Ray Pride

"I came as soon as I got your towel"--why is that line one of the most weirdly perfect in American movies? It's a seeming non sequitur amid the unceasing delights of the desperate, ruthless "Mikey & Nicky," (Home Vision) Elaine May's nicotine-stained 1977 masterpiece. The DVD includes interviews with cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (whose grainy images and loose yet precise framing are breathtaking in their simplicity and economy) and producer Michael Hausman. The ever-shy May is MIA. The title floors me, another exemplar of perfection. How better to sum up a John Cassavetes-style portrait of two buddies from childhood--little-boy monikered Mikey (Peter Falk) and Nicky (Cassavetes)--whose loyalties as gangsters and pals are stretched to the limits on one dark, gritty night. Critics have noted the resemblance of this written-to-a-T screenplay to the equally scripted, seemingly improvisational work of Cassavetes, but Reader reviewer Jonathan Rosenbaum's liner notes point out that she was likely drawing on her own family history as early as 1954 at the advent of the Chicago glory days of her collaboration on classic "people" routines with Mike Nichols. Nicky's crossed the mob, he's on the run, and Mikey's his only escape, unless... Jumpy and shivering in a shitty SRO room, Nicky snickers as he wraps a J&B bottle in a bath towel and flings it onto the street at the head of his friend, awaiting word on the street below. Finally let into the room by feral, coiled Mikey: "I came as soon as I got your towel." The two friends embrace, vulnerable, like lovers. Nothing makes sense. Everything is logical. Guys are in gangs `til the day they die. It's cruel, exquisite, invaluable, unmissable, perfect. Another important 1970s entry directed by a female director is also released this week, Joan Micklin Silver's ambitious, loving black-and-white 1974 gem, "Hester Street" (Home Vision), shot for $375,000, yet ably recreating New York's Lower East Side of the 1890s. Carol Kane is the center of this bittersweet romance, remarkable as a young, Yiddish-speaking emigrant who must make her way in a new world. Silver and her husband and producer Raphael Silver offer informative commentary, and excerpts from "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews," a PBS documentary, underlining how capable their re-creation of a lost era was.

(2004-12-14)

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