues from the play had to be tones down, in order for the movie to be filmed...

Sandy Dennis screen test (6'53), 
Excerts from 1966 Mike Nichols interviews (8'58)
Theatrical trailer (2'11)

It's possible to select the following subtitles on the documentaries: English, French, Italian, Dutch, Castillian and German