Edward Albee Movies
This first film directorial effort of actor Simon Callow is based on a novel by Carson McCullers -- which, in turn, was adapted for the stage by Edward Albee in 1964. Vanessa Redgrave plays a powerful Southern matriarch who, sequestered in her café/general store, holds her home town in the palm of her hand. Redgrave's benevolent despotry is threatened by the arrival of her hunchbacked cousin, Cork Hubbert (in the role played on stage by dwarf actor Michael Dunn), and her jailbird husband Keith Carradine. Unable to remove this threat to her authority by her usual means, Redgrave is reduced to challenging Carradine to a bare-knuckle fight! Carson McCullers' fascination with the disintegration of the Old South coupled with her preoccupation with the grotesque requires delicate handling (as witness Heart Is a Lonely Hunter). Callow works overtime keeping things controlled and tasteful; unfortunately, this results in a very mannered and stilted production, all too obviously betraying its stage origins. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine, (more)
The Broadway Archive presents this play by Pulitzer prize-winning author Edward Albee. The story revolves around a dying man surrounded by his immediate family, along with his mistress and doctors. Starring Myra Carter, William Prince, and Anne Shropshire. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
- Starring:
- Myra Carter, William Prince, (more)
A Delicate Balance is the 1973 film adaptation of Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield play an old married couple, Agnes and Tobias, who much prefer to be alone. Each time someone visits them, their "delicate balance" is threatened. The first intruder is Agnes' inebriated sister, Claire (Kate Reid). The next is their much-divorced daughter, Julia (Lee Remick). The limit is reached when well-meaning friends Harry (Joseph Cotten) and Edna (Betsy Blair) show up unexpectedly and threaten to stay forever. In keeping with the austerity of the other American Film Theatre presentations, director Tony Richardson eschews his usual cinematographic pyrotechnics here. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1966
- Add Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Queue Add Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to top of Queue
"You are cordially invited to George and Martha's for an evening of fun and games." Thus read the ad copy for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which in 1966 went farther than any previous big-studio film in its use of profanity and sexual implication. George (Richard Burton) is an alcoholic college professor; Martha (Oscar-winner Elizabeth Taylor) is his virago of a wife. George and Martha know just how to push each other's buttons, with George having a special advantage: he need only mention the couple's son to send Martha into orbit. This evening, the couple's guests are Nick (George Segal), a junior professor, and Honey (Sandy Dennis), Nick's child-like wife. After an evening of sadistic (and sometimes perversely hilarious) "fun and games," the truth about George and Martha's son comes to light. First staged on Broadway in 1962 with Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, Edward Albee's play was adapted for the screen by Ernest Lehman, who managed to retain virtually all of Albee's scatological epithets (this was the first American film to feature the expletive "goddamn"). Lehman opened up the play by staging one of George's speeches in the backyard, and by relocating the film's second act to a roadside inn (he also added four lines--"all bad," according to Albee). Thanks to the box-office clout of stars Taylor and Burton, not to mention the titilation factor of hearing all those naughty words on the big screen, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was a hit, and it won 5 Oscars, including awards for Taylor and Dennis, though it lost Best Picture to A Man for All Seasons. First-time director Mike Nichols lost the Oscar, but this movie gave him a perfect transition from his stage work and established him as a hot young Hollywood director, leading to his acclaimed (and Oscar-winning) work on his next movie, The Graduate. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, (more)
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