BEFORE: Liz Taylor carries over this time, and she starred with one husband, Eddie Fisher, in the last picture, and with another husband in this one.
I'm sort of beating TCM to the punch here, they won't get to this film for a few days, when they hit their New England chain, but I picked this up last year when they ran a 24-hour tribute to Liz Taylor. Today TCM hits ancient Rome with "Quo Vadis", "Cleopatra" (the one without Liz Taylor), Ben-Hur (seen it), "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (ditto) and "Spartacus", which is already on my list, thanks to my BFF Andy's Christmas gift. Then it's on to Austria for a few films, including "The Third Man" (seen it) and "Amadeus" (seen it). So no adds today, but I will be adding two tomorrow.
THE PLOT: A bitter aging couple with the help of alcohol, use a young couple to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other.
AFTER: Speaking of Andy, we've been having an ongoing conversation that sprung out of last week's film "The Seven Year Itch", and we're both making salient points concerning relationships, however the difference in our marital status may be causing a bit of a disconnect. Explaining the finer points of marriage to a single person might be a little like explaining color to a blind person, no offense intended, Andy.
But by the same token, every marriage is different, and it's easy to see something in another relationship that bears no resemblance to yours - case in point, tonight's feuding couple, George and Martha. They've taken arguing to a whole new level, referring to it as their "games", and even getting others involved to an unnatural extent. It starts during drinks with another couple with a few underhanded jabs, and over the course of the evening (which turns into night, which turns into morning) it becomes a total mind-bender.
I suppose the fact that it's set in academia might have something to do with it - George is a college professor and we can surmise that Martha's father is/was some kind of bigwig at the college. The couple caught in the crossfire here is a new biology professor and his young, reserved wife. Once George and Martha have liquored them up and extracted a few key facts from their history, they've got all the ammunition they need to cut them down, maybe even tear them apart.
I didn't particularly enjoy watching a couple fight for two hours, it's not exactly my idea of a good time, particularly when Taylor's performance was so over-the-top, compared with, say, the one in "BUtterfield 8". Yeah, I'll admit the mind-games got a little interesting near the end, when we get a peak at just how delusional and dysfunctional this couple is.
I've read the explanation of the title, and I still don't really get it. Obviously it's a play on "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?", but neither of the professors are literature teachers, so I don't see why they're referencing Virginia Woolf. It comes across like the punchline to a joke that was told at a party earlier in the evening, but without the funny part. Anyway, more Virginia Woolf to follow this week...
Also starring Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Dennis.
RATING: 3 out of 10 snapdragons
A great example of an unnamed movie genre: the "Get a bunch of intense actors together on minimal salary and the promise that they'll get to act THE CRAP out of every scene."
ReplyDeleteIt's common way to make a movie out of a stage play. See: "Glengary Glenn Ross," "The Big Kahuna," and more. One wonders how much more intense this script must have been when seen performed live. This...is...ACT-TINNNNGG!!!!!!
Ugh, it's painful to watch these 50's and 60's perspectives on relationships and marriage.