This is what happen after so many years!

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

This film will actually blow your mind away. With all of its only 4 casts getting Oscar nominations and winning 5 of the 13 categories that it was nominated for, it must be one of its kind.
The main characters, George and Martha (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor), sets the gold standard of how chemistry between characters should be. The dialogue is quite heavy and incisive. At the time, it was considered unsuitable for general public consumption, so much so that, it became the first American movie with the 'For Mature Audiences Only' tag.
Phew! That's how I would label this flick. Watching it and digesting the dialogue is quite emotionally draining. The interplay with words, word play, cursing, abuse, flirting, heckling, insinuations, teasing and quarrelling is simply heavy with emotions.

The whole scenario happened in the wee hours of the early morning after a party in the Martha's father's place. Tipsy, George and Martha saunter back to their home. After a few minutes of meaningless conversation, George wants to retire for the night but Martha tells him that she had invited someone from the party to their home for some drinks.
What follows later is a solid 2 hours of ventilation of emotions and outpourings of deep seated sorrow between two couples. George, living a unfulfilled life, living under the scrutiny of his father-in-law who is also a History Professor under whom he is an Associate Professor. His wife is a foul mouth bossy drunk and a flirt. She is a persistent whiner who is forever not satisfied with her husband. She feels that George is a slob and an underachiever. Along the way, I gather that she must have snapped, needing psychiatric assistance.
George is embarrassed with his wife's broadcasting of personal problems and is ashamed of their childlessness. Martha, as we later find out, makes up a fictitious son who was turning 16 the next day.
The guest, Nick and Honey, has their own set of problems. Nick is a young lecturer who married his timid 'mousy' wife as he thought that she was pregnant. It turned out to be a pseudo-pregnancy. Honey, the young naive wife, has nothing to contribute intellectually that night except to be drunk and puke.
Layer by layer, all the uncertainties are teased out over the night. Even though 20 years of problems cannot be solved in a single night, George managed to convince Martha that there is no son and their 'cat and mouse' reaches a sober end.


The film's title refers to Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), an influential British feminist writer who pioneered the 'stream of consciousness' literary style while examining the psychological and emotional motives of her characters. [Perhaps the 'fear' of VW refers to the film's characters who are suffering marital discord in the emotionally-draining film, and who may have 'known' that she suffered from mental illness and ultimately went insane and committed suicide.] The title is also a parody of 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?', a tune sung in Disney's Three Little Pigs (1933) animated short film. [Wikipedia]

The baggage of time

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)
If you want to see a movie where 4 people get drunk on bourbon and brandy and go on talking and talking in circles and riddles for 2 hours, this is it. On the other hand, their talk is not gibberish mutterings of  drunks but all the outpourings of 2 frustrated middle class couples of their marriages which started with pomp and splendour but slowly degenerated to one pair who are constantly at each other's nerves and find pleasure in hurting each other real bad where it hurt most. In fact the whole film is a quarreling match on how the main character and his wife abuse each other with words whilst slowly unfolding their life tragedy. All this shouting and hurling earned this film 13 Academy Award nominations and won 5.
George (Richard Burton), a history Associate Professor, staggers along in a drunken gait with his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) to their home at 2am. Martha enters their home to complain about the dumpster of a house they are living in. After a few more drinks, she announces that a young couple that they had met in her father's, (the College President) party earlier would be visiting them soon. They argue on the inappropriateness of their visit at such unearthly hour just as the couple arrives, much to the guests' embarrassment (not the host). The couple comprise Nick (George Segal), a young lecturer in Biology and his meekly wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis).

Histrionics of Oscar Winner

The drunken Martha unashamedly flirts with the young hunk whilst belittling her husband's meagre pay and other inadequacies. George, the verbose intellect goes on an offensive on character bashing of his wife and guests. We later (almost at the end) come to realise that George and Martha are a childless couple who concocted a elaborate story about a non existent son. This childlessness has brought them much frustration and resentment against each other. The marriage based on love and high expectations turned sour when George failed to climb the ladder of promotion in the university much to the disappointment of his father in law, the College President. The constant whining of a frustrated Martha probably turned George into the grumpy old man that he is.
Nick, also had many burdens to clear off his chest as the night progressed and as many more drinks were downed. He got in a marriage with a plain girl just because her father was a heavyweight in the university and that he thought she was pregnant. The pregnancy, however, turned out to be a hysterical pregnancy that disappeared after the wedding. There is more to that than being a case of a disappearing baby. In a drunken delirium, Honey may have blurted out of undergoing a termination due to her morbid fear of having babies.
The arguments proceeds to a dance hall, to the garden, to their bedroom and finally back to the living room where it all started. The guests leave when the whole truth about the non-existence of the blue eyed (sometimes green) son comes out in the open.
This is an excellent film which brought out the best in the acting skills of all 4 main characters of the show. 2 of them (Taylor and Dennis) went on to win the Oscars. Burton, the experienced stage actor who gave such a sterling performance with succinct dialogues and word play failed at Oscars as he finally did 7 times in his lifetime. Talking about dialogue, these days, they do not make movies with such moving script and interesting cheeky play with the English language anymore.