Thanks to AMC's Film Preservation series those of us who had missed the rare previous opportunities to view this out-of-print cult classic on television were recently afforded a cinematic pleasure of the highest order.
Everything about this film impressed me enormously - its startling New Wave-influenced editing and camera angles, its atmospheric noir lighting effects, its surrealistic mise en scene, its Kafkaesque paranoia and philosophical themes, and the incredibly convincing performance given by Warren Beatty in the title role. There isn't a dull shot or moment in the entire film, and some of its images and visual conceits (the automobile junk yard as existential metaphor, for instance) are breathtaking. That this artistically ambitious and ambiguous film ever got made and theatrically released in 1965 is a small miracle. Perhaps I'll think differently after the initial glow has worn off and I have a chance for a second viewing, but right now I'd rank Arthur Penn's Mickey One with such all time great thrillers as The Third Man and Touch of Evil.
Everything about this film impressed me enormously - its startling New Wave-influenced editing and camera angles, its atmospheric noir lighting effects, its surrealistic mise en scene, its Kafkaesque paranoia and philosophical themes, and the incredibly convincing performance given by Warren Beatty in the title role. There isn't a dull shot or moment in the entire film, and some of its images and visual conceits (the automobile junk yard as existential metaphor, for instance) are breathtaking. That this artistically ambitious and ambiguous film ever got made and theatrically released in 1965 is a small miracle. Perhaps I'll think differently after the initial glow has worn off and I have a chance for a second viewing, but right now I'd rank Arthur Penn's Mickey One with such all time great thrillers as The Third Man and Touch of Evil.