Category: Theatre Adaptation

Equus (1977)

Clumsy adaptation that presents theatrical invention with the heavy-hand of realism

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: Richard Burton (Dr Martin Dysart), Peter Firth (Alan Strang), Colin Blakely (Frank Strang), Joan Plowright (Dora Strang), Harry Andrews (Harry Dalton), Eileen Atkins (Hesther Saloman), Jenny Agutter (Jill Mason)

In a parallel universe somewhere, there is a film version of Equus that doesn’t have a single horse in it. It’s probably a better version than this. Peter Shaffer’s stage play was a sensation in the 1970s in the West End and on Broadway – but Lumet’s film robs it of the mystique that made it work, by introducing a (literally) brutal realism. This helps reduce the play into being a quite self-important piece of cod-psychology, with ideas that increasingly seem more simplistic the longer the play lasts.

Dr Martin Dysart (Richard Burton) is a depressed and discontented child psychologist, who is struggling with a general sense of ennui, not sure what is life is for and stuck in a loveless, functional marriage. These feelings grow in him, as he begins to work on the case of Alan Strang (Peter Firth), a troubled young man who blinded an entire staple of horses in a seemingly random act of brutality. What were the deep-rooted psychological problems that caused Alan to carry out this senseless attack? And, by curing it, will Dysart remove from Alan anything that makes him unique?

Shaffer’s stage play used a combination of impressionistic moments, and mime artists, to create the impression of the horses that dominate the imagination (and desires) of Strang. Moments of horse riding (or eventual blinding) were presented symbolically. Meanwhile, Dysart functions as a quasi-narrator, delivering long speeches to the audience on the case, it’s causes and (increasingly) his own feelings of inadequacy and emptiness. It’s a tightrope, that manages to prevent the at-times portentous dialogue and student psychology from seeing either too self-important or slight. Lumet loses this mesmeric suggestiveness, doubling down on its pomposity. It makes for a bit of a mess.

I can totally see why, on film, it was felt necessary to go for real horses. However, it just plain doesn’t quite work. Watching a nude Peter Firth hug, stroke and eventually ride a horse until he reaches an orgasm mid-canter, might have had a sort of magic acted out on stage with dumb-show, puppets and actors as horses. On film, it’s tiresome and suddenly way too much. That’s as nothing compared to the decision to stage the blinding of the horses at the film’s end by showing us in graphic detail a sickle plunging into the eyes of alarmingly real-looking horses, blood pouring across Firth’s face. As that’s (pretty much) the last impression left on the audience for the film, rather than swept up in symbolism you’ll feel grossed out by the graphic violence. It’s not good for the play.

In fact, overlong and too full of speeches and not enough scenes, you watch this and start to wonder if Equus was much cop in any case. Certainly, the way it’s staged here doesn’t work. When Shaffer worked with Milos Forman on Amadeus that play was radically re-worked, extended and remodelled into an actual film that shared lines and DNA with the play, but was a very different beast. Equus is basically pretty close to an exact filming of the stage script, except on location. The show-stopping speeches by Dysart – brilliantly delivered by Burton as they are – come across heavy-handed, portentous and (in the end) off-putting and alienating.

That’s to mention nothing about the plays take on sex and psychology which feels very tired. Needless to say, Strang’s problem is rooted in his relationship with his parents (they fuck you up, you know). His mother (played with wound-up tension by Joan Plowright) is a holier-than-thou type who thinks sex is something a little dirty, while his father (an equally buttoned-up Colin Blakely) is a deeply repressed man who thinks sex is something to be ashamed off. Bound that up with the parents clashes about religion and you wind up with a boy who sublimates his sexual feeling into a confused horse worship, laced with religious overtones.

Which all sounded more daring then than perhaps it does now. Now this sort of sexual confusion (various theories suggest that the young Colin felt his first ever sexual longings after sharing a ride on a horse with a young man and – ashamed of these homosexual yearnings – transferred the association with sex from the man to the horse) was familiar then – it’s pretty much the first thing we look for now. And the insights the play offers around this, don’t carry nearly enough impact or insight to make you feel you are learning something. Anger, frustration, impotence, fear and shame all rear their heads as expected.

Saying that, Peter Firth – who originated the role at both the National and on Broadway – is excellent as Strang. It’s a full-bloodied, committed performance – but also one that is packed with an acute empathy and insight, a sensitive empathy and vulnerability that makes Strang deeply sympathetic even when he is at his most odd.

Richard Burton – who lost his final Oscar bid with this film – is also very good as Dysart. The rich Burton voice is perfectly used for Dysart’s monologues (all filmed in one day, in consecutive order, by Lumet). Burton’s puffy, unhealthy face also matches up perfectly with the sadness and resignation in Dysart – qualities that Burton again brilliantly conveys, his eyes brimming with regrets and his voice catching behind it oceans of confusion, sorrows and self-accusation. It’s one of Burton’s greatest performances, the ideas and elaborate language being a gift for an actor like him who worked best when challenged with complex material.

Unfortunately, the play itself is bogged down in a grimy, unattractive literalism that grinds the life out of it and ends up making it look very slight (this isn’t helped by its huge length). While the acting is very good – Jenny Agutter is also excellent as a young woman whose attempted seduction of Strang triggers a breakdown – the direction is leaden and the play ends up feeling histrionic and simplistic rather than engrossing and insightful.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

Chadwick Boseman excels in his final performance in the stagy Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Director: George C Wolfe

Cast: Viola Davis (Ma Rainey), Chadwick Boseman (Levee Green), Glynn Turman (Toledo), Colman Domingo (Cutler), Michael Potts (Slow Drag), Jonny Coyne (Mel Sturdyvant), Taylor Paige (Dussie Mae), Jeremy Shamod (Irvin), Dusan Brown (Sylvester)

In a Chicago recording studio in July 1927, while the sun beats down outside, blues singer Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) is due to record some of her greatest hits. But she’s almost an hour late. The people who made it on time are her backing jazz band. Cutler (Colman Domingo), Toledo (Glynn Turman) and Slow Drag (Michael Potts) are seasoned pros. But trumpet player Levee Green (Chadwick Boseman) is something else, an ambitious and electric young man who feels he knows what the new sound is in a way that Ma doesn’t. Over an afternoon, as Ma flexes her power upstairs, the white agent and recording studio owner fret, and tensions between the band members slowly simmer towards and explosion.

It’s impossible to watch Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom right now without being very aware of the tragic early death of Chadwick Boseman. Boseman passed away while the film was in post-production, and it’s hard not to guiltily wonder if Boseman was aware this was to be his final performance. Either way, this was a stunning way for this electric, James Dean-like talent to sign off – a scintillating, passionate performance as a man carrying huge burdens and deeply repressed griefs and guilt. August Wilson’s play provides several key set-piece speeches for Levee – and Boseman burns through them with an intensity that will leave its mark on you.

Bright-eyed, with a wiry body of elastic tension that shifts from loose, jazzy movements to rigid bursts of fury, Boseman is extraordinary. Starting the film as seemingly an irresponsible, easy-going young man frustrated at the concessions of his elders, Boseman establishes a deep psychological pain at his core. He’s a young man who has seen his parents vilely mistreated by oppressive white men, who smiles to get what he wants but never forgets that the white bosses he works with see him as little better than a slave, ripe for exploiting. It’s a brilliant performance, one for the ages.

It dominates a film that is told with dynamism but never escapes its theatrical roots. Its set-piece speeches are virtuoso moments for the actors, but the silent observance with which they are watched by other actors feels more suited to theatre rather than the realism of film. The build towards the film’s tragic end, hinging on a moment of violence, is the sort of character breakdown that we accept in the theatre, but seems forced on film – especially when met with the sort of visual tableaux that seems to invite the curtain to come down. Wolfe directs what is very much a conversation piece in two locations with a great deal of energy and imagination – but it remains very much a theatrical venture at heart, where long speeches and elements of Greek tragedy (hubris, nemesis and character flaws) shape the plot.

But it doesn’t altogether matter when the ideas the film tackles are so vibrant and presented with such passion. It’s a film that sharply outlines the racial divide in America. Wilson’s play is all about how master/servant exploitation continues in America. Its early shots establish the only work black people in Chicago can find (all of it manual or secretarial), while the musicians are paid cash-in-hand, even Ma, because no bank will believe a black man hasn’t stolen a cheque.

“All they want is my voice” says Ma, and she’s right. A difficult prima-donna, unafraid of expressing her desires both musical and sexual, Davis is larger-than-life but impressive as the domineering Ma. But Ma behaves badly because it’s the only way she has of exerting some control in this environment. She won’t see the profits from this recording work (it will be the white men running the studio). So, just for a few hours, she wants to remind them that they rely on her. So, she’ll be late. She’ll demand a cold coke. And she’ll insist her stammering nephew speaks the opening monologue of the song, even if that does mean burning through several recording albums to get it right. Because Ma may be an artist, but she’s also a tool to these people – something they will use while she can earn them money, and will then cast aside the second she is done.

It’s the same with the band. And the older hands have accepted it. Sure, they have their resentments and their sadnesses – old pro Toledo even remembers when he had the fire like Levee has – but they understand the game. They are props in the white man’s game, and they are content to earn a decent living from something they like doing, knowing that they are still living a better life than many. Cutler even has his faith to bolster him, a faith Leveee rejects in Boseman’s most electric scene, with a speech that angrily denounces God for his unfairness towards black people.

Levee is another thing again to the rest of them. He has plans and ambitions and wants to form his own band. He’s written his own songs, which have far more of the zip that we know jazz is heading towards. He’ll play nice to get what he wants, but he’s not willing for a second to forget how racist the world is. And he won’t let go of his anger for a moment. Compromise for him only serves a purpose. His youthful defiance and lack of deference spark resentment in the others – who either can’t or won’t understand him – and even Ma, perhaps seeing him as a threat, can’t stand him.

It of course leads to tragedy – and a coda that grimly reminds us all that in this world there may be winners but the thing that unites them all is that they are white. Jazz music may be on the cusp of change – and Ma will pay that price in a few years – but America isn’t. You only need to look at how the musicians are treated to know that equality is a million miles away.

The cast are faultless. Turman carries a quiet sadness and resignation as the ageing Toledo. Colman Domingo is relaxed then taut as Cutler. Taylor Paige has a dangerously selfish energy as Ma’s younger lover Dussie. But it’s still more of a play than a film, even if it is told with pace and energy, acted with such flourish and passion. It leaves you with effective and engaging arguments, but it still feels like it work best in the theatre.

One Night in Miami (2020)

Aldris Hodge, Eli Goree and Leslie Odom Jnr have a passionate debate in One Night In Miami

Director: Regina King

Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X), Eli Goree (Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali), Aldris Hodge (Jim Brown), Leslie Odom Jnr (Sam Cooke), Lance Reddick (Brother Kareem), Christian Magby (Jamaal), Joaquina Kalukango (Betty X), Nicolette Robinson (Barbara Cooke), Michael Imperioli (Angelo Dundee), Lawrence Gilliard Jnr (Drew Bundini Brown), Beau Bridges (Mr Carlton)

One night In Miami in 1964… civil rights activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), NFL super-star Jim Brown (Aldris Hodge), “King of Soul” Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jnr) and world heavy-weight champion of the world Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) all gathered in a motel room overnight. We’ll never know what they talked about: but playwright Kemp Powers imagined what might have gone down in that room in a play, which forms the basis of Regina King’s film directing debut.

What do they talk about? Along with some home truths, it’s mostly the state of America and the struggle for racial justice. Malcolm X – edgy and worried for his life – feels singer and businessman Sam Cooke has sold out by pandering to white audiences. Cooke angrily argues that building his own record label for himself and his black artists is beating the white man at his own game. Cassius is having last-minute doubts about converting to Islam. Jim Brown is pondering switching from sport to film-making: after all, what are he and Clay really but “gladiators”?

King’s film is passionate and directed with confidence, even if the film never really escapes from its heritage as a single-setting, one-act play. The action largely takes place in a single room – despite efforts to open it up by having our heroes visit the roof or pop out for supplies. It’s not a surprise that the best moments are also the most theatrical, not least the heated debates that allow the actors to shine.

These debates are so strong, I wish there were more of them. The heart of the film is that argument about the balance between pandering and creating something that will sell. Sam Cooke has had a lot of success – but is it at the cost of not singing about the things he really cares about? Or is he right that people like The Rolling Stones will always open doors he can’t – and if he and other artists can make fortunes from the Stones covering their songs, isn’t that a win for the black community? Malcolm X has no time for that possibility, accusing Cooke of a soft-pedal Uncle-Tomism, content to leave the sort of impassioned protest songs he could be singing to men like Bob Dylan.

Both Brown and Clay are largely left to play peacemaker and devil’s advocate. Hugely successful athletes, they balance justifiable pride with a determination to be their own men. But the film fails to really explore issues in their industries – is their success elevating their community, or just enriching rich white guys? It would have been interesting for Malcolm to turn some his fire on these two. After all an early scene with Brown shockingly demonstrates the limits of sporting success to truly change the opinions of some white Americans about their black neighbours. There would certainly have been plenty for him and Malcolm X to get into in a debate about the right way to progress civil rights. But it never quite happens.

Not that the film is afraid to turn some of its guns on Malcolm X. Kingsley Ben-Adir excels playing a far more fragile, anxious and gentler Malcolm than we expect (after all, it’s so hard not to immediately think of Denzel Washington). This is a Malcolm worried for his and his family’s safety, going through the turmoil of leaving the State of Islam and not sure where his life is heading, other than the fear it won’t be a long journey. Ben-Adir has the fire and passion, but also the nervous sense of being the youngest, least well-known (at the time) of the four, and he creates a successful ambiguity as to whether his friendship with Clay is at least partly based on self-interest.

There is some seriously rich material in this film for the four actors to sink their teeth into, and King’s direction allows each of them a showpiece, while expertly shuffling perspectives. Odom Jnr is superb – not least for his heart-rending and emotional performances of several Cooke songs – as a man who knows deep-down there’s truth to what he’s being accused of, while feeling his shared success is part of doing “his bit” and he’s being unfairly picked on.

Aldis Hodge’s Jim Brown is the most settled and content of the four, certain of his own destiny and comfortable with his life. In the hands of a lesser actor, his role could be potentially overlooked, but Hodge’s charisma keeps his careful performance compelling. Eli Goree perfectly captures Muhammad Ali’s exuberance, good-natured arrogance and restless energy and mixes it in with a sweet desire for everyone to get along. All four of these actors riff brilliantly off each other.

The film doesn’t let us forget the dangers of the time either. The opening sequence demonstrates the dangers and prejudices all of them face: from booing crowds to threats of physical harm. It’s something we return to time and time again – while Malcolm X’s fear about shadowy figures watching him is a constant reminder that his own death is so close.

But I feel there could have been more. Sam Cooke would also be dead by the end of 1964 – but you could watch this film and not have a clue that within 18 months half the people in it would be murdered. Away from the debates, the film takes a while to get going, and there gaps in issues of racial politics that you feel could have been richly explored.

For all that the film could have been a moment of time, it actually feels a bit disconnected from the rest of history. Where does this event – and the insights we gain about our characters – fit within the perspective of civil rights for the rest of the 1960s, let alone the rest of the century? The film doesn’t quite capture this. More ambition to expand the play beyond that one night into something more far-reaching (imagine what Spike Lee might have made of it) would have been fascinating. As it is, this is a brilliantly acted, well-made film – but still feels like an adaptation of a night at the theatre, a more reassuring rather than challenging film.

An Ideal Husband (1999)

Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver and Rupert Everett do the best in this Wilde mis-fire An Ideal Husband

Director: Oliver Parker

Cast: Rupert Everett (Lord Arthur Goring), Cate Blanchett (Lady Gertrude Chiltern), Minnie Driver (Miss Mabel Chiltern), Julianne Moore (Mrs Laura Cheveley), Jeremy Northam (Sir Robert Chiltern), John Wood (Lord Caversham), Peter Vaughan (Phipps), Lindsay Duncan (Lady Markby), Simon Russell Beale (Sir Edward), Nickolas Grace (Vicomte de Nanjac)

I have a theory that Shakespearean comedy rarely translates well to screen because what makes it work is its theatricality and how it encourages laughter by interacting directly with the audience. I think you could say the same for Oscar Wilde. Certainly, this film version of An Ideal Husband looks lovely and never misses a single Wildean bon-mot. But it’s overlong, drags rather in its final third and, above all, isn’t particularly funny.

The plot has been freshened up and adjusted in places to make for a more filmic narrative, but the principles are the same from the play. Sir Robert Chiltern (Jeremy Northam) is a pillar of the establishment, famed for his unshakeable dedication to principle and adored by his wife Lady Gertrude (Cate Blanchett) who sees him as a paragon. But all that could be shaken up when Mrs Laura Cheveley (Julianne Moore) re-enters his life, bringing with her shocking revelations that could destroy Sir Robert. So he turns to help to his best friend, the witty and debonair Lord Arthur Goring (Rupert Everett), who is himself in love with Sir Robert’s sister Mabel (Minnie Driver). How will events play out as they start to spiral out of control?

Oliver Parker’s film is cautious, safe and – for all that it tries to open the play out with scenes in parks and Parliament – conservative and safe. You can imagine Wilde himself would probably have wanted something a little more daring had he been involved. As it is, things that work very well on stage (the farcical elements of mistaken identity and a house with a different character hiding behind every door) don’t really work on film. These ideas are inherently theatrical and depend on the heightened unreality of theatre – in the cold hard harshness of cinema, they feel out of place.

Put frankly, the big thing the play misses is the live audience. You can imagine this cast going down an absolute storm in the West End. The lines that demand a wink to the audience, bits of business that invite laughter, just fall flat here. They are rendered lifeless by the demands of being fit into a film, or having to take place in a world that seems real, when Wilde’s plays are all about a sort of bizarre ultra-Victorian world of form covering up a suggestive naughtiness. When the characters go and watch The Importance of Being Earnest at the theatre (a sign of the film’s clumsy opening out, and its lack of wit when left to its own devices) the dialogue style that doesn’t really work in the “real world” of film suddenly feels perfectly natural when we see people speak it on stage.

Parker’s film fails to bring any particular inspiration to events. Instead it seems determined to package Wilde as a heritage product, the sort of thing you can imagine people considering a safe thing for the whole family to sit down and watch. There is no sense of cheek, sex or danger in this like you can get in Wilde. Instead it’s all about attractive actors in period-drama drawing rooms, going about their work with skill. All made to look as pretty as possible with some lovely costumes. It’s Sunday tea-time viewing.

But despite this, some of those performances are spot on. I’m not sure there is an actor alive today better suited to Wilde than Rupert Everett. His imperious drawl, his sardonic wit, his louche manner (not to mention his ability to suggest an illicit wickedness under the surface) make him absolutely perfect. Everett has shown time and again – on film and in the theatre – he has an affinity for the dryness needed for Wilde, as well as being able to communicate the intelligence without smugness. All the successful scenes of the movie revolve around him, and he invariably brings out the best from his co-stars. He’s also far-and-away the funniest thing in the film.

The rest of the cast are more mixed. Cate Blanchett is the stand-out in (sadly) the least interesting main role, the rather stuffy Lady Gertrude (you wish you’d been able to see her let rip as the more wicked Mrs Cheveley) – like Everett she “gets it”. Jeremy Northam also does excellent work in the straight-man role of Sir Robert, but his characteristic dignity and intelligence do very well in the role. Julianne Moore though seems oddly constrained by the period setting as Mrs Cheveley (strange that she did this at the same time as her superior work as a restrained Englishwoman in The End of the Affair) while Minnie Driver lacks impact as Mabel. John Wood and Peter Vaughan – two old pros from the theatre – bring much of the energy and wit in supporting roles.

An Ideal Husband is fine. But watching it you’d wonder what all the fuss about Wilde is about. And that can’t be a good thing. If Wilde wrote a review of it, it would be funnier than anything in the film.

Frost/Nixon (2008)

Frank Langella and Michael Sheen face-off in famous interviews in Frost/Nixon

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Frank Langella (Richard M Nixon), Michael Sheen (David Frost), Kevin Bacon (Jack Brennan), Rebecca Hall (Caroline Cushing), Toby Jones (Irving “Swifty” Lazar), Matthew MacFadyen (John Birt), Oliver Platt (Bob Zelnick), Sam Rockwell (James Reston Jnr), Clint Howard (Lloyd Davis)

If there is a bogeyman in American politics, it will always be disgraced President Richard Nixon. Because, however divisive Donald Trump is, Nixon will always be the king who was toppled, the man some consider a crook and a war criminal, others a gifted politician and negotiator. The truth is somewhere, as always, in the middle – but what seems inarguable is that Nixon was a man of deep personal flaws, which contributed considerably to his fall. Peter Morgan’s play explored the complexities of Nixon’s character through his famous TV interviews with British talk show host David Frost, a man with a few chips of his own. Ron Howard takes what was already a fairly cinematic script by Morgan, and produces a smoothly professional, entertaining and very well acted film.

After Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) has been forced into resigning, he is in the political wilderness. Watergate engrossed the world, with hundreds of millions of people tuning in to follow every detail. Who in television could resist those numbers? Certainly not David Frost (Michael Sheen), who believes if he can secure an exclusive interview with Nixon he could have a television package that could pull in millions of viewers, make Frost a fortune, and catapult him into the front ranks of TV interviewers. Slowly the project comes together. But both participants have a lot to prove: for Nixon this could be a chance of redemption; for Frost to prove he is more than a chat show host better suited to grilling the Bee Gees than the President. With both men underestimating each other, who will emerge on top in the interviews?

One of Ron Howard’s greatest strengths as a director is his ability to elicit fine performances from good actors. This is the real bonus he brings to this faithful adaptation of Morgan’s award-winning play. He presents it with a highly skilled professionalism and a refreshing lack of distraction that allows the audience to focus on the acting and the dialogue, its real strengths. Frost/Nixon is sharply written – with Peter Morgan’s expected mix of careful research and dramatic licence (most especially in a late-night phone call between the two men before the final day’s filming) – crammed with fine lines, well drawn characters and fascinating insights into both politics and television.

Perhaps Howard’s finest decision was to ensure the two stars of the play (in both the West End and Broadway) were retained for the film. Langella and Sheen’s performances – already brilliant in the stage version, which I was lucky enough to see – are outstanding here, both of them completely inhabiting their characters. The comfort and familiarity between the two performers are crucial – and ensure that the vital scenes between the two characters carry an electric charge.

Langella brilliantly captures the physicality and voice of Nixon, but also finds deep insights into the President’s tortured soul. He communicates Nixon’s sense of inadequacy and bitterness, his resentment at having to fight all his life for things others have been gifted. He balances this with Nixon’s pride and paranoia that constantly leads him to cheat others first. Langella’s Nixon, lost and bored in retirement, is desperate to regain his statue, but also tortured by a guilt and regret he can hardly bring himself to name. Under his robustness and confidence, lies deep shame and sorrow. It’s a brilliant capturing of perhaps the most psychologically complex leader America ever had.

Sheen is just as superb as Frost. As you would expect from an accomplished mimic, the voice is almost alarmingly accurate (he makes a better Frost than Frost did!). But just as insightful is his understanding of Frost’s psychology. Just like Nixon, Frost is a hard-working lad from a poorer background who has had to fight for everything he has. Sheen’s Frost is a phenomenal hard worker – producer, financier and star of his own career – who works hardest of all to appear an effortlessly confident dilettante. Sheen’s Frost balances immense pressures – facing personal and financial ruin – with an assured smile, keeping every plate spinning by never allowing a moment of doubt.

It leads into fascinatingly different attitudes to the interviews themselves. Nixon prepares in detail – and determines his best strategy is long winded answers that present his case and prevent attack. Frost is so focused on delivering the interviews that he sacrifices his actual interview preparation (certainly more so than he did in real life). Morgan uses the conventions of boxing dramas – corners, breaks between ‘rounds’, advice from their trainers – to capture a sense of gladiatorial combat.

However, the play is more complex than this. The reason why Frost struggles to land a glove on Nixon in earlier interviews on his domestic and foreign policies is that Nixon genuinely believes he is in the right – but (perhaps as Frost understood) the final interviews based on Watergate will see a more vulnerable Nixon as on that subject he knows he’s in the wrong. I suspect the real Frost knew that to get to Nixon on that final topic, he needed to be ‘softened up’ first to feel comfortable and produce a revelation.

Because the film is refreshingly positive in its view of television. A medium that films often attack for being trivial and boiling things down to soundbites and snippets, here acknowledges the strengths that can bring. A single snippet of an apologetic and crushed Nixon is worth thousands of words – and small moments can turn a TV programme from a failure to an event. Howard uses the power of the close-up at these moments to demonstrate how TV can zero in with a merciless gaze on a single moment. It’s a defence of the power of TV and its ability to reduce things down to moments.

Howard’s understanding of the strengths that lie at the heart of the play – and to tell the story simply – is what makes an already cinematic play translate wonderfully to the screen. With Langella and Sheen outstanding (with the supporting cast all equally excellent), the film entertainingly demonstrates the preparation and delivery of the interviews, while offering shrewd psychological insights into two men who had a lot more at a stake – and in common – than at first appeared. Professional, handsome and captivating, this is Hollywood movie making at its best.

The Entertainer (1960)

Laurence Olivier excels as a faded music hall star in The Entertainer

Director: Tony Richardson

Cast: Laurence Olivier (Archie Rice), Brenda de Banzie (Phoebe Rice), Roger Livesey (Billy Rice), Joan Plowright (Jean Rice), Alan Bates (Frank Rice), Daniel Massey (Graham), Shirley Anne Field (Tina Lapford), Thora Hird (Mrs Lapford), Albert Finney (Mick Rice)

In the late 1950s Laurence Olivier was worried about his career. While he was still doing Shakespeare and Coward comedies (intermixed with the odd film), the world of acting and theatre was moving on. Not least as John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger was taking the West End by storm. Olivier seemed the polar opposite of the “Angry Young Men” of British theatre, a dusty relic. So Olivier changed gears – and his entire life – by asking to be cast in the lead role of Osborne’s next play The Entertainer. Olivier’s sensational stage performance – captured here on film – radically changed the path of both his career and his life, with his long-troubled marriage to Vivien Leigh broking down during it. But he also cemented himself as the leading British actor.

Olivier plays Archie Rice, a failing never-has-been end-of-pier comedy performer at an unnamed Seaside town in 1956. Rice’s routines are old-and-tired, his comedy tinged with desperation and he’s all but broke. Archie’s audiences are tired, bored and unamused. His home life, with his faded former beauty champ wife (Brenda de Banzie) is on the ropes due to his constant infidelity. His father (Roger Livesey) – a music hall celebrity with real talent – loves him but thinks he’s a disasater waiting to happen. His son Frank (Alan Bates) adores him but his daughter Jean (Joan Plowright) is more realistic. Archie through continues to peddle the idea of a success being round the corner, trying to put together a hit revue starring his latest mistress (Shirley Anne Field) and funded by her parents. Things will not end well.

The Entertainer’s main claim to historical note is that it captures that sensational stage performance of Laurence Olivier in the lead role. Olivier had always liked to claim that, with a few zigs and zags in his career, he would have become a third-rate comedian. His performance – with its ingratiating patter, it’s seedy sexually ambivalent campness, his selfishness and self-obsession and greed – is brilliant. Archie’s entire life is a desperate struggle to get himself the career he wants – while trying to shut his eyes to his own lack of talent (of which he is painfully aware). Olivier captures superbly not only the front of a man bent on self-promotion, but also the dead-eyed horror of a man who is aware all the time that he is dying inside.

Olivier’s eyes are drill-holes of death, and his life is an exhibition of selfish patter, with a constant sense of performance in every inch of Archie’s life. He’s a run-down, finished and disillusioned man trying to pluck what few moments of pleasure he can from a life he is only going through the motions in. All of it covered with a coating of self-delusion that quickly crumbles into sweaty desperation. While the film can only give a taste of the Olivier stage performance, it re-enforces Olivier’s energy, creativity and bravery. Olivier’s both bravura and tragically tired music hall performances alone are worth the price of admission.

Away from Olivier’s exceptional capturing of the washed up patter of the sleazy loser, it’s easy to overlook most of the rest of the film. But it’s directed with a kitchen-sink freshness by Tony Richardson, who brilliantly captures the faded grandeur and grubby failure of a failing seaside resort. Osborne’s play used the decline of music hall as a metaphor for the decline of the British Empire and while the film (for all its Suez references) doesn’t quite convey this, favouring instead domestic tragedy, it still perfectly captures the crumbling world of Rice and his ilk. Rice’s father – Roger Livesey, excellent and about a year older than Olivier – is a relic of the success of this era, and still carries some of its glamour, but still lives as a virtual tenant in the Rice home, eating spare cake where he can.

While the film is dominated by Olivier, this presentation of the play as a domestic tragedy works rather well. Brenda de Banzie (also reprising her role from stage) is very good as an ex-glamour puss (and former mistress of Archie) now turned into a faded, depressed matron, drunkenly bitter about what her life has (not) led to. Joan Plowright is excellent as the knowing daughter, alternately sympathetic and appalled at her father. Shirley Anne Field’s naïve lover is suitably naïve, under the control of her battleaxe mother, well played by Thora Hird. The cast is rounded out with Alan Bates and Albert Finney (both in debuts) as Archie’s sons.

While the film feels a little overlong at times, and is perhaps too much in thrall to Olivier, it offers a neat kitchen-sink view of failure and corruption in British life of the 1950s. There is, of course, no hope and no second chances here. Only the long, wearying decline and rotting as Archie’s life disintegrates under pressure and his own incompetent self-delusion.

The Lion in Winter (1968)

Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole are the feuding royals in The Lion in Winter

Director: Anthony Harvey

Cast: Peter O’Toole (Henry II), Katharine Hepburn (Eleanor of Aquitaine), Anthony Hopkins (Richard the Lionhard), John Castle (Prince Geoffrey), Nigel Terry (Prince John), Timothy Dalton (Philip II), Jane Merrow (Alais), Nigel Stock (Captain William Marshall)

James Goldman’s play The Lion in Winter did solid but not spectacular business on Broadway. But when it came to film, it surfed a wave of popularity for stories about British history and became one of the most financially successful films of its year, winning three Oscars (including for Goldman). Even more than that, it went on to be West Wing President Jed Bartlett’s favourite movie of all time. I think we know which prize is the most treasured.

Christmas 1183 (including an ahistorical Christmas tree and gift wrapped presents and all) and Henry II (Peter O’Toole), king of England and huge chunks of France, wants nothing more than family around him to mark the occasion. Problem is, this is possibly the more dysfunctional family ever. His Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn) has been under “home arrest” for ten years in her castle, and his children Richard (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey (John Castle) and John (Nigel Terry) seem to take it in turns to conspire against their father, their allegiances shifting faster than even they can sometimes follow. For added complexity, Henry is living with his late eldest son’s intended Alais (Jane Merrow) as husband and wife and her half-brother the new King of France Philip II (Timothy Dalton) is joining the family for Christmas. Over one night, this family will fight, feud and change pacts and allegiances until hardly anyone knows where the games end and the hate begins.

Anthony Harvey’s film is a stately, often wordy, faithful reconstruction of Goldman’s script that gives front-and-centre to the often scintillating dialogue between the family members, that leans just the right side of ahistorical (sample line: “Hush dear, Mummy’s fighting”) but frequently allows it’s top-of-the-line cast to let rip on some glorious speeches and dialogue duets crammed with ideas, wordplay, character and wit. Harvey therefore basically decides to sit back as much as possible and allow the actors do the work, using a mixture of medium shots and close-ups to bring the focus as much as possible to the Broadway-style staging or into the actor’s faces. He also uses the strength of the performers to allow for a series of long takes as they burn through pages of Goldman’s dialogue. The fact that there is hardly an interesting shot in the film, and its visual language never matches it’s verbal fire is a shame, but a price the film thinks worth paying.

And it matters little when Harvey is able to work as well with actors as he does here. All the performers are at the top of their game. Katharine Hepburn (winning her fourth Oscar, in a tie with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl) has the perfect level of acute intelligence and imperious arrogance for Eleanor. But Harvey encourages from her a softness at crucial moments, that in-between the barn-storming speeches and verbal putdowns, Hepburn finds moments of quiet sadness and loneliness – a sense that sometimes ten years of imprisonment means she has had enough of all this – that are some of her most affecting work on screen. She’s hilarious but deeply moving – and totally believable as one of the most powerful women of the middle ages.

She also is matched perfectly with O’Toole. Playing a 50-year old King at 35, O’Toole brings all the fire and charisma of his personality to the part, in a film where he perfectly balances the larger-than-life gusto of Henry II with his own personal disappointments, guilt and sorrow. O’Toole had already triumphed once as the charismatically brilliant king in Becket (for which he was also Oscar nominated, as he was here), but this performance is even better. Not only is his facility with the dialogue faultless, he also utterly convinces as the sort of awe-inspiring figure who dominates every room he’s in not just with force of character but the acuity and sharpness of his intellect. This might be his finest screen performance – and the one where he was most cheated of the Oscar (losing to a highly active campaign, criticised at the time, from Cliff Robertson in Charly).

To fill the cast out around these pros at the top of their game, Harvey raided British theatre to pluck some promising gems from British Theatre, more or less all of them here in their film debut. Anthony Hopkins is marvellously proud, forceful but just a few beats behind most of the others as a Richard who says what he means and sticks to it. Timothy Dalton is his polar opposite (and equally brilliant) as a Philip II who never says what he means and manipulates with a playful ease everyone he meets. John Castle (an actor who never had the career he should have had) is smugly unlikeable and coldly superior as the unliked middle-brother Geoffrey, while Nigel Terry is a snivelling punching bag as two-faced coward John. Jane Merrow is heartfelt and earnest as Alais, the only unquestionably kind and good person in this bunch.

These characters rotate sides and allegiances over the course of one evening, raging at each other like a medieval Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The brilliance of the dialogue never stops entertaining – although towards the end the film loses a bit of energy (it probably peaks with Henry’s loud double bluff of dragging the family in the middle of the night to a wedding he has no intention of seeing performed), perhaps partly because the film itself never really comes to flight as something cinematic. This is despite the decision to downplay the glamour – costumes are simple and look lived in (the cast wore them for hours off set to make them look lived in) and sets are far from pristine. It perhaps contributes to the slightly mundane feel of the filmmaking.

But the tricks are all in the dialogue and perhaps the film works best with an interval and a chance to take stock. There are several marvellous scenes, even if the constant feuding and side changing does wear you out after a while. But it’s a treat for the acting. Hepburn and O’Toole are simply at the top of their game, and the rest of the cast more than keep up with them. With an excellently imposing score from John Barry (also Oscar-winning), it’s a shame the film itself is a little too flatly and uninspiringly filmed with a murky lack of visual interest, but there are more than enough qualities for you to issue a pardon.

Born Yesterday (1950)

Judy Holliday gets a tutorial in class from William Holden – much to the chagrin of Broderick Crawford – in Born Yesterday

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Judy Holliday (Billie Dawn), Broderick Crawford (Harry Brock), William Holden (Paul Verrall), Howard St John (Jim Devery) Frank Otto (Eddie), Larry Oliver (Congressman Hedges)

Perhaps George Bernard Shaw should have tried to copyright the Pygmalion concept. After all no end of films and plays have tried their best to replicate the magic of having one working class classless type (usually the woman) learning how to use their own natural intelligence effectively by a wiser tutor (usually the man). Born Yesterday is a near text-book example of this – she’s as ill-informed as a young baby so might as well have been “born yesterday” y’see – that offers very little in the way of surprises, but a lot in the way of charm – most particularly from Judy Holliday who carries the entire the film with aplomb.

Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) is a corrupt, uneducated businessman who has arrived in Washington to buy up a few congressmen. Brock may be a boreish bully, but he’s worried that his mistress, former Chorus-girl Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday), is so brash and ill-educated that she will show him up in front of his new political contacts. So he hires investigative journalist Paul Verrall (William Holden) to educate her. But Paul and Billie have an immediate romantic frisson – and as she learns about politics, literature and the state of the world Billie starts to realise that maybe all those shares she holds in her own name (for tax purposes) in Brock’s dodgy dealings might give her the chance to put his wrongs right.

Born Yesterday was an adaptation of Broadway hit that had made Judy Holliday a star. Written by Garson Kanin, bullying Harry Brock was allegedly based on Colombia Pictures head Harry Cohn. He clearly didn’t care when he smelt a hit – and even confirmed some suspicions by ordering Kanin to do re-writes of the rewritten script for no extra payment. Cohn had been deeply uncertain about bringing the unknown Holliday along for the ride (she had made only three small appearances beforehand) so Cukor cast her in a key role in Adam’s Rib (where Hepburn generously ceded many scenes to her) to prove Holliday could make it on the big screen.

Thank goodness she did make it to the film, as Holliday makes the film. Winning the Oscar – famously beating Bette Davis and Anne Baxter in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard – Holliday is superb in the role. Billie Dawn may be brassy, may be load, she might have the sort of screeching Brooklyn accent that sometimes feels like nails on a blackboard – but she’s not dumb. She’s smart – as she shows by repeatedly beating Harry with ease at games of gin rummy – she’s capable and she cares. She just hasn’t learned any better, and having spent her life being told that her opinions don’t matter, she’s decided to not mention them.

But Holliday shows Billie is a woman fast – and eager to learn – and a week or so with Paul won’t turn her into a genius, but she’s more than sharp enough to work out what’s wrong about her life and her sugar daddy, and to give her the oomph to do something about it. Holliday demonstrates this endearing growth of engagement and curiosity with a superb lightness – her comic timing is faultless – and a touching sweetness.

The script gives Billie a hilarious tendency towards malapropism and her wide-eyed innocence and desire to do her best works wonderfully in getting us onside. While she is often the source of jokes she is never the butt of them, and Holliday makes clear her decency and sharpness is innate. She’s far from a dumb blonde – although she certainly looks and sounds like it – and watching her apply good-old fashioned Hollywood liberal ideas to confound boreish businessmen is good fun.

Her co-stars give sterling performances. Broderick Crawford channels his Oscar winning turn from the year earlier as corrupt bullying Willie Stark in All the King’s Men as the loud, bullying and dim Harry Brock. Throw-away lines suggest he has killed in the past – and at one point he strikes Billie – but he’s always a comic blusterer rather than a real threat. William Holden generously cedes much of the ground to Holliday as her Henry Higgins, although unlike that guy he’s humble, supportive and pleasingly democratic (quite the year for Holden, having also played a similar supplicant role in Sunset Boulvard).

Cukor directs with his usual lack of flash, quietly setting the camera in place and letting the actor’s go about their business meaning, for all the location shooting in Washington, this still feels very much like a Broadway piece. Cukor does skilfully manage to smuggle a lot under the censor wire – not least that Billie is clearly Harry’s mistress – and keeps a fine romantic tension between Billie and Paul, even if having the pair of them kiss early on does undermine some of the “will-they-won’t-they” magic.

But then basically this is a very straight forward film that just looks to entertain. There are some dirty dealings in Washington – but it’s all sorted out very easily and we are reassuringly told that there are only a very few bad apples in this barrel, and we can trust in the decency of our leaders. It’s no surprise who ends up with who, and no real revelations in character. The most surprising character in many ways is Harry’s disillusioned, self-loathing lawyer played by Howard St John, constantly on the verge of alcoholic self-disgust.

The film is really a showcase for its star though – and Holliday delivers with a terrifically entertaining performance that hammers home even more the sad fact that she passed away at 43 with only a handful of films to her name. Pygmalion Goes to Washington it maybe, but this is still a lovely epitaph to a talented actress.

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Glenn Close and John Malkovich play games of lust and sex in Dangerous Liaisons

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: Glenn Close (Marquise Isabelle du Merteuil), John Malkovich (Vicomte Sébastian de Valmont), Michelle Pfeiffer (Madame Marie du Tourvel), Uma Thurman (Cécile de Volanges), Swoosie Kurtz (Madame de Volanges), Keanu Reeves (Raphael Danceny), Mildred Natwick (Madame du Rosemonde), Peter Capaldi (Azolan), Valerie Gogan (Julie)

Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Les liaisons Dangereuses had been a stunning success in the West End and on Broadway – so a film adaptation of this lusciously set story of sex was inevitable. Stephen Frears’ film keeps the story grounded in its setting of pre-Revolutionary France, but deliberately encourages a modern looseness, even archness, from its actors that makes it feel grounded and modern.

The Marquise du Merteuil (Glenn Close) and Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) are two French aristocrats who fill their time with seductions and sexual manipulation of other people, while conducting a dance of attraction around each other. Du Mertuil wants revenge against her ex-lover by getting Valmont to seduce the lover’s innocent intended bride Cécile de Volanges (Uma Thurman). But Valmont is more interested in setting himself the challenge of seducing the unimpeachable Madame du Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer) – du Merteuil so convinced the task will be impossible that she bets him if he seduces du Tourvel, she will sleep with him as well. These games of sexual manipulation develop with disastrous consequences for all involved, as unexpectedly real emotions of love and affection intrude on the heartlessness and contempt.

Frears’ film won three Oscars for its most striking elements: production design, costumes and Hampton’s script. Hampton’s script provides a series of striking scenes and tongue-lashing dialogue for its stars. Meanwhile the film looks marvellous, it’s use of French locations superb in creating the world of decadence that these characters move in, while the costumes are so strikingly, elaborately intricate they practically become characters themselves. The film opens and closes with scenes of dressing and de-dressing: the opening sequence shows Merteuil and Valmont being dressed in their elaborate finery, a sequence uncannily reminiscent of knights being dressed for war, ending with shots of their defiantly cold faces starring down the lens. The film bookends this with the film’s key survivor, brokenly wiping away from their made-up “public face” probably forever. It’s a film that uses the intricacy of the period, to strongly suggest modern, dynamic tones and emotions.

The film is shot with a series of tight shots, intermixed with the odd long shot, that is designed to bring us in close with the film’s serial seductions and envy-powered clashes. This brings us straight into the middle of the events, giving them an immediacy and suddenness that makes this feel like anything but a traditional costume drama. Seductions have a steamy immediacy, while the growing moments of tension in the relationship between Mertuil and Valmont is similarly bought in close to us, to allow us to see the mix of emotions these two have for each other – both a deeply, unexpressed, love and a strange sense of loathing linked together with a possessive jealousy.

Frears makes marvellous use of mirrors in the film. These reflective surfaces appear in multiple shots and frequently expand the world, mirrors reflecting characters as others discuss them, or forcing into shot (usually between two other characters) the subject of conversations. They reveal (to the viewers) eavesdroppers hiding and, in one striking shot, as Valmont and Mertuil’s latest lover argue she is framed in reflection hanging above them on the wall mirror. There’s a reason why one of the film’s final sequences revolves around the smashing of a mirror in grief.

The film’s modernism also stems from its use of very modern American actors – apeing the success of Milos Forman’s Amadeus – with everyone using their own accents. Glenn Close is superb as Mertueil, a woman projecting a cold, manipulative authority but does so to suppress and hide her own emotional vulnerability. Mertueil has convinced herself that she is a champion of her sex, but her every action seems to be motivated by finding indiscriminate revenge on all those who have found the sort of happiness she has been denied (or denied herself). Close lets little moments – wonderfully captured by the intimacy of Frears’ camerawork – where moments of micro-emotions and pain flash briefly across her face, only to be wiped away.

Malkovich is an unusual choice as Valmont – and his serpentine swagger and arch mannered style at first feels quite a disconnect with a character renowned as the most successful lover in France. But Malkovich’s eccentricity, his very oddity, in a way makes him believable as a man women would find intriguingly irresistible. Malkovich, while naturally perfect for the coldness of the character, is also highly skilled at expressing the slow, non-continuous growth of conscience and feeling in Valmont, as his feelings for Tourvel dance an uncertain line between manipulation and genuine feeling – and while his confused feelings for Mertuil alternate from possessive devotion to revulsion.

The whole cast respond well to Frears guidance, and his ability to draw relaxed performances from an odd selection of actors. Michelle Pfeiffer is particularly fine in a role that on paper could be very dull – the perfect, kind woman – but which she invest with such a seam of emotional truth and longing for deeper connections, combined with naked emotional honesty that she becomes the most compelling character in the film. Uma Thuman is very good as a naïve young girl, Kurtz and Natwick suitably arch as society bigwigs, Peter Capaldi creepily willing as a manipulative servant and even Keanu Reeves has a certain sweetness about him, even if he is at the height of his “Woah” dudeness.

The film’s principle problem is perhaps the very archness and coldness that makes it affecting. While it’s intriguing and intelligent, it is never perhaps as engaging as it should be and its characters are so jet-black, deceitful and cruel that it becomes hard at points to really invest in this chilling story of unpleasant people using other unpleasant people and manipulating innocent ones. It becomes a film easier to admire, perhaps carrying too much of the freezing chill of imperial French greed and selfishness. Come the denoument for all the skill it is played with the actors, it is hard to feel your emotions invested or your heart moved by any of the fates of the characters. Perhaps, in presenting a heartless world of selfishness and lies, it does its job too well.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Burton and Taylor play a feuding couple in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Director: Mike Nichols

Cast: Elizabeth Taylor (Martha), Richard Burton (George), George Segal (Nick), Sandy Dennis (Honey)

In 1966, Hollywood was only just emerging from the strict rules of the Hays Code. These governed everything from the themes a film could explore to the language you could use while doing it. But in the permissive 60s, it was finally beginning to crack – and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was one of the first films to really push it over the edge. This film helped usher in 70s Hollywood, where filmmakers finally felt empowered to explore darker themes and to do so with sex, violence and bad language. Five years after this film came out, something like A Clockwork Orange could become a box-office smash and a Best Picture nominee. Talk about the changing of the guard.

Mike Nichols’ film debut is a faithful adaptation of Edward Albee’s Broadway smash, which had been controversial enough on stage for its full and frank exploration of a marriage consumed with bitterness, feuding and pain. Not to mention its open acknowledgement of extra marital sex, abortion and alcoholism all delivered with a literal “screw you!”. Elizabeth Taylor is Martha, daughter of the president of a small New England college, whose husband George (Richard Burton) is a failed associate history professor. The couple are locked into a dysfunctional marriage that mixes recrimination and a perverse, shared sense of humour. Drunkenly returning home after a party, they welcome a new professor (George Segal) and his wife (Sandy Dennis) to their home for a nightcap. There they quickly rope the couple into a series of increasingly personal “games” with an edge of cruelty and lashings of verbal abuse.

Today, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has not always aged well, coming across at times as rather forced and overbearing, as is often the way with films that pushed the boundaries so effectively back in the day. Nichols has the confidence to avoid “opening up” the play too much – its single setting on stage is augmented here only with a brief drunken excursion out to a late night bar – and instead focuses on drawing out four superb performances from its actors (all Oscar nominated) and letting the camera move intricately around the confined rooms where the action takes place.

What Nichols really draws superbly from this film is the control of the film’s continual pattern of simmer, tension and release. The play is effectively a series of psychological games that George and Martha play between themselves. The film is like a drunken, truly mean-spirited version of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, where the self-absorbed hosts similarly play elaborate ”games” with their confused guests. Most games involves Martha and George turning on each other, viciously attacking the other for everything from failure to drunkenness, with their guests used as the jury, mixed with “get the guests” interludes as the couple turn on the sexual and marital issues in their guests’ lives.

It makes for a series of compellingly delivered sequences – even if the constant thrum of tension and heightened half-mock, half-real fury Martha and George keep up for most of the film finally starts to bear down on the viewer. The film starts banging its points with a transgressive pride, which looks like increasingly like a lot of sound and fury over quite minor issues. But then that’s always the way with convention defying films – so many following films have buried these conventions, that the attention grabbing way this film does it looks quite tired and overworked today.

As Martha and George, Nichols was able to cast the most famous married couple on the planet at the time, in Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. With these titanic personalities working – for perhaps the only time – with a director who had the skill and authority to tame them, the two of them delivered probably their finest performances on film. It also adds to the illicit sense for the audience – like Nick and Honey – that we are trapped into seeing a series of personal and intense conversations and arguments.

Finally accepting the sort of intense and challenging material he often overlooked for well-paid gigs, Burton is superb as George: a mass of passive aggression, condescending to everyone around him, capable of great cruelty but also a crushed, disappointed and vulnerable man, desperate for affection.

Elizabeth Taylor was similarly sensational – and Oscar-winning: puffy faced, blowsy and domineering as Martha, who similarly has buried her pain and loneliness under a never ending onslaught of aggression, mockery, tartiness and loudness. Brassy and bold, Martha at first seems the controlling, even abusive force in the relationship, but she is also isolated, scared and overwhelmed with pain.

What’s brilliant about the relationship between the couple is at first it seems like George and Martha are a deeply unhappy couple, fuelled by hate. However, it becomes clear their feuding and contempt for each other is in fact part of a relationship grounded on mutual love and need (the final shot is their hands joined together), revolving around their mutual shared pain on their failure to have children. The couple’s primary “game” is a private one – a fictional child, invented to compensate for their mutual infertility – discussion of whom early on by Martha opens the door to the fury that follows. But it gives an insight into their relationship, actually kept fresh by their feuding.

By contrast, it’s the seemingly happier young couple who have serious problems. Nick, very well played by George Segal, is a dashing young buck who is actually selfish and, with a dream of sleeping his way to the top (despite his possible impotence), whose lack of depth is routinely savaged by both Martha and George. Despite this, Nick doesn’t seem to realise that this he’s in the middle of a series of games. He’s married his wife out of obligation for her pregnancy. Honey – an Oscar-winning turn by Sandy Dennis – on the other hand seems to be aware she’s out of his depth here, and reverts into an almost childish passiveness, mixed with awkward horror which slowly peels away to reveal her misery and depression. Slowly we realise Nick and Honey have nothing in common.

It’s a complex and intriguing play, brilliantly bought to the screen by Nichols whose camera (in stark black and white) bobs and weaves through the action, involving each actor in every scene (the camera often focuses on reactions as much as dialogue delivery). All four of the actors are great, but Burton and Taylor are nothing less than sensational (ironically their careers never seemed to recover from the amount they put out there, with more than a few speculating that their own marriage was but a few degrees different from George and Martha) and the film itself, while overbearing, is also still compelling in its complexity and stark insight into human relationships.