The 70s were perhaps the first decade where Nichols could start getting projects made, rather than simply joining projects that he was interested in, or ones where the right set of circumstances was created. All in all this is to introduce that the four films Nichols made in the 70’s are four of his more niche and experimental features, exploring themes that he had already explored and would explore again, all the while through a far less commercial lens, with this decade featuring three of Nichols biggest commercial failures. But I’d still put these four films up and against so many others from other directors, especially when comparing the ‘failures’ of great directors.
Catch-22 (1970)
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In an unintended double bill I ended up re-watching Catch 22 back to back with watching for the first time Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, two dark comedies from immediate classic novels that many have commented on repeatedly as largely un-adaptable. Now both have their merits, however whereas Bonfire is of course one of the great noted filmic disasters of the 90’s, Catch 22 I feel to be an underrated nowadays cult gem. For this does most of the things that Bonfire attempted; heightening the comedy, heightening the satire, filling the film with big names, getting a brilliant writer in to pen the adaptation and to have an incredible director at the helm – however this leads to the Nichols film I am always surprised by how much I enjoy upon every re-watch, whereas the next film in this article and Nichol’s oeuvre is a case where surely I should enjoy more than I do, this is one where despite a few stretches where I think the film stretches itself a little thin, this is an exceptionally tight, brilliantly funny and repeatedly inventive comedy of epic proportions about the insanity of war. For if Catch 22 has one purpose as a film, and one purpose in its original source novel by Joseph Heller (who said he liked the film), it is to convey through absurdity and hilarity the absolute baffling insanity of war. Catch 22 goes out to achieve this in a few chief ways; through of course our avatar character of Captain Yossarian, played with a grit and humanity by Alan Arkin that I don’t think many actors would choose as their first approach to the role, aswell as the opposite of Arkin, the ensemble that surround him who grow from the intensely heightened to the incredibly subdued, all supplied with intensely heightened dialogue. Overall it is this combination of the ensemble of performances paired with Buck Henry’s smart, funny and perfect balance of message driven and character driven screenplay that makes the film the success it is.
Nichols here is working again with Buck Henry, with another incredibly tight screenplay, yet is of course working on a far larger canvas. This film is of course about characters, but gone are the extended sequences of two or three characters in hotel rooms or lounges that The Graduate was made up of. Here those similar witty conversations take place shouted over the sounds of engines and with planes setting off, landing and even crashing in the background of shots. Nichols here shows with great quality here his ability to land (I’m sorry) a film of this epic scale. Something that he didn’t really achieve on this scale again. Henry’s dialogue repeatedly focuses on repetetition upon repetitions until it devolves in on itself in most cases, or comes to a surprising and blunt conclusion, or for that matter a final gag. But it’s the ensemble that makes this film work, again, I can only address how the biggest achievement of all these films is that everybody was on the same page. To have such an incredible array of actors all manage to convey and deliver scene after scene, exchange after exchange, the same sometimes dead-pan, sometimes bombastic comedic tone, whilst also fuelling the drama of the piece, leads to not just one of the great erosive and acidic satires of the time, but at times one of Nichols’ best dramas. It’s certainly one hell of a way to start a decade, which will mark a move to more experimentation, following his two immense success of the 60’s, with both The Graduate and Virginia Woolf?
Carnal Knowledge (1971)
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Now I say I should enjoy this movie more, and by the way I enjoy it an awful lot, because amongst friends who know of my movie taste it has become almost infamous to what extent I love a movie where sex and relationships are dissected and famous actors shout at each other for two hours. Now that is of course a gross over-simplification of many of the great drama movies of all time, at the bare level, I guess it is true, and it is true of me too – I do love a lot of these movies, so why do I not absolutely adore the film of this nature directed by one of my favourite directors and starring my literal favourite actor of all time? Well it’s simply because for me Carnal Knowledge has always felt a little under-cooked. I’m sure there is a camp of those who dislike the film due to the fact that what was incredibly provocative at the time, might seem blasé, sexist and problematic, or even exploitive, on that front I’d disagree. For me there is work still in this film that is shocking, and provocative and for those who find the film sexist and problematic, we enter the age old critical theory dilemma of whether or not a film featuring sexist and deplorable characters and sexist and deplorable scenes and actions is sexist and deplorable itself? It’s a case by case basis, but for me the rest of the work of Nichols can more than back up that these are simply the characters he is focussing upon in this film, and it is indeed an interesting study of two men through multiple decades as they encounter various women and discuss with one another their intensely repulsive opinions and views on women. The screenplay is by Jules Feiffer and came from discussions with Nichols for a play project, Nichols saw it more so as a film and so Carnal Knowledge the film was born. Feiffer’s dialogue is indeed provocative, at times sickeningly funny, at times woundingly truthful and at times even a little empty.
However for me the ultimate issue when I call this film under-baked is just in the structuring of the piece. The film consists of an excellent opening 30 minutes consisting of our two friends, played by Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel (working again with Nichols after his acting debut in Catch 22), as they end up in a deceitful love triangle with Candice Bergen. Before skipping many years and following Nicholson and his relationship with Ann Margaret for another 45 minutes. That leaves only ten minutes there for another time jump and three brief scenes; Nicholson showing Garfunkel’s new girlfriend (a line-less Carol Kane) an inexplicable photo slideshow of his previous lovers, one more conversation between Nicholson and Garfunkel discussing women, before an almost epilogue-esque conclusion featuring Rita Moreno in a scene depicting the sexual lows Nicholson now lives through. All in all it’s just not a structure with any rhyme, reason, or flow and hence leaves a viewer wondering what the purpose of it all was. Two acts and an epilogue may have worked for a play, but it does just all feel... as I said... under baked. Nichols camera work here is repeatedly experimental, choosing to remain in static one-shots of figures on the outside of the action some might see, this places an unbroken focus on specific character and moments that lead to a sense of unease and unbalance that describes the film best. Bergen, Margaret, Garfunkel and Nicholson do all give terrific turns however, and that’s the real reason to watch the film, is these four delivering great dialogue from Feiffer directed by one of the greats. All in all Carnal Knowledge can’t help but feel like a dry run for Closer, with its similar four people entanglements over multiple years, propelled that time however by a great through line and a fierce consistency with Patrick Marber’s writing as compared to Feiffer’s. However that’s not especially a favourite in my Nichol’s rankings either.
The Day of the Dolphin (1973)
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Now this was almost certainly the most contentious and troubled film-making experience of Nichols career, as a matter of fact Nichols in his later life would simply refer to this critical and commercial dud as “the fish movie”. Now is the sort of film crying out for a full reappraisal and reclamation project not unlike Noah Baumbach’s often commented opinion that his favourite Brian De Palma film is the one most neglected and hated Get to Know Your Rabbit. No, it is certainly not that. However in like so many of these cases, it is also not the great abomination that it is referred to as in the Nichols cannon. Now above all else it’s intriguing and there are many very good elements on display, overall the films biggest issue is a pacing problem around the middle half hour, but once we are past that and the films most interesting concepts and ideas are at the forefront of the piece, we are off and away for a rather fun pulpy and at times indeed ‘so bad it’s good’ oddity in this turning point period in Nichols career. The film follows George C. Scott, whom Nichols had worked very well with on stage previously as a marine biologist whose main area of study on his remote island where he works with his beautiful younger wife Maggie (played by Scott’s own demands by his own beautiful new younger wife Trish Van Devere) is to teach dolphins how to communicate with humans. Now this film is interesting in that regard on a base level however really gets moving when it is revealed that the main action of the film will be the matter that a secret government agency are planning to kidnap these trained dolphins (whom Scott has successfully led to talk, humorously voiced in a squeaky tone by the films screenwriter Buck Henry, adapting the original French novel by Robert Merle Un Animal Doue De Raison) to stage an undercover assassination of the president. Yes, that is indeed the plot of this film. It does unfortunately fall between the lines of it actually being good and actually being humorously bad though and that is on modern reflection its biggest issue. Nichols and Henry have done a solid job at bringing this madcap tale to screen and Nichols in this film has some of his greatest thriller moments of his career and even a few horror style sequences that he pulls off, even if he won’t return to that filmic field again. The performances too are all serviceable or very good, Devere, Paul Sorvino and many others in the ensemble are all very solid in delivering this very far-fetched work in a believable manner. Scott is a lot of fun when he is allowed to go – shall we call it – ‘Full Scott’. Especially during what is supposed to be the tender finale of the film, Scott and Devere have to talk to a squeaky Dolphin in a scene where they must Harry and the Henderson’s style pretend to hate the dolphins so that they leave to the expanse of the ocean to be safe. Scott’s grizzled delivery of such Dolphin speak lines is hilarious and if the film was consistently as good as its good moments or consistently hilarious as Scott angrily talking to a Buck Henry voiced Dolphin then we may have been on to something, but it is neither of those things and so there we go.
The Fortune (1975)
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The Coen Brothers have often commented that one of their
favourite films of all time is the Mike Nichols directed, Carole Eastman
penned, screwball comedy The Fortune. A
film that was such a critical and commercial bomb at the time it led it to
Nichols taking an extended period of around 8 years before he would make his
next film, Silkwood. The Coen’s are
all over this movie and thus as a huge fan of them, Nichols and the films three
stars, Stockard Channing (in her film debut, replacing Bette Midler, in a role
originally considered for Carrie Fisher, or even Cher), Warren Beatty (starring
as part of a two movie deal to get Shampoo
made) and Nicholson once more – I too love The Fortune. I however will perhaps be the first to admit that even
as a fan, the film does at times drag in its first half, however this is not
unlike most farces, where a slightly less funny first act of set-ups all comes
to benefit a hilarious and beautifully structured second act filled with every
pay-off one can fit into what’s left of the running time. Farces on film have
never really faired well and although this film was written for the screen
rather than the stage, there are indeed stage elements to my eye all over,
specifically multiple set-ups featuring one single take. In many ways there is
a lot more static framing here than in any of Nichols actual play adaptations,
such as Virginia Woolf and Closer. Both of those films are a lot
more kinetic than this feature, however if a medium required such quality
framing of a shot and actors and overlapping dialogue than it would indeed be
the farcical comedy that is found within The
Fortune. At the heart of the film is Stockard Channing, the heiress to a
feminine hygiene family fortune, as she is manipulated, married and plotted to
be murdered by the fumbling and bumbling likes of Nicholson and Beatty. The
frank sexual nature of the script positions the film in a place both very
modern and very period accurate as the three embark on a road trip during the
1920’s. The love triangle entangles in on itself multiple times and the raucous
goings on of the three lead to some top notch Nicholson and some delightfully
rigorous Beatty, aswell as, as aforementioned, some lovingly naive (yet
frequently in control) Channing. The film would make for a wonderful double
bill with Frank Oz’s comedic masterpiece Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels, with the arc of both films coming similarly to a same
end with our seemingly naive woman holding every card in the deck. The
reversals of class, stupidity and sexuality keep this film fuelled and make it
one hell of a great Nichols farce, reminding one that Nichols is perhaps first
and foremost one of the great directors of comedy both on film and on stage of
his time and beyond.
The regrettable contemporary critical and commercial failures of these four films has been re-evaluated in numerous cases, primarily in the cases of Carnal Knowledge and Catch 22. With The Fortune and The Day of the Dolphin even now making the turn themselves. Either way the incredible talent of Nichols would never subdue and along came the 80s with multiple further successes, this time both of the critical and commercial kind.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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