MCW: Best Elizabeth Taylor Movie
"If you existed, I'd divorce you" (Martha to George)
The time: 1966. The movie: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
A black and white movie with just 4 characters and confined (for the most part) to a single room somehow turns out to be more explosive than your average summer blockbuster. If you have ever been out with people who spent the evening trading barbs and veiled putdowns you know how awkward that can be. This movie makes you feel that only in a different way because the acting is so intense and wide open that you are spellbound in horror and recognition. Alcohol is the accelerant that turns a shit night on the George and Martha marriage front into DefCon 4, taking a small fragile relationship down with it.
I had thought about going with A Place in the Sun but that's Monty's movie. Its his story. Though I love Elizabeth in it for just sheer astonishing beauty, it is nowhere near the acting triumph that VW is. First of all, it was brave of her to play physically a chubby stuffed into her clothing alcoholic bitch. Raging at her real life husband Richard Burton in the movie, one wonders how real it might have been given the volatility the actual marriage had.
heres a favorite scene:
I know I will blog jinx this week. How could I not?
RIP Elizabeth. You were a true star. Happy MCW everyone!
The time: 1966. The movie: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
A black and white movie with just 4 characters and confined (for the most part) to a single room somehow turns out to be more explosive than your average summer blockbuster. If you have ever been out with people who spent the evening trading barbs and veiled putdowns you know how awkward that can be. This movie makes you feel that only in a different way because the acting is so intense and wide open that you are spellbound in horror and recognition. Alcohol is the accelerant that turns a shit night on the George and Martha marriage front into DefCon 4, taking a small fragile relationship down with it.
I had thought about going with A Place in the Sun but that's Monty's movie. Its his story. Though I love Elizabeth in it for just sheer astonishing beauty, it is nowhere near the acting triumph that VW is. First of all, it was brave of her to play physically a chubby stuffed into her clothing alcoholic bitch. Raging at her real life husband Richard Burton in the movie, one wonders how real it might have been given the volatility the actual marriage had.
heres a favorite scene:
I know I will blog jinx this week. How could I not?
RIP Elizabeth. You were a true star. Happy MCW everyone!
posted by sparringK9 at 9:44 PM
4 Comments:
Art, imitating life, imitating life?
We'll never know how close this came to resembling "At home with the Burtons"
Still a Great Movie. The girl could act!
Happy MCW
Well, you nearly blog jinxed with me because I went with A Place in the Sun. It was my Mother's favorite movie and mine too.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is one I had a hard time watching the first time; almost too real, too horrifying and intense. I watched it again as an adult and of course saw it through the eyes of a person who HAS spent an evening with a couple that really, really, shouldn't be mixing alcohol and their relationship around friends.
Great pick, great write up as always and happy MCW!
I have never seen this movie, strangely enough. I think I need to find it and watch some evening when I can spend some time with it and study it. I remember my mom didn't like it for some reason, and she was pretty open with movies and letting us watch controversial things. This one was a no. Meanwhile, Sandy Dennis! Wow. Now there is a face of the 60's.
This film should serve as a stern reminder that alcohol and romance are strange bedfellows. They seem to hit it off at first. But then alcohol finds out that romance never really did like all of its old Journey records.
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