Mickey One is a 1965 American neo noircrime 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 Beatty's 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 film's soundtrack, reverberating with hints of everything from Béla Bartók to bossa nova, reteamed Stan Getz with arranger Eddie Sauter, following their classic album Focus.
Plot
After incurring the wrath of the Mafia, a stand-up comic flees Detroit for Chicago, taking the name Mickey One. He uses the card to get a job at a seedy diner hauling garbage. Eventually he returns to the stage as a stand-up comic, but is wary of becoming successful, afraid that he will attract too much attention. When he gets a booking at the upscale club Xanadu, he finds that his first rehearsal has become a special "audition" for an unseen man with a frightening, gruff voice. Paranoid that the mob has found him, Mickey runs away. He decides to find out who "owns" him and square himself with the mob. However, he doesn't know what he did to anger them or what his debt is. Searching for a mobster who will talk to him, he gets beaten up by several nightclub doormen. Mickey finally concludes that it's impossible to get away and be safe, so he pulls himself together and does his act anyway. In traveling about the city, Mickey continually sees a mute mime-like character known only as The Artist. The Artist eventually unleashes his Rube Goldberg-like creation, a deliberately self-destructive machine called "Yes," an homage to the sculptor Jean Tinguely.
Aram Avakian as Mickey's invisible tormentor in the theater
Taalkeus Blank as the homeless man whose identity Mickey assumes
Release and reception
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 mostly negative. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times praised the visual style but claimed that the film was "pretentious and monotonous." Time called the film, "never boring but never very precise, and finally goes to pieces amidst the crash of its own symbols." Distribution was spotty, with the film arriving in some areas at drive-ins rather than first-run theaters, and it quickly vanished after several audience members walked out. The film was a commercial flop. Beatty and Penn did not get along while making this film. Beatty later recalled, "We had a lot of trouble on that film, because I didn't know what the hell Arthur was trying to do and I tried to find out... I'm not sure that he knew himself" and added, "To me, the stand-up gags that the guy had to do in Mickey One were not funny and that was always my complaint with Arthur." Producer Harrison Starr recalled, "Warren 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." Nevertheless, Beatty and Penn soon teamed again for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.
Rediscovery
The rediscovery of the film began in 1995 with a booking at San Francisco's Castro Theater and a reevaluation by Peter Stack:
