SUBJECTS

Betrayal -- Psychological aspects -- Drama, Hoodlums -- Drama, Male friendship -- Drama

Mikey and Nicky

Digital Restoration

May was known for her comedy but here proves absolutely fluent in the language of mobster lowlife, with an edge of caustic, disillusioned humor, and strange yet shockingly real outbursts of violence.

Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
featuring

Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty, Carol Grace,

Mikey (Peter Falk) and Nicky (John Cassavetes) are petty gangsters in a lonely night’s landscape, on the run from death. Cassavetes’s influence—and both actors’ finest performance outside of Cassavetes’s own films—infuses Mikey and Nicky with an absurd humanity. May’s use of a three-camera setup throughout resulted in cost overruns and a battle with the studio, but it also allowed for spontaneity on set. “A dark dazzler. . . . Over the course of one evening, the two pass an entire lifetime together talking, walking and waiting for the inevitable. Like all May’s films, has the hard-to-capture feeling of spontaneous life” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Elaine May
Cinematographer
  • Bernie Abramson
  • Lucien Ballard
  • Victor J. Kemper
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 106 mins
Source
  • Jumer Productions, Inc.
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Mikey and Nicky documents  

John Cassavetes, actor and director (article), SF Weekly, Gregg Rickman, 1998

The films of John Cassavetes (program note), Walker Art Center, 1989

The films of John Cassavetes (press release), Walker Art Center, 1989

Mikey and Nicky (article), Village Voice, Tom Allen, 1986

Buddy love (review), Wall Street Journal, Julie Salamon, 1985

Mikey and Nicky (article), Village Voice, J. Hoberman, 1985

Elaine May film reborn and praised (review), Los Angeles Times, Sheila Benson, 1984

Mikey and Nicky (program note), Toronto International Film Festival, Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1982

Mikey and Nicky (review), New West, Stephen Farber, 1977

A long night's journey into buddy-buddy land (review), Village Voice, Molly Haskell, 1977

Displaying 10 of 18 publicly available documents.


View all Mikey and Nicky documentation on CineFiles.