Elaine May re-teamed with her Luv (1967) co-star Peter Falk for her definitive statement on masculine frailty Mikey & Nicky (1976). May spent a long time in pre-production on the film writing and re-writing the script to incorporate the input of stars Peter Falk (Mikey) and John Cassavetes (Nicky) in the form of improvisations. The processes of pre-production and production were so similar to that of John Cassavetes’ own filmmaking methodology that, when the film first came out, critics failed to see how much Elaine May actually made it onto the screen. Similarly, May’s perfectionism and the sexism of studio executives combined to sabotage any positive reception for Mikey & Nicky with the public.
Ostensibly Mikey & Nicky is a gangster film about one crook (Mikey) setting up his childhood pal (Nicky) for a hit by a mob enforcer (Ned Beatty). Elaine May, a comic genius, cannot help but lampoon the gangster archetype of the hitman by turning Ned Beatty’s character into a hapless goof who is unable to find his way through the narrow streets of Philadelphia. But these comedic gestures exist only as moments of levity. The real work May sets out to do is to disassemble the male psyche via a series of dialogues and encounters that reveal the inherent moral corruption of a patriarchal culture.
The character Nicky is not dissimilar to that of the Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin) character in The Heartbreak Kid (1972). Both men are neurotic narcissists whose masculinity is affirmed by external perceptions and defined by misogynistic expectations. But where Cantrow is a revolting caricature Nicky is a flesh and blood human being. Nicky, and even more so Mikey, are as much victims of patriarchal culture as they are instruments of victimization on that culture’s behalf.
The scene of seduction where the two buddies take turns and Mikey becomes violently frustrated betrays the systemic toxicity of this patriarchal culture. Virility and desirability are paramount just as affection for one’s fellow male can only be expressed in terms of how the two compare as the same woman’s lover. For the entirety of the film the two men long to express their mutual love but are stymied by their own hang-ups at every turn until their relationship inverts into a combustable series of altercations.
In this economy of emotional withholding Nicky’s death and Mikey’s betrayal becomes far more inevitable than any gangster movie trope. And this is the genius of Elaine May’s film. She, single handedly, takes back the masculine ritualizations of the gangster movie and gives it back to men with all the codified gesturing removed. May defangs the genre and finds, at its core, a human frailty desperate for affirmation and acceptance.
In the decades since Mikey & Nicky first bombed the film has undergone a phenomenal reappraisal. Critics like Jonathan Rosenbaum along with a home video release from Home Vision Entertainment enabled new generations of cinephiles to discover this modern masterpiece. Now Mikey & Nicky is so thoroughly canonized in cinema discourse that even the Criterion Collection has put the film out, solidifying its status as a mainstream cinematic text.
