As a Liz Taylor fan, and a fan of film history in general, this post-modern black and white was in many ways a pinnacle watch for me.
Elizabeth Taylor grew up on the screen, she was America's sweetheart at the age of 7. By the time she was 18 and starring in Father of the Bride, she was arguably the most beautiful woman in the world. A year later, after A Place In The Sun, she became one of the most accomplished actresses Hollywood had yet seen. In this role we find her at about 34 years of age, but playing an even older woman in Virginia Woolf I'd say. In this role, we see her own personal transition as an actress as well as Hollywood's transition into the new-age of the 1960's and beyond, when traditional ethical and moral standards in film making began to crumble. It was very interesting to see how Liz Taylor, once America's Darling, was one of the main actors who helped engender this change.
The language is rather tame of course by today's standards, but still racy and raunchy and very controversial for the time. And to see the normally dignified and prudent Taylor lashing out as a somewhat middle aged sex-crazed, foul-mouthed alcoholic middle aged wife made her appear as a REAL person for perhaps the first time in her career (not an idealized or romanticized vision of what Hollywood or America is supposed to represent). It's almost as if Hollywood grew up right alongside Taylor as well.
And the comedic element is uncanny; you just don't get that kind of writing today--lewd, but not hyberbole prone and over the top. Just the perfect element of realness and believability that draws the audience in. Taylor and Burton are electric, unconvenential, yet very relatable to. Their quarrels actually resemble a real-life confrontation in the depth and breadth of their message and its delivery, and this real-life element adds to the pathos of the story.
Excellent watch; a narrative structure and scenario that's been emulated by playwrights and screenwriters since--perhaps even beforehand--but never done quite as well as this. Taylor and her then husband Richard Burton play an onscreen "old married couple" who have a severed relationship but for what reason we the audience really aren't aware of (some issue with their son). A night with another couple (younger than themselves) turns into a rather prurient evening amidst thundering confrontation between Taylor and Burton. We find the two (especially Taylor) testing the animalistic limitations of sex and faithfullness in a marriage with their younger and inexperienced counterparts. (Often times, a narrative such as this presents itself in this manner with the circumstances of a changing outside world at that time, which fuel the interactions between the couples, if that makes sense.)
Perhaps my favorite Elizabeth Taylor role ever next to A Place In the Sun. She's never looked sexier, even at age 34, and even in character of someone much older and more jaded than her own self. But with her real-life tragedy that preceded this role, it's no small wonder what a tour de force she was on the screen.
Highly recommended watch if nothing else than for its historical significance.
