"she's never wunk at you?"

the first thing you think once 'who's afraid of virginia woolf?' has started is 'lord, what a cackle that elizabeth taylor has!'

edward albee of course wrote the play, and it is a much more delightful play than old edward himself, whom i met several years ago when appearing in a production of his one-act play 'the death of bessie smith'. i shook his hand and told him i was playing the lead role. he said "it's a very difficult role." charming, just charming. he then gave a talk in which he mainly bad-mouthed his adoptive parents for half an hour.

in 1966, it was the most expensive black and white film ever made, due to the astronomical (at the time) salaries of taylor, burton, and albee. taylor won her second oscar, while burton lost out to paul scofield in 'a man for all seasons'. i would have had a hard time deciding that one myself.

for most of the film, george is the only character it's possible to feel much sympathy for, and i feel this is largely due to the fact that everything he says sounds vaguely shakespearean in that rich welsh voice of his. yes, even during the roadside cafe when he calls honey first 'angel boobs' and then 'monkey nipples'. he's the only actor i can think of who can come off dignified saying 'monkey nipples'. he's got that devilish little laugh, which will suddenly break and he'll give martha that look, and he's suddenly as sad as his grandfather cardigan. martha and nick can keep up with his steady stream of verbal brutality (honey is simultaneously too stupid and too sloshed), but neither can match his eloquence.

the thing that always astounds me about elizabeth taylor is her ability to look either beautiful or trashy, or a weird combination of both. last week i watched 'a place in the sun', in which she is about as porcelain and untouchable as a girl can be. but in this film (thanks in part to the weight gain?) she looks cheap and vulgar and used. she throws around that raspy, sex-infused voice, and you find yourself wondering why george doesn't just go ahead and kill her. (burton and taylor were only on their first marriage at this point.) it's pretty incomprehensible that he could still love her at all, but when he finds her clothes on the stairs and the door chained, you believe that he does. the best scenes, for me, aren't the yelling and the screaming, or the not-even-thinly veiled barbs, but the episodes of genuine camaraderie, like when they team up in humiliating nick, or the moments immediately following the rifle turned umbrella.

sandy dennis provokes her own sympathy, partially due to the fact that she really does look like the mouse they refer to her as (especially when crawling around drunk in a fur coat), and also because she is truly pathetic, defenseless, ridiculous, and unaware of how pathetic, defenseless, and ridiculous she is. sadly, i couldn't rid my mind of the mental image of george segal as the magazine editor on 'just shoot me'. his character comes across as the worst -- out for himself and hypocritical to boot. george and martha may have their moments of extraordinary cruelty, but even though it seemed to be aimed at each other, helping someone else destroy you is tantamount to self-destruction.

it really is a great, great film, and at a little over two hours, is not at all too long, and in fact ends at just the right moment, with george and martha finally having to face up to the fact of what their lives have been, and what they will have to be.

(the picture is from the george and martha series by james marshall. when i was a kid, i thought maybe the reference was to george and martha washington, but now i'm not so sure....)