Preceded by short: Hot Leatherette (Robert Nelson, USA, 1967). "Car races along dangerous road...Blowout! Spectacular crash, car hurtles off cliff into the ocean. Comic; short, fast audience pleaser" (RN). (6 mins, B&W, 16mm, From PFA Collection) Set to an improvised score by Stan Getz, Mickey One has Warren Beatty as a second-rate nightclub entertainer, heavily in debt, who attempts to escape into a new identity but is instead haunted by it. In a fine performance, Beatty sings, tells bad jokes, and gives contemporary authority to a film that was recognized by only a few as being ahead of its time-and one of the few works of surrealist cinema to escape from Hollywood. Critic Eric Sherman writes, "Mickey One is Arthur Penn's most overtly metaphysical work. In this Kafkaesque vision of a night-club comedian pursued by an unknown mob for an unknown crime, Penn further explores his fascination with the social outcast who wants back in. Anonymity, lack of identity, is-in the case of a public performer-the worst kind of exclusion. Only death-and that death from an unknown force-is more to be feared...Mickey One is also notable for Penn's first use of cars as a particularly American metaphor..."