Few directors begin their careers like Mike Nichols. While it may sound like an overstatement on the day after his death, but he shook Hollywood like no other first-time director had since Orson Welles.
That first film, of course, was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a movie you can either hate or love. If you hate it, it’s probably because you can’t stand watching two hours of a husband and wife yelling and screaming at each other. If you love it, it’s because of the acting tour de force that Nichols orchestrated. Indeed, the term “actor’s director” seems invented just for Nichols.
Based on the Edward Albee Tony-winning play, the film centers on George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and the young couple Nick (George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis) that Martha invites over to their house. George is a professor at the university and a coward, whose life hasn’t panned out the way it should have - or at least how others think it should have. Martha, his wife, is the bossy one, a hard-drinking, overweight woman whose father happens to be George’s boss.
The two are constantly bickering, and the intrusion of the young couple brings the bombastic relationship to a new level. Even before Nick and Honey come in, the two bicker over the smallest things. “What a dump!” Martha says, as she enters their home at the start of the film, quoting Bette Davis. George doesn’t get the reference and that already angers Martha. Nick and Honey have entered a disaster area and while Nick has reservations, they continue down the proverbial rabbit hole.
Virginia Woolf could have been a very boring movie, but Nichols - who had previously only worked on the stage and in front of TV cameras - understood how to keep it visually alive. He puts the camera right in the action, using long takes and allowing the actors to move within the space of George and Martha’s house. Nichols and screenwriter Ernest Lehman do open the movie a bit, moving a scene to a roadhouse, showing an understanding for the medium.
It’s remarkable that Nichols got this great performance out of Elizabeth Taylor. I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt that Richard Burton could handle his role (and one of the great injustices of the movie world is that he never won an Oscar), but Taylor grew up in the Hollywood studio system, learning a form of acting that was outdated by 1966. She understood that and Nichols was thee best director available to help her.
Just compare Taylor’s shrill, annoying performance in Butterfield 8 to her work in Virginia Woolf?, released just six years later. She was a genuine actress who, when paired with the right director, could be explosive on the screen.
Virginia Woolf was the first film since 1931’s Cimarron to be nominated for all the Oscars it was eligible for. But Virginia Woolf? ultimately lost Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay to A Man For All Seasons. Taylor and Dennis did win their Oscars, though.
Nichols would return with a vengeance though the following year with The Graduate, a film that was even more radical and important than Virginia Woolf. Still, his opening shot at Hollywood still smolders.
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image courtesy of Walter McBride/INFphoto.com