Revival: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? will be screened three times this week as the Charles' revival film.



Show Times:
Saturday, January 9 at Noon
Monday, January 11 at 7 PM
Thursday, January 14 at 9PM


1966 Mike Nichols. Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis. Written by Edward Albee (play) and Ernest Lehman (screenplay). Winner of five Oscars: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Art Direction (bw), Best Cinematography (bw), Best Costume Design (bw). 131m. bw.

"Outstanding direction by Mike Nichols in his feature debut, and four topflight performances score an artistic bullseye.

Elizabeth Taylor's...chacterization is at once sensual, spiteful, cynical, pitiable, loathsome, lustful and tender.

Richard Burton delivers a smash portrayal. He evokes sympathy during the public degradations to which his wife subjects him, and his outrage, as well as his deliberate vengeance, are totally believable.


Provoking the exercise in exorcism is the late-night visit of Dennis and Segal. Latter is the all-American boy type who, in the course of one night, is seduced by his hostess, exposed by his host, but enlightened as to more mature aspects of love and marriage. Segal is able to evoke sympathy, then hatred, then pity, in a first-rate performance.


Dennis makes an impressive screen debut as the young bride, her delivery rounded with the intended subtlety of a not-so-Dumb Dora." (Variety)

A Place in the Sun @ Charles Theatre

This week's revival: A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951) directed by George Stevens.


Showtimes:
Saturday, August 22 at Noon
Monday, August 24 at 7 PM
Thursday, August 27 at 9 PM

A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951 George Stevens) Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Raymond Burr. 122m.

Academy Awards for Best Director, Screenplay, Cinematography (William C. Mellor), Editing (William Hornbeck), Score (Franz Waxman), Costume Design (Edith Head).



Previously filmed in 1931 under its original title, Theodore Dreiser's bulky but brilliant novel An American Tragedy was remade in 1951 by George Stevens as A Place in the Sun. Montgomery Clift stars as George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), but he forgets all about her when he falls for dazzling socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). Alice can't forget about him, though: she is pregnant with his child. Just when George's personal and professional futures seem assured, Alice demands that he marry her or she'll expose him to his society friends. This predicament sets in motion a chain of events that will ultimately include George's arrest and numerous other tragedies, including a vicious cross-examination by a D.A. played by future Perry Mason Raymond Burr. A huge improvement over the 1931 An American Tragedy, directed by Josef von Sternberg, A Place in the Sun softens some of the rough edges of Dreiser's naturalism, most notably in the passages pertaining to George's and Angela's romance. Even those 1951 bobbysoxers who wouldn't have been caught dead poring through the Dreiser original were mesmerized by the loving, near-erotic full facial closeups of Clift and Taylor as they pledge eternal devotion. ~ Hal Erickson