Arthur Penn (1965)

An odd film – one of the oddest things about it is Warren Beatty as a stand-up comedian.    Mickey is on the run from the Mafia and anxious that show business fame will bring him to their attention.  With Beatty playing him, Mickey has no need to worry about getting his name in lights:  he’s so introverted on stage that it’s difficult to believe any audience would warm to him.  The themes of Mickey One, which Arthur Penn directed from an original screenplay by Alan Surgal, include the paranoia of performance and potential celebrity – of becoming public property – but I wasn’t convinced that Beatty was intentionally incongruous in the role.  Although he began his acting career in the theatre, he’s not cut out for histrionics:  in offstage sequences, his Mickey sometimes makes big gestures with his arms – empty gestures because there’s no feeling (or suggestion that they’re natural to a theatrical spirit) behind them.  Mickey One has its place in Hollywood history, though, as the film that first brought Beatty and Arthur Penn together and, to that extent, made way for their collaboration on Bonnie and Clyde.  The BFI programme note was an extract from David Thomson’s biography of Beatty, in which Thomson describes Penn as ‘[embodying] the hope that cultivated New York theatre traditions can take over the movies’.

There’s plenty of evidence here of what a talented film-maker Penn already was – the volatile look and movement of the film is in striking contrast to his previous movie, the intelligent, forceful adaptation of The Miracle Worker, which Penn had also directed on Broadway.  Mickey One’s impressive features include:  ariously ominous sounds and images of imprisonment and destruction; sharp editing (by Aram Avakian); an expressive jazz score (Eddie Sauter and Stan Getz); noir-ish lighting (Ghislain Cloquet); and Beatty’s speed of movement, when Mickey’s literally on the run.  There are good sequences, like Mickey’s confrontation on stage with the ice-cold beam of the spotlight on him, and his echo of the words heard earlier in the film being sung by a Salvation Army band:  ‘Is there no word from the Lord?’   But although Mickey One is stylistically coherent it ultimately consists of fragments of evidence that Arthur Penn can make a better film – just as Beatty’s achievement here is to predict how effective he will be in roles to which he’s more suited.  The main support is provided by the lovely, bland Alexandra Stewart, as Mickey’s girlfriend, and Hurd Hatfield as a club owner.  Hatfield’s acting isn’t up to much but, thanks to the role for which he’ll always be remembered, it’s intriguing to look at his middle-aged face on screen more than twenty years after he played Dorian Gray.  For the smaller parts, Penn depends on actors with eccentric and sometimes grotesque physiques and faces.  It’s hard to believe that one of them is Franchot Tone, given the way that he looked in his Hollywood heyday.

21 October 2013