Friday, March 2, 2012

Elaine May's MIKEY AND NICKY (American Revival)

Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Friday, 7pm
Letting Peter Falk (Mikey) and John Cassavetes (Nicky) run wild on film can be a dangerous proposition. Sure, Cassavetes got away with it as a director, but he financed his own movies. After shooting 1.4 million feet of film while running 3 cameras at once, Elaine May was understandably over budget and the studio was understandably disappointed. Paramount buried the film after a short run, and it would be 12 more years until she would direct again (ISHTAR). Although panned by critics at the time, May's approach yielded a nuanced portrait of the male ego and of Downtown LA that has rarely been matched. The 2 close-ups and a master approach to cinematography was effective, albeit listless, in generating a claustrophobic world – a structure largely controlled during May's lengthy editing process. Although the two leads play low-level LA gangsters, they may as well be any of Cassavetes' standard protagonists: cornered by their jobs and social circumstances, and long past fighting to break out of them. We know the hero isn't going to win by the end of the first reel, and we know that he's not much of a hero by the end of the second. But watching May's collaboration with two great method actors in their prime is worth savoring until the credits roll. (1976, 119 min, 35mm) JH - cine-file.info

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