I'll borrow a line from a French movie theorist named Vincent Amiel who said that a lasting career can do a lot to a film's legacy. Had May had the career of Scorsese, the film would have been as highly regarded as "Taxi Driver". I agree. Many New Hollywood movies were also flushed into oblivion because they had no De Niro or Pacino.
Still, atching a New Hollywood movie is like wandering at night in a deserted street and contemplating the decline of civilization in an urbane purgatory made of bars, pimps, police sirens and walking through that moral dumb, you bump into remains of inner poetry as casually as your foot steps on a cigarette butt or bump into an emptied beer can. "Mikey and Nicky" is one of these New Hollywood gems, directed by comic writer/director Elaine May.
This is a film that doesn't offer much to look at except the sight of two worn-down old friends going from various points of the city during a rather night. Nicky (John Cassavetes) is trying to escape from the mob, he knows a contract's been put over his head as his old accomplice is as dead as Dillinger. Hiding like a cornered rat in a flea-bitten motel, he calls the only person he can trust, his old buddy Mikey (Peter Falk). It takes forever for the two men to be "framed" by the camera, Nicky sobs and cracks up with the only person who could see him so shattered. Eventually, Mikey convinces Mikey to pull himself together, have a shave, drink some cream to appease his ulcer and get the hell out of the hotel.
That's for the set-up. At that point I was hooked and at the same time worried, if these two men were friends already and the film was to consist of a cat-and-mouse chase with the hired killer Kinney (Ned Beatty), I'm not sure it could have maintained its rhythm and punchiness. But that was forgetting I was watching a Cassavetes and Falk movie and the experience reminded me of the days I was anticipating every new movie from the indie icon with thrills and excitement. The last classic Cassavetes I had seen was "Minnie and Moskowitz" so basically it took me 8 years to rediscover the spice of unpredictability and pre-written improvisation that govern his movies. Oh, it's an Elaine May movie alright but it's the closest to a Cassavetes' film I ever saw, one can even see it as a "Husbands" without Ben Gazzara.
Indeed, while Nicky is scared out of his wits and can beg for his life like a baby, he needs fresh air and gets out and then, he doesn't walk, he runs so fast that his friend can almost lose his track, that's pure Cassavetes, even men run like little boys playing, as if the possibility of death enhanced the exhilaration of life. And the personality of Nicky gradually recovers life and unveils his more complex, colorful and even at times disagreeable trait. There's something in Cassavetes that makes him so believable as a jerk and yet the film asks us to care for the life of someone who acted all his life and still acts like a prick, a man so self-absorbed he doesn't even show respect to the friend who's saving his skin... or is he?
Even that would've been too simplistic, they're two in the film and while I was seeing Mickey making constant phone calls and being genuinely annoyed when Nicky suddenly leaves one bar, starts a brawl in another, insults a bus driver or decides to visit a cemetery, I was wondering why I was lead to believe that Nicky is selling his friend. Ironically, the one answers our suspicion is Nicky. And if Mickey was to be a traitor, after all it's a mob picture and it's got to come from your best friend, maybe the point is to see the traitor redeeming himself and helping his friend after all, but Nicky isn't the kind of guy easy to like. Mikey is no saint either but Cassavetes is at his Cassavetest in a non-Cassavetes movie.
This is indeed the closest to his cinema-verité style a film could ever come to, a vitriolic friendship confronted to the imminence of death. Sometimes, both truly behave like they're on the run, looking for a place to hide or to be safe, sometimes, we can even tell that death offers them moments of insightful meditation, even a joke in a cemetery carries deep resonances. Finally, we have finally a last confrontation where Mickey lets his feeling out and comes to term with Nicky in an authentically disturbing moment that sealed the final act.
The two men couldn't afford fooling around like they did in "Husbands" yet this ws an unprecedented case that could only unleash the most buffoonish or savage sides of both, repressed during their mob years while their wives were waiting. This is a movie that feels conservative in its portrayal of women who are just enduring their men's shenanigans and wait at home, an even more unlikely move from a woman director. But that iconoclast New Hollywood thriller allowed the talented Elaine May to finally subvert the myth of male friendship, and justify the poster with the torn picture.
First, as I said, they were framed together, then they're playing hide and seek together, and the film swings between dual moments and others where we see them alone and out of reach, even ours. And that's the point, May shows two men who become out of each other's reach which culminates in the heart-pounding minutes where they're framed separately and the word 'framed' takes an even more poignant meaning for one of them.
In these years of sheer disillusions, there was no honor whatsoever among thieves and some could betray not out of greed, not out of threat but because they were nicknamed "the echo".
Still, atching a New Hollywood movie is like wandering at night in a deserted street and contemplating the decline of civilization in an urbane purgatory made of bars, pimps, police sirens and walking through that moral dumb, you bump into remains of inner poetry as casually as your foot steps on a cigarette butt or bump into an emptied beer can. "Mikey and Nicky" is one of these New Hollywood gems, directed by comic writer/director Elaine May.
This is a film that doesn't offer much to look at except the sight of two worn-down old friends going from various points of the city during a rather night. Nicky (John Cassavetes) is trying to escape from the mob, he knows a contract's been put over his head as his old accomplice is as dead as Dillinger. Hiding like a cornered rat in a flea-bitten motel, he calls the only person he can trust, his old buddy Mikey (Peter Falk). It takes forever for the two men to be "framed" by the camera, Nicky sobs and cracks up with the only person who could see him so shattered. Eventually, Mikey convinces Mikey to pull himself together, have a shave, drink some cream to appease his ulcer and get the hell out of the hotel.
That's for the set-up. At that point I was hooked and at the same time worried, if these two men were friends already and the film was to consist of a cat-and-mouse chase with the hired killer Kinney (Ned Beatty), I'm not sure it could have maintained its rhythm and punchiness. But that was forgetting I was watching a Cassavetes and Falk movie and the experience reminded me of the days I was anticipating every new movie from the indie icon with thrills and excitement. The last classic Cassavetes I had seen was "Minnie and Moskowitz" so basically it took me 8 years to rediscover the spice of unpredictability and pre-written improvisation that govern his movies. Oh, it's an Elaine May movie alright but it's the closest to a Cassavetes' film I ever saw, one can even see it as a "Husbands" without Ben Gazzara.
Indeed, while Nicky is scared out of his wits and can beg for his life like a baby, he needs fresh air and gets out and then, he doesn't walk, he runs so fast that his friend can almost lose his track, that's pure Cassavetes, even men run like little boys playing, as if the possibility of death enhanced the exhilaration of life. And the personality of Nicky gradually recovers life and unveils his more complex, colorful and even at times disagreeable trait. There's something in Cassavetes that makes him so believable as a jerk and yet the film asks us to care for the life of someone who acted all his life and still acts like a prick, a man so self-absorbed he doesn't even show respect to the friend who's saving his skin... or is he?
Even that would've been too simplistic, they're two in the film and while I was seeing Mickey making constant phone calls and being genuinely annoyed when Nicky suddenly leaves one bar, starts a brawl in another, insults a bus driver or decides to visit a cemetery, I was wondering why I was lead to believe that Nicky is selling his friend. Ironically, the one answers our suspicion is Nicky. And if Mickey was to be a traitor, after all it's a mob picture and it's got to come from your best friend, maybe the point is to see the traitor redeeming himself and helping his friend after all, but Nicky isn't the kind of guy easy to like. Mikey is no saint either but Cassavetes is at his Cassavetest in a non-Cassavetes movie.
This is indeed the closest to his cinema-verité style a film could ever come to, a vitriolic friendship confronted to the imminence of death. Sometimes, both truly behave like they're on the run, looking for a place to hide or to be safe, sometimes, we can even tell that death offers them moments of insightful meditation, even a joke in a cemetery carries deep resonances. Finally, we have finally a last confrontation where Mickey lets his feeling out and comes to term with Nicky in an authentically disturbing moment that sealed the final act.
The two men couldn't afford fooling around like they did in "Husbands" yet this ws an unprecedented case that could only unleash the most buffoonish or savage sides of both, repressed during their mob years while their wives were waiting. This is a movie that feels conservative in its portrayal of women who are just enduring their men's shenanigans and wait at home, an even more unlikely move from a woman director. But that iconoclast New Hollywood thriller allowed the talented Elaine May to finally subvert the myth of male friendship, and justify the poster with the torn picture.
First, as I said, they were framed together, then they're playing hide and seek together, and the film swings between dual moments and others where we see them alone and out of reach, even ours. And that's the point, May shows two men who become out of each other's reach which culminates in the heart-pounding minutes where they're framed separately and the word 'framed' takes an even more poignant meaning for one of them.
In these years of sheer disillusions, there was no honor whatsoever among thieves and some could betray not out of greed, not out of threat but because they were nicknamed "the echo".
