Mikey and Nicky
Mikey and Nicky is a 1976 American crime drama film written and directed by Elaine May. It stars John Cassavetes as a desperate small-time mobster and Peter Falk as his longtime, childhood friend. The supporting cast features Ned Beatty, Carol Grace, Rosee Arrick, and noted acting teacher Sanford Meisner.
Mikey and Nicky
Elaine May
- Bernie Abramson
- Lucien Ballard
- Victor J. Kemper
- December 21, 1976
106 minutes
United States
English
$4.3 million
The production ran over its schedule and budget, leading to tensions between May and Paramount Pictures, who revoked her final cut privilege. When finally released on December 21, 1976, the film bombed at the box office, which led to May not directing again for a decade.[1] Her director's cut of the film was screened in 1978, which was remastered and released by the Criterion Collection in 2019. [2]
Plot[edit]
When Nicky (John Cassavetes) calls Mikey (Peter Falk) yet again to bail him out of trouble—this time a contract on his life for money he stole from his mob boss—Mikey, as always, shows up to help. Overcoming the obstacles of Nicky's paranoia and blind fear, Mikey gets him out of the hotel where he has holed up, and starts to help him plan his escape, but Nicky keeps changing the plan, and a hitman (Ned Beatty) is hot on their trail. As they try to make their escape, the two friends have to confront issues of betrayal, regret, and the value of friendship versus self-preservation.
Cast notes
Release[edit]
Angered by May's contentiousness during filming and editing, Paramount booked the completed film into theaters for a few days to satisfy contractual obligations, but did not give the film its full support. Paramount's cut, riddled with continuity errors, was released to the ridicule of critics. This led John Simon to call the film "a celluloid death wish" in a 1976 article in New York Magazine.[6] In 1978, Julian Schlossberg, who had previously worked in acquisitions for Paramount before starting his own company, Castle Hill Productions, purchased the rights from the studio with May and Falk.
A new version of the film, approved by May, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for the Directors Guild of America Fiftieth Anniversary Tribute on November 17, 1986. The film was also shown in Park City, Utah, at the United States Film Festival's Tribute to John Cassavetes on January 25, 1989. The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection in 2019.[7]
Reception[edit]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 88% based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10.[8] According to Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average score of 81 out of 100 based on 15 critics, the film received "universal acclaim".[9] In 2018, The Guardian praised the film as 'a neglected gem of 70s cinema', granting it a five star review.[10]
Leonard Maltin gave the film 21⁄2-stars-out-of-4, calling it a "Ragged film" that "improves as it goes along" with "superb performances by Falk and Cassavetes."[11] Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader wrote: "May allows the improvisational rhythms of her actors to establish the surface realism of the film, but beneath the surface lies a tight, poetically stylized screenplay that leads the two characters, as they pass a fearful, frenzied night together, back over the range of their lives, from infancy to adulthood. What emerges is a profound, unsentimental portrait of male friendship-and of its ultimate impossibility."[12] A retrospective review from Richard Brody for The New Yorker stated: "This hard-nosed masterpiece, from 1976, was written and directed by the doyenne of loopy comedy, Elaine May, who borrowed the scarily intense and spontaneous performance style of Cassavetes’s films to expose the cruelty of their male bravado—the ugliness of what his men do to women and what his women take from men. The wild emotional swings render the inevitable conclusion all the more shattering, as the film lays bare the price of friendship and the gall of betrayal. In May’s view, it takes a real man to stop being one of the guys."[13]
The New York Times found much to criticize: "It's a melodrama about male friendship told in such insistently claustrophobic detail that to watch it is to risk an artificially induced anxiety attack. It's nearly two hours of being locked in a telephone booth with a couple of method actors who won't stop talking, though they have nothing of interest to say, and who won't stop jiggling around, though they plainly aren't going anywhere. They just seem to be carrying on—making elaborate actor fusses—in front of the camera. Miss May is a witty, gifted, very intelligent director. It took guts for her to attempt a film like this, but she failed."[14]