This entire presentation is copyright © 1968 and © 1999 by William Allin Storrer. Phd. For permission to quote, contact Dr. Storrer at mindalive@storrer.com
Consideration of the film of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or Cinewoolf as it is called in this text, would be relatively simple were it necessary only to compare the dialogue of Stagwoolf to the dialogue of Cinewoolf. The changes from Stagwoolf to Cinewoolf in the dialogue alone are sufficient evidence of difference between the two artifacts, but they are only part of the story for visual elements play a significant role, perhaps the significant role, in the experience of Cinewoolf.
Such changes in dialogue as are indicated by Ernest Lehman's film script1 and observed in viewings of Cinewoolf and auditings of the phonograph recording of the complete film play have been documented in Appendix A. In this and successive chapters the effect of these dialogue changes will be considered in detail.
Some of the dialogue changes alter significantly the content of Albee's work. The altering of "Screw you" to "Goddamn you" at the arrival of the guests,(19)2 the omission of the "screwing machine" dialogue,(69) retention of "Screw, baby"(197) and addition of a "goddamn,"(199) are small changes taken one by one. Together they help shift the emphasis from general profanity in Stagwoolf to a cumulative increase in profanity as the evening progresses in Cinewoolf, focusing attention the climax of the action.
Other dialogue changes are often of little or no significance. Changing "Christ's sake" to "cry sake" removes the obvious visual profanity from the printed page, but does not essentially alter what is actually heard from the sound track. The changing of "Yes . . . yes" to "Unh hunh"(56) is a change that might take place in a stage production as the actor learns his lines and finds that the rhythm of "Unh hunh" flows better in the situation than "Yes . . . yes." The actor's acquiring of this change in rehearsal, and making of it a habit, is no more nor less significant than the appearance of this change in Cinewoolf. The recording of the original New York production of Stagwoolf reveals several minor alterations from the published text, yet it would not be suggested that this alters the cumulative effect of the drama in significant manner.
What we hear as we watch Cinewoolf is but one part of the film experience. What we see is another part, and which dominates or controls the progression of the film at any given moment is a factor that must have our attention. Both aural and visual elements are essential aspects of Cinewoolf, and each is subject to alteration; in terms of length, juxtaposition, intensity, composition and numerous other factors, the visual and aural elements may be altered to achieve almost any desired effect in the final print. After all these manipulations have taken place we view Cinewoolf as an artifact and as an aesthetic experience.
<The statement that "the camera cannot lie" has been disproved by millions of flattering portraits . . . . Yet in our heart of hearts we credit the truth of that statement. A picture, a piece of sculpture, a stage-play--these we know were created by man . . . we are prepared to demand nothing save a theatrical truth. For the films, however, our orientation is vastly different.>3
<The strange paradox, then results--that, although the cinema introduces improbabilities and things beyond nature at which any theatrical director would blench . . . the filmic material is treated by the audience with far greater respect (in its relation to life) than the material of the stage . . . . What we have witnessed on the screen becomes the "real" for us. In moments of sanity, maybe, we confess that of course we do not believe this or that, but, under the spell again, we credit the truth of these pictures.>4
What happens on a stage is real only in a theatrical sense. We know the same events can be portrayed the next day by the same or different actors with similar or different effect upon the audience. We know that what we see on that stage is not real life, but only an imitation of it. If we see someone murdered on stage, we know it is only a theatrical murder, and the actor can do it all over again tomorrow. Yet we accept this kind of theatrical assumption when we go to the theatre.
The experience of the film is of a different nature, asserts Raymond Durgnat:
<In matching the curve of music with the movement in the shots, in matching the movement within the shot with the movement of the camera, the film enters artistic territory which has never been broached before and is divorced from simple realism.>5
Then what is it that gives film its own "peculiar power of compelling conviction"?6 Durgnat answers that
The cinema is exciting not because it is more realistic but because it offers a mental continuity and the link is the narrative, the idea, that is resonance of experience.7
This idea of "mental continuity" is significant, for the film is hardly an art of continuity in the manner of the stage. On the stage, the physical presence of the actor constitutes a continuity in time and space. If all actors leave the stage, or the curtain drops to hide the stage from view, a major change of time and space may occur. In the film, however, it is possible for continuity of time or space to be broken without the mental continuity or the flow of verbal and aural images to be interrupted. This happens at least twice in Cinewoolf, first as the two couples enter the roadhouse,(126) and later as Martha speeds off in the station wagon leaving George in the parking lot.(159)
In the transition to the roadhouse interior, the momentum of action bridges a "discontinuity" in time and space, allowing the high emotional pitch to continue unbroken. From shots of the couples in the car and of the roadhouse they are passing, there is a jump cut to Honey in the roadhouse whirling in a circle: "I dance like the wind,"(126) as she says. Physical time and space have been violated, but the dramatic momentum is maintained, and there is no loss of mental continuity.
The sequence in the parking lot ends on a high emotional level. Martha declares that the war is "Total,"(159) stalks away from George, gets into the station wagon and floors the accelerator pedal. The camera follows the car as it moves out of the lot, down the road, stops, admits Nick and Honey, turns, and rushes back past George who is standing alone in the parking lot. A dissolve, from George's face to the yard in front of Martha and George's house, violates temporal and spatial continuity. The new shot reveals the station wagon from a distance, one tail light blinking. The change of mood, not of time or space, is what attracts attention, and our energies are spent assimilating the significance of this drop in emotional pitch, not in questioning how we got from one place to another in such a short time.
Bluestone suggests that where there is an "instantaneous succession of different spatial entities"8 such as in the first sequence discussed above, then there must be
<. . . a constant to stabilize them. In the film, that constant is motion. No matter how diverse the moving spaces which explode against each other, movement itself pours over from shot to shot, binding as it blurs them, reinforcing the relentless unrolling of the celluloid.>9
The experience of the image on the screen, constantly there yet changing in an instant, maintains a mental continuity that compels conviction.
Another factor that is different for the theatre and the film is that of audience viewpoint. To the audience seated before a theatrical stage, the viewpoint of the action does not vary, but the audience may give its attention to any part of that stage, and any character on it, at any moment. Before a movie screen, we cannot change our viewpoint, but the camera that photographed what we see on the screen could move and record the action from the viewpoint that is most advantageous for revealing the content of the dramatic moment.
Bluestone notes one significance of this:
<Bound by its respect for physical reality but unbound by the vision of any one spectator, the lens becomes an ideal, unrealistic eye: unbound by natural observation, the eye of the spectator becomes omniscient.>10
These are but a few of the reasons why the film experience is not the same as the stage experience, and many such factors must be considered in order to grasp the nature of the experience of Cinewoolf. Changes in dialogue, specific content of the shot, handling of time and space and inclusion of music are but some of the factors that affect the spectator's response to the cinematic artifact. An attempt has been made to achieve a coherent view of Cinewoolf, and to isolate specific elements of the film that may identify operative principles. The presence of one principle does not automatically exclude other possibilities. What is observed by one person may not be the most significant element that is there to be observed but if it is experienced by one, it should be present for the inspection of another to whose attention it has been called. Once identified, it may serve the needs of comparison of this dissertation.
1. Ernest Lehman, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (unpublished film script, Burbank, California: Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, 1965).
2. Stagwoolf, p. 19, as corrected to changes, noted in Appendix A, to make it read as the dialogue screenplay of Cinewoolf.
3. Allardyce Nicoll, Film and Theatre (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1936), p. 167.
4. Ibid., p. 171.
5. Raymond Durgnat, "Fake, Fiddle and the Photographic Arts," The British Journal of Aesthetics, V (June, 1965).
6. Ibid., p. 270.
7. Ibid., p. 284.
8. George Bluestone, Novels into Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957 v .59.
9. Ibid., p 60.
10. Ibid., p. 17