Mickey One (VHS) (letterbox) [1965] Warren Beatty

http://bayimg.com/IAoEGAaCD Mickey One (1965) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059447/ Mickey One (1965) is a surrealistic dramatic film starring Warren Beatty and directed by Arthur Penn from a script by Alan Surgal. Its kaleidoscopic camerawork, film noir atmosphere, lighting and design aspects, Kafkaesque paranoia, philosophical themes and Warren Beattys performance in the title role turned the film into a cult classic. Penn and Surgal ignored the usual conventions of narrative for a freewheeling approach to their dramatic devices and Chicago locations. The films soundtrack, reverberating with hints of everything from Béla Bartók to bossa nova, re-teamed Stan Getz with arranger Eddie Sauter, following their classic album Focus. Warren Beatty ... Mickey Alexandra Stewart ... Jenny Hurd Hatfield ... Castle Franchot Tone ... Rudy Lopp Teddy Hart ... Berson Jeff Corey ... Fryer Kamatari Fujiwara ... The Artist Donna Michelle ... The Girl Ralph Foody ... Police Captain Norman Gottschalk ... The Evangelist Dick Lucas ... Employment Agent Jack Goodman ... Cafeteria Manager Jeri Jensen ... Helen Charlene Lee ... The Singer Benny Dunn ... Nightclub Comic Every actor or director probably has at least one movie in their filmography unlike anything else theyve ever done before or since and for Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn that film would be Mickey One (1965). Allegedly inspired by the French New Wave films of the early sixties, Penns film is an enigmatic and existential tale of a nightclub stand-up comic who goes on the lam from the mob because of a huge financial debt he cant repay. Warren Beattys title character confesses at the beginning, The ride was over, I was trapped and I find out suddenly I owe a fortune, and with no more exposition than that, the rest of the movie repeats a pattern of Mickey One fleeing, hiding, being discovered and repeating the cycle until the unresolved fadeout which is open to interpretation and not the sort of ending the average moviegoer wants to see. It wasnt what the Columbia Studio executives expected either and put them in panic mode, realizing they had a commercial flop on their hands. Nevertheless, Mickey One is a fascinating example of the creative freedom that once existed in Hollywood in the late sixties and is a near impossibility now with everything focused on the bottom line of profitability. In some ways, the film could even be considered a success in retrospect because it led to the future collaboration of Penn and Beatty on the phenomenally successful and influential Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, the film that really made them both major players in the film industry on an international level. The making of Mickey One is, in some ways, as peculiar and as unexpected as the film. Beatty, who had been impressed with Penns film adaptation of The Miracle Worker (1962), brought him a personal project in development called Honeybear that he hoped he would direct. Penn instead offered Beatty the lead in a low-budget, experimental drama he was creating called Mickey One which reportedly would convey the type of paranoia prevalent during the Communist witchhunts of the late forties. Beatty quickly agreed since he was still awaiting final script revisions from Woody Allen on Whats New, Pussycat?, a big budget comedy being developed for him by producer Charles Feldman. Once Beatty and Penn began working together on Mickey One, problems began to develop. We had a lot of trouble on that film, Beatty said candidly, because I didnt know what the hell Arthur was trying to do and I tried to find out...Im not sure that he knew himself. (from Warren Beatty: A Private Man by Suzanne Finstad). One of the main frustrations for Beatty was his character. To me the stand-up gags that the guy had to do in Mickey One were not funny, observed Beatty, and that was always my complaint with Arthur, that the jokes were some attempt to attain some sort of universality, some appeal to intellect that I didnt find funny at all...I felt if I was playing a comedian I ought to be funny. Penn also had a tendency to emulate director William Wylers notorious habit of requiring countless takes of the same scene until he was satisfied he had what he wanted. In one instance, he made Beatty do sixty-nine takes of one scene. Harrison Starr, the producer of Mickey One, recalled that Beatty and Arthur had go-arounds...the role was basically a role of an eccentric, a person whose inner demons were reflected in the world he inhabited...and I think that was difficult for Warren to play. He wanted to play it more as a Broadway showbiz guy. The on-the-set frustration Beatty was experiencing was further heightened by his dismissal from the Whats New, Pussycat? project after a heated argument with producer Charles Feldman over the casting of Capucine in a key role; Beatty had vowed he would not do the film if Capucine (Feldmans girlfriend at the time) was cast so he walked and was replaced with Peter OToole. At the same time, Beattys private life was also becoming complicated due to his passionate new affair with actress Leslie Caron who was still married to director Peter Hall. Caron even visited Beatty on the Mickey One set and at first, in an attempt to be discreet, tried to disguise herself so she wouldnt be noticed but the gossip columns were soon abuzz with the news. Peter Hall would divorce Caron that same year and Beatty would follow Mickey One with Promise Her Anything (1965), a lightweight romantic comedy with Caron as his leading lady. As for Mickey One, Penn screened the completed film for Columbia executives. People walked out, recalled Arthur Penns assistant. It was the gossip at the studio. Arthur, who had put his heart into it, was devastated. As Penn elaborated, I was able to persuade Columbia to back it on the basis of them not reading the screenplay...[and] we made it quite cheaply for an American film, but that did not in any way mitigate their consternation when they eventually saw it. They were very upset. The critics werent exactly a cheerleading squad for the film either but the reviews were more balanced and considerate. Time magazine wrote Penns talent often seems equal to the task, for he has taken Hollywoods old formula for a gangland chase melodrama and refashioned it as a hip morality play, alive with razzle-dazzle cinematic techniques....Mickey One is never boring but never very precise, and finally goes to pieces amidst the crash of its own symbols. Variety proclaimed that Mickey One could be described as a study in regeneration, but the screenplay is overloaded with symbolic gestures which obscure the main objectives of the plot... and The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote The picture is interesting mainly for the elaborate photographics of Mr. Penn - his delight in using his camera to scan the phantasmagoria of city life, or to view a superfluously staged happening such as one of those pyrotechnical things done by the pop artist, Jean Tinguely. This, too, becomes pretentious and monotonous as the film runs along. Judith Crist, who Beatty befriended after she trashed his performance in Lilith (1964), was the only critic to praise Mickey One calling it a brilliant original screen work and that Beatty was one of the remarkable young actors of our day. Beatty was always diplomatic about the movie stating, truthfully, I did not enjoy making it...I liked it on a personal level, the people involved...I do respect the picture. But Arthur Penn was more candid years later saying that Warren thought the script was too mannered and intellectual, and I have to admit he was right. (from Warren Beatty: A Private Man by Suzanne Finstad). While Mickey One does have its share of pretentious and obtuse moments - a surreal sequence in a junkyard where Mickey is chased and threatened by salvage forklifts and garbage trucks, a comic, speeded-up clean-up of his grubby, rented room a la Keystone Cops, a street brawl where he is attacked and beaten by an odd assortment of penny arcade operators and street vendors - there are also aspects of the movie that are truly inspired. Because Penn wanted to make a European style art film but with a distinct American identity, he filmed most of the movie in unfamiliar locations in and around Chicago with Belgium cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet. The latter had filmed Alain Resnaiss Night and Fog (1955), Louis Malles The Fire Within (1963) and many other acclaimed European films and would eventually win the Oscar for Tess (1979). His extraordinary sense of composition, depth of field and use of dark and light in the black and white design are often so stunning that Mickey One becomes an exercise in high style and the equally innovative editing by Aram Avakian keeps the movie afloat through its frequent and incomprehensible shifts in tone and mood. Another major triumph of Mickey One is the lush, expressive jazz score by Eddie Sauter with soulful sax solos by Stan Getz that provide the emotional kick in some scenes that Penns direction and Beattys performance cant deliver. It is also a great stand alone score and is still available on CD. Last but not least, the eccentric casting of Mickey One deserves a mention as well. Alexandra Stewart, a Canadian actress who was discovered by cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet at the age of seventeen and had appeared in Roger Vadims Les Liaisons dangereuses (1959) and the 1960 epic, Exodus, is Jenny, Mickeys on-again, off-again lover and roommate. According to Suzanne Finstads biography of Beatty, one day Arthur Penn is looking for a young girl, Midwestern girl, to play this sort of fiancée of Warren Beatty, whos a pure sort of girl who doesnt know whats going on. And because Louis Malle was already quite a director, Arthur saw his movie Le Feu Follet [1963] and said, Thats her - we can give it kind of a European look. Hurd Hatfield, the peculiar screen presence who was ideally cast as the lead in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), plays a high strung, narcissistic talent booker who becomes obsessed with Mickey and Jeff Corey, a veteran character actor, drama teacher, and former victim of the blacklist in the fifties, is Hatfields volatile, insecure second-in-command. Franchot Tone, in one of his final film appearances, is Mickeys personal manager and Kamatari Fujiwara, a longtime member of Akira Kurosawas stock company, is memorable as the bizarre mime-like figure who constantly shadows Mickey, eventually presenting a Jean Tinguely-like performance piece with Rube Goldberg influences that could be a symbolic reenactment of a nuclear holocaust. As the first major Hollywood studio film to display an extensive influence from the New Wave in the cinematography and editing, Mickey One received a good send-off at the 1965 New York Film Festival, and Penn received a nomination for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. However, critical reaction was mixed, and distribution was spotty, with the film arriving in some areas at drive-ins rather than first-run theaters, and it quickly vanished. Nevertheless, Beatty and Penn soon teamed again for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. The rediscovery of the film began in 1995 with a booking at San Franciscos Castro Theater and a reevaluation by Peter Stack: Mickey One is, in essence, a jazz film with an edgy style in which shadings and tone of voice are everything. It is laced with American idioms in its script by Alan Surgal, and most of Beattys lines have a smart-alecky tone. When he goes on the run, Mickey meets a woman who wonders who he is (since he cant shake his show-biz patina) and he hits her with the line: Im the king of silent movies hiding out till the talkies blow over. In another place he verbally assaults a nightclub owner who cant figure out why Mickeys so edgy, saying, Im guilty of not being innocent. At the start we see pretty-boy Beatty as a hot comic in Detroit. Hes got it all -- good looks, the swagger of a deft improviser -- and hes having a torrid affair with a blond siren. (The film is filled with women bursting with desire). But fortune quickly turns -- witness to a torture murder in a back room, the comic flees, hoboes his way to Chicagos West Side and takes refuge in a junkyard. There he runs into another nightmarish scene -- police investigating a murder in an automobile crusher. The cinematic invention in Mickey One has been dismissed by some critics as contrivance. But Penn may have been decades ahead of his time in depicting an urban America as gallery of paranoia, cynicism and loneliness. In a classic scene, the comic is up against a brick wall auditioning at a nightclub, a single, powerful spotlight trained on him so he cant see into the audience. Penn creates an agonizing moment of a man talking awkwardly to God while looking as if hes standing before a firing squad

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