Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
Holy crap what a draining movie. Not a bad draining… not at all. Actually, I’d go so far as to say it is one of the most powerful actor’s showcases in the nearly 200 films we’ve covered in this column. The performances in this film are unreal.
On the surface this film is about one thing: cruelty. And I’m not talking about subtle cruelty, but real in your face venomous, crass, harsh, ugly cruelty.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton play a very bitter old married couple, each with a matching appreciation for the most vile humor, throwing daggers at each other from the first moment they appear together.
Burton is a college professor, Taylor the daughter of the top dog in this school’s adminstration. When we first meet them they’re just getting in from a party, both a little tipsy. Burton just wants to go to sleep, but Taylor tells him to expect company, that her daddy has arranged an informal get-together with a new math professor and his wife.
These two poor bastards show up (played by George Segal –who we follow over from yesterday’s THE HOT ROCK- and Sandy Dennis) and become unwitting spectators in this dysfunctional family. Actually, they only start out as spectators, but both get pulled in over the course of the movie.
It’s a dizzying juggling act as Taylor and Burton take turns abusing each other, sometimes physically, mostly emotionally. Neither one is content to keep it playful, but always twist the knife after it has been stuck in.
As the acts pass we soon realize that this is a sort of game for them, but game or not, the pain is real. That’s the point. That’s the game.
It’s no surprise to me that this film was directed by Mike Nichols, but it is shocking to me that this is his first film. I love his work to death. THE GRADUATE, SILKWOOD and CLOSER stand out to me (and I’m sure I’ll be adding CARNAL KNOWLEDGE to that favorites list soon) as films that somehow pull the absolute best performances out of the actors involved. They’re simple films technically, but never dull.
This is the most perfect example of his talent at doing that, I think. It’s very play-like, talking heads from beginning to end, but it’s never anything less than engaging. You’re either going to be engrossed by the shocking, but undeniably funny (at times) cruelty on display or you’ll be so damn curious as to where this is all going that you can’t help but stay glued to the screen for the 130 minutes of runtime.
Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for her work in this film and she deserves it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performance from her as natural and effortless as it is here. I’m sure that’s aided by the real life baggage, both positive and negative… I mean, you don’t divorce twice without getting into spats, right?
The real tragedy is that Taylor was awarded the Oscar, but Burton was not. He lost out to Paul Scofield from A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, which also took away the Best Picture Oscar from WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
And as great as Taylor is in the movie, the real revelation is Burton’s performance. Just watch the scene which starts off with him laughing until his hysterical laughter transforms into racking sobs of true grief. Taylor has a similar scene at the very end of the movie, but it didn’t hit me as dead center as Burton’s did. Maybe I could relate to it more, I don’t know. But for whatever reason Taylor’s scene is great, but just not the emotional gut-punch for me that Burton’s scene was.
Once again, we have a movie that has it all. It’s been a great week for black and white photography… PANIC IN THE STREETS, TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH, GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, ON THE BEACH, MYSTERY STREET, THE TIN STAR… been a great, great run for awesome black and white cinematography, but the clear winner is Haskell Wexler’s unbelievably beautiful work here, which in and of itself is enough to elevate the story out of its play origins.
But on top of Wexler’s cinematography, Nichols keeps the camera moving, uses depth of field extremely well and cuts in close at the perfect moments to give the cinema audience the kind of intimacy that is impossible for a theater performance. We can look deep into the eyes of these characters who are not at all theatrical (maybe a little bit when Sandy Dennis is playing drunk, but even then it’s not distracting), making for a wholly cinematic feel.
Final Thoughts: This is one of the maybe 20 films in the top 250 (as rated on IMDB) finally checked off of my “haven’t seen” list and it does not disappoint. They don’t make movies like this anymore and maybe they can’t. CLOSER is very much WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?’s tonal brother, but I’d say there’s even more hope in CLOSER, which is undoubtedly a very dark movie, than in VIRGINIA WOOLF. It’s more to do with the type of actor, I think. This seemed to be the perfect material for the perfect pair of actors at the perfect stage of their careers and life. I don’t know if that kind of lightning can ever be captured again, but that’s kind of the joy of film, right? Hoping that each time we sit in a theater we’ll see that magic up on the screen.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Tuesday, December 2nd: THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN (1973)
Wednesday, December 3rd: CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971)
Thursday, December 4th: THE CINCINNATI KID (1965)
Friday, December 5th: POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES (1961)
Saturday, December 6th: MIKEY & NICKY (1976)
Sunday, December 7th: TWO MINUTE WARNING (1976)
Monday, December 8th: THE SENTINEL (1976)
See you folks tomorrow for the 2nd of three Mike Nichols flicks, the bizarre-sounding George C. Scott dolphin flick DAY OF THE DOLPHIN!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
