Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk in Mikey and Nicky

Cast: Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty, Rose Arrick, Carol Grace, William Hickey, Sanford Meisner, Joyce Van Patten, M. Emmet Walsh. Screenplay: Elaine May. Cinematography: Bernie Abramson, Lucien Ballard, Jack Cooperman. Production design: Paul Sylbert. Film editing: John Carter, Sheldon Kahn. Music: John Strauss.

"I came as soon as I got your towel." That line, spoken by Mikey (Peter Falk) to Nicky (John Cassavetes) after the latter has thrown a bottle and a towel out of his hotel room window to get the former's attention, has an Elaine May ring to it. It's followed by a sardonic in-joke when Mikey chides Nicky for throwing the bottle because the broken glass could have put his eye out. (Falk lost an eye to cancer when he was 3.) The scene feels like a set-up for a comedy of rude manners, which Mikey and Nicky could well have become. But because May famously let the two great improvisatory actors have their head -- resulting in a shoot notorious for going way over budget and consuming reels upon reels of film -- the movie is a raucous, bittersweet tragicomedy about two old friends who have found themselves mobbed up beyond their control. Nicky, when we meet him, is a gibbering nervous wreck, so paranoid about being the target of a mob hit that he can't trust Mikey, even though he has called him to his aid. This time, the paranoia is justified: Mikey, it turns out, is in touch with the hit man, Kinney (Ned Beatty). But even the hit man is paranoid, fearful that he'll be the target next if he botches the hit on Nicky. And so goes this jittery one-of-a-kind movie, which is a kind of tribute to the movies Cassavetes directed himself. (Stories have it that he did direct some scenes.) I'm generally on the fence about Cassavetes's work, feeling that improvisation is a hit-or-miss way to make a serious movie: The misses seriously undermine the hits. Still, the energy generated by Falk and Cassavetes in Mikey and Nicky is potent and irresistible. The film is almost a two-hander, with the supporting cast, even Beatty, good as he is, serving as objects for the two leads to bounce off of. I can wish that May had exerted more control over her film -- she almost lost complete control of it to an uncomprehending studio -- but I also admit that I couldn't stop watching it.

The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)

Vera Miles, Henry Fonda, and Anthony Quayle in The Wrong Man

Manny Balestrero: Henry Fonda
Rose Balestrero: Vera Miles
Frank D. O'Connor: Anthony Quayle
Det. Lt. Bowers: Harold J. Stone
Det. Matthews: Charles Cooper
Tomasini: John Heldabrand
Mama Balestrero: Esther Minciotti

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Maxwell Anderson, Angus MacPhail
Cinematography: Robert Burks
Art direction: Paul Sylbert
Film editing: George Tomasini
Music: Bernard Herrmann

Alfred Hitchcock's docudrama The Wrong Man is not so anomalous in his career as his rather portentous backlit introduction suggests: It may be based on an incident about a real Manny Balestrero, but there are lots of wrongly accused men in his movies, and this time he simply landed on one who happened to be an actual person. And Hitchcock's gravitation to the theme of undeserved punishment and consequent mental anguish (in this case Rose Balestrero's) was something we could expect from him if we knew of the trauma caused by the notorious childhood incident in which his domineering father had the local constabulary lock young Alfred in a jail cell for five minutes. The lesson learned was less "be a good boy" than "fear the cops," who loom large in many of his films. But the real novelty of The Wrong Man is its tone: There's virtually no leavening of gloom in the film by the usual Hitchcockian humor. Only at the very ending, when we are assured that Manny and Rose and the kids moved to Florida and lived happily ever after, is there any attempt to mitigate the rather oppressive quality of the black-and-white, location-shot tale of the struggling Balestreros. And anyone who knows much about the difficulty of "curing" depression, which Rose suffers from, is likely to feel a little skeptical about that. That said, it's a very good film, making especially fine use of Henry Fonda -- his only appearance for Hitchcock -- whose naturally haunted look is a perfect fit for the victimized Balestrero. Vera Miles, whom Hitchcock was grooming as a replacement for Grace Kelly after her recent elevation to Princess of Monaco, gives a convincing performance as Rose, managing to suggest that her depression was in the cards even before Manny's arrest. The realism of the Balestreros' financial struggle is also well-handled, as is the climactic revelation of the "right" man, accomplished by a double exposure in which he walks into and fills the image of Balestrero in closeup. For me, the other only false note besides the oversimplified happy ending is the invocation of religion as a cure to Manny's dilemma: Mama Balestrero's urging him to pray for strength and his gaze at a rather kitsch picture of Jesus is too swiftly followed by his deliverance. It turns a serious emotional and spiritual struggle into a cliché as old as the movies. The Wrong Man has been favorably compared to Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956), a distinction I don't think it quite merits, but then what film does?