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By PAUL BRENNER
Peter Falk and John
Cassavetes as childhood pals Mikey and Nicky, now
fifty-year-old two-bit thugs, cavort around a
Philadelphia graveyard in the dead of night, spend
some time reminiscing about their youth and their
decades-long friendship and Cassavetes, with a
meaningful pause, declares to Falk, "I wouldn't do
anything to hurt you...on purpose." This sublime
revelation to Falk's Mikey from Cassavetes's Nicky
comes in the middle of an all-night, end of life
lesson delivered by Nicky to Mikey, on the meaning
of friendship and loyalty. Mikey has been sent by
the mob to reel in Nicky (who stole some mob
money) and draw him out into the open for a
hapless hit-man (Ned Beatty) to kill.
Betrayal of friendship has been a major theme in
all of Elaine May's four films as director ("A New
Leaf," "The Heartbreak Kid," and "Ishtar" being
the others), perhaps her calling card for life
since the breakup of the Nichols and May team at
the height of their fame; but in no other film has
this theme been presented in such a raw and
unfiltered manner as in her darkly comic character
study "Mikey and Nicky," now available on DVD
through Home Vision Entertainment.
"Mikey and Nicky" has been hard to see since its
initial release in 1977 and even then in the
butchered version released by Paramount it was
still difficult to appreciate. May shot an
astronomical 1.4 million feet of footage and spent
two years editing the film. And like Beatty's
hit-man, Paramount tried to send emissaries to
recover the footage but, May, on the run from the
Hollywood mob, enlisted her psychoanalyst to help
her stash footage in an uncharted location in
Connecticut. Years down the road, the film
reemerged with footage restored and the visuals
cleaned up and this is the version making its
appearance on DVD. In May's scant oeuvre, this
film emerges as her finest.
The mid-70s were the artistic height of the films
of John Cassavetes and May in "Mikey and Nicky" at
first appears to be knocking off Cassavetes's
distinctive style. And in a sense, she certainly
is. Not only because Falk and Cassavetes are the
stars but in the improvisatory approach to the
camerawork and the dialogue. Clearly, we are in
Cassavetes Land. At least up to a point. May apes
Cassavetes but, with a feminist perspective, turns
that style on its head. In "Mikey and Nicky," the
two characters race around the streets of Philly
causing commotion in a black bar, scuffle with a
bus driver (M. Emmett Walsh), trip over
headstones, and manhandle women. For May, Mikey
and Nicky are not men, but hateful little
fifty-year-old boys. Where Cassavetes seeks a life
spark between his characters and the audience, May
keeps the characters at a distance -- these are
not nice people, they are soulless macho men, they
treat women like dirt, and they are digging their
own graves. With death looming over his head,
Nicky realizes the bankruptcy of this life and
shallowness and self-hatred of his personality and
he tries to get his Judas (Mikey) to understand
the blankness of his life and values and by
extension Mikey's as well.
May perfectly encapsulates this end-of-the-world
attitude and illustrates where this kind of world
view is heading as Beatty and Falk drive around
Philadelphia to locate the on-the-run Nicky.
Irritated, Mikey berates the hit-man, "I said he
was around here. I didn't say he was standing in
the middle of the street waiting for us." May then
cuts to Nicky, waiting for them in the middle of
the street.
The DVD also offers interviews with producer
Michael Hausman and cinematographer Victor J.
Kemper; a documentary on the restoration of the
film; and liner notes by film critic Jonathan
Rosenbaum. |
