Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

The critic declares the film a motion picture masterpiece, an instant classic that will sweep the Oscars and succeed at the box office without compromise. Nichols receives the greatest credit for the implacable engagement the film creates for its audience, while the adaptation preserves nearly all of Albee's language and vitality.

The film transforms Albee's powerful drama into a brilliant motion picture through strong adaptation, production, and direction by Mike Nichols in his feature debut, along with four outstanding performances. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton deliver standout portrayals that capture the characters' complex mix of sensuality, spite, and tenderness.

The critic celebrates the enduring power of Mike Nichols’ 1966 debut as a sizzling, gut-busting adaptation that has kept the play in the cultural zeitgeist for six decades. Particular praise goes to Elizabeth Taylor’s searing, ferocious yet vulnerable performance as Martha, which crackles with emotional electricity alongside Richard Burton.

The critic highlights the film's opening credits sequence as strangely affecting, with its nighttime campus walk and greenhouse imagery suggesting buried lives and alternative possibilities for the characters. It notes how the adaptation marks Nichols' successful shift from theater to a more cinematic style, using close-ups effectively to stress Albee's dialogue.

The critic finds Edward Albee's vitriolic stage portrayal translated grainily and effectively to the screen. Taylor delivers what is probably her finest performance as the blowsy harridan Martha, Burton is solid if not quite as hammy as usual, and the verbal fireworks are surprisingly convincing, though the film is played too relentlessly for realism when the subject is at least half fantasy.

The critic praises the film's intense, close-up focus on the Burtons' performances and its shocking language for the era, calling it an excruciating but often painfully funny experience that was a commercial success despite production difficulties.

The critic highlights the film's complex, unflinching close-up of a damaged marriage and praises the lead performances, calling Taylor's a career best and Burton the standout for his mix of passive and real aggression.