Mickey One (1965)

Review by All Movie Guide
Eschewing any semblance of conventional Hollywood narrative, Arthur Penn and writer Alan Surgal present a world skewed through Mickey's neuroses, putting viewers in the position of his unease and uncertainty. Steeped in New Wave devices like abrupt editing and jittery location shooting, Mickey One evades easy answers to the main character's psychological dilemma in favor of disjointed actions and evocative imagery, like a hapless Mickey (Warren Beatty) chased around a dark stage by a spotlight. Deemed bizarre and opaque in 1965, Mickey One disappeared swiftly after it was released. Despite this poor reception, however, Beatty hired Penn to direct what would be Beatty's debut as a producer: the landmark "Hollywood New Wave" film Bonnie and Clyde (1967). As the influence of European cinema on the new Hollywood generation became apparent in the work of such other directors as Mike Nichols and Martin Scorsese, and paranoia became a persistent theme of the early 1970s, Mickey One now seems an artistically challenging sign of things to come. Its art-movie atmosphere of malaise and anxiety, together with its romantic anti-hero and unconventional style, would all be familiar elements of American movies ten years later. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide