There are few filmmakers who have the same brand of theatrical warmth that Mike Nichols had. Nichols, a master director responsible for numerous award-winning classics, approached his films the same way he approached his plays: as sincere and unflinching character studies. He could work with light comedy, satire, horror, even outright politics, and still get under the skin of the material. He could dissect, examine, and intellectualize, all from within a warm, human skin. He was, in the truest sense, interested in people.
Nichols is often included with other members of his generation (including Sidney Lumet, Bob Rafelson, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese) as one of the vanguard of late ’60s and early ’70s cinema. Nichols’ 1967 effort The Graduate is often called one of the best of its decade, and the film’s frank depictions of sexuality, not to mention its wholly ambiguous views on romance, paved the way for the following dark wave of hard-hitting dramas that were to define the 1970s.
Related: R.I.P. Mike Nichols (1931 – 2014)
But Nichols (along with many of his contemporaries) was not confined to the 1970s “bleakness” movement, continuing to make interesting and successful – and often great – films in every decade. He was also much more adept at outright comedy than most of his contemporaries, infusing even his darker films with a casual form of interpersonal joy. Even though hearts may be breaking, Nichols was often able to wring the wry smirk out of the situation. Some of his films were outright tragic – social satire was his strongest suit – but the tragedy and cruelty on display were never included for the sake pity or cheap tears. Nichols was far too humane. He didn’t stiffarm us. He hugged us. Often in empathy.
Nichols directed 19 theatrical feature films in his career, one short film, one made-for-TV movie, and one miniseries. Each one is notable in its own way, but the following eleven selections are, I feel, a healthy and interesting cross-section of his body of work.
Slideshow: 11 Essential Mike Nichols Films
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his Trolling articles here on Crave, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
Mike Nichols: 11 Essential Films
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1966)
You will not film a film more laced with poison than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This is a film that drips with resentment. An older married couple (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton), deeply out of love with one another, invite a younger more optimistic couple (Sandy Dennis and George Segal) over for a few (hundred) drinks, and proceed to belittle, insult, seduce, and emotionally wreck one another for two hours. We eventually learn why this couple has become so bitter, but until then, Nichols turns their hatred into a subtle, knowing game. It's oddly exhilarating.
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The Graduate (1967)
One word: Plastics. The Graduate is perhaps one of the most misinterpreted films of all time, often called a romance. In fact, The Graduate is about how directionless the lead character is, and how easily his emotions seem to be manipulated by circumstance. This is a film about sexuality, yes, and Anne Bancroft's seduction scenes are indelible. But The Graduate is far more sophisticated than that. It's a film about emotional naïveté. The final bus ride, a quiet moment of complete non-triumph.
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Catch-22 (1970)
Joseph Heller's sarcastic war satire seems like a difficult thing to bring to the screen, but Nichols was equal to the challenge, converting the hilarious cynicism of the book into a star-studded slapstick farce. Alan Arkin was the disconnected lead in a film that included Richard Benjamin, Bob Newhart, Martin Balsam, Buck Henry, Tony Perkins, John Voight, Martin Sheen, Norman Fell, Art Garfunkel, and Orson Welles. The film plays like Kurt Vonnegut retelling It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It is long, confusing, hilarious, and most certainly underrated.
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Carnal Knowledge (1971)
Films about sex and sexuality were only just beginning to be made in America in the 1970s (Last Tango in Paris was but a year away), and Carnal Knowledge is a notable addition to a growing tide. The film is about two couples who live concurrent, but very different sex lives. While the sexual and relationship drama may seem like a typical soap opera on the page, Nichols cleverly made the film about the actual personalities involved; he was more interested in temperament than hanky-panky. Overall, the film is a comment on changing sexual mores of the time, and how more open sexuality doesn't immediately make for more open people.
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Silkwood (1983)
Karen Silkwood was essentially tortured to death when she threatened to blow the whistle. Practices at her plutonium processing plant were most certainly unsafe, and workers were constantly under threat. She was deliberately poisoned, berated, and (allegedly) murdered as a result. Nichols, however, doesn't like preaching. As usual, he made this real-life story of a real labor dispute more about the people involved. This film sparks outrage, yes, but it is not a polemic. It's about empathy.
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Postcards from the Edge (1990)
There were many, many films about addiction prior to Postcards from the Edge, but this was the first I can think of that a) deals with addiction with good humor, and b) reflects directly on the link between addiction and fame. Written by Carrie Fisher, based on her own book, Postcards looks frankly and knowingly at living with an alcoholic, being an alcoholic, and fleeing alcoholism without ever delving into the now cliché sweaty, seedy montages. And what a cast. Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, and Richard Dreyfuss.
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Regarding Henry (1991)
Mike Nichols gave us one of Harrison Ford's greatest performances with Regarding Henry, an outright melodrama, but a sweet one, and an optimistic. Ford plays a cutthroat businessman who gets shot in the head and loses all his memories back to infanthood. He has to learn to eat again, to walk again, to talk again, to read again. Through this second childhood, the people around him discover that he is actually a warm, caring, funny human being. His hard exterior was a shell he needed to shed.
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Wolf (1994)
And yes, Mike Nichols made a werewolf film. Jack Nicholson plays a high-powered businessman who is bitten by a wolf and slowly, over the course of the film, turns into one. While there is campy pleasure to be had in watching Nicholson howling at the moon in wolf makeup, there is a strangely adult and cosmopolitan tone to Wolf that stands in contrast to most werewolf movies. Not to mention Nichols' usual amount of good humor.
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The Birdcage (1996)
The Birdcage was a remake of a 1978 French farce about a gay couple, co-owners of a drag club, who have to pose as a heterosexual couple (by putting one of them in drag) to fool the homophobic parents of their son's fiancee. The original was clunky high farce. The remake is actually the superior film (not a phrase you'll hear a lot) as it managed to have all the slapstick and hilarity, but also a good deal of wit and compassion. In Nichols' film we see a struggling couple, and not a pair of caricatures. It also features one of Robin Williams' best performances, as he plays the grumpy straight man (so to speak) to Nathan Lane's noisy drama queen.
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Primary Colors (1998)
It's always dangerous to make a film that comments directly on the immediate politics of the day. Just ask Oliver Stone. Primary Colors is a film about the Bill Clinton election campaign, made while Bill Clinton was still in office. They did change the names (Clinton became an imaginary governor named Jack Stanton), but that didn't matter much. Adrian Lester plays the aide who become decreasingly enamored of politics as sex scandals and spin come to replace sincerity. It's preachy, but it's on the nose.
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Wit (2001)
Although this was made for HBO, Wit deserves to be mentioned amongst Nichols' best. Based on a play by Margaret Edson, Wit is about a professor (Emma Thompson) who is slowly dying of ovarian cancer. As her body deteriorates, her reflections on her own dignity begin to take precedence. She wants to be more than her disease, but the disease is not letting her. Best to face the situation with, well, wit. You will never hear a more heartbreaking and moving speech dedicated to a semicolon anywhere else.
