- Carnal Knowledge
Earlier this week, the director Mike Nichols passed away at the age of 83. Nichols, who was a premed at the University of Chicago during the 1950s, was an audience favorite and received critical acclaim but had some vocal detractors. In his famous tome The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929—1968, Andrew Sarris placed the director in the “Less Than Meets the Eye” category, right next to Stanley Kubrick and Norman Jewison. David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) once wrote that Nichols’s films inspire little more than the audience’s desire to leave the theater. Sarris and Thomson were no strangers to controversial critical stances, but I’m receptive to the idea that Nichols isn’t a great filmmaker. Since his background was primarily in theater, occasionally his films had a stagnant, staged air. Like his post-Code peers Martin Scorsese and Arthur Penn, Nichols was enamored with the European standard of auteurism—but the latter’s films rarely exhibited the understanding and application of auteurism that exists in the films of the former.
- Working Girl (1988) Along with Postcards from the Edge Nichols proved himself one of the few mainstream directors interested in exploring female characters faced with difficult decisions and complex goals. This is mostly a work of entertainment—Nichols’s films are usually funny, this one especially—but there’s a self-referential quality as well. The climax resembles The Graduate‘s famous wedding scene.
