Mickey One (1965 Arthur Penn)

It's claimed that Bonnie and Clyde was the first American film to embrace the style of the French nouvelle vague, but I would make the case that it's this film, which virtually could have been made by either Truffaut or Godard, or both.  It's even got a French cinematographer, Ghislain Cloquet, who by this time had worked on Resnais' Night and Fog, Louis Malle's Le Feu Follet and Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques. One big difference is that it isn't as funny as say Tirez sur le Pianiste or Bande a Part. It's very dynamic and symbolic, though the plot is somewhat murky, to put it kindly. In a Kafkaesque fashion, entertainer Warren Beatty is on the run from the underworld for a crime he thinks he may have committed but may not have - it's something to do with a girl he was with, but we're not sure. Huge paranoia follows, affecting the (new) girl he's moved in with in Chicago, Alexandra Stewart (Black Moon, La Nuit Américaine).

Features a quite weird performance from Hurd Hatfield. With Franchot Tone and Kamatari Fujiwara as the silent abstract artist. Eddie Sauter provides the music, with improvisations by Stan Getz

Interesting camera angles, close ups, tricks and more of that experimental editing by Aram Avakian, marked by particularly long dissolves. Q hated it. The New York Times agreed, calling it a 'difficult and disappointing' picture, Time Out 'infuriating, intriguing and self-conscious', Time 'finally goes to pieces amidst the crash of its own symbols'. Beatty found the jokes the stand-up told weren't funny (that is a problem) and didn't understand what Penn was going for. The writer, if such a term is applicable, was Alan Surgal, who wasn't encouraged to write anything else. It was (of course) a flop. So yes, let's summarise and call it an interesting misfire.

The significance of this shot, which is repeated later, is somewhat elusive. The girl he's been with has now gone.

Was Penn experimenting with drugs? His next film, The Chase, was a more traditional film, but it was his first time working in Hollywood and he apparently had big problems with producer Sam Spiegel and the film was compromised as a result.