Mickey One
1965 film by Arthur Penn
title: "Mickey One" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1965-films", "american-crime-drama-films", "american-black-and-white-films", "films-directed-by-arthur-penn", "films-set-in-chicago", "films-shot-in-chicago", "1965-crime-drama-films", "american-neo-noir-films", "1960s-english-language-films", "1965-american-films", "english-language-crime-drama-films"] description: "1965 film by Arthur Penn" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_One" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary 1965 film by Arthur Penn ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox film"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Mickey One |
| image | Mickey_one_moviep.jpg |
| caption | original film poster |
| producer | Arthur Penn |
| director | Arthur Penn |
| writer | Alan Surgal |
| starring | Warren Beatty |
| Alexandra Stewart | |
| Hurd Hatfield | |
| music | Eddie Sauter |
| Stan Getz (improvs) | |
| cinematography | Ghislain Cloquet |
| editing | Aram Avakian |
| distributor | Columbia Pictures |
| released | |
| runtime | 93 minutes |
| language | English |
| country | United States |
| :: |
| name = Mickey One | image = Mickey_one_moviep.jpg | caption = original film poster | producer = Arthur Penn | director = Arthur Penn | writer = Alan Surgal | starring = Warren Beatty Alexandra Stewart Hurd Hatfield | music = Eddie Sauter Stan Getz (improvs) | cinematography = Ghislain Cloquet | editing = Aram Avakian | distributor = Columbia Pictures | released = | runtime = 93 minutes | language = English | country = United States Mickey One is a 1965 American neo noir crime film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty, Alexandra Stewart and Hurd Hatfield. It was written by Alan Surgal.
Like several of Penn's later films, it draws upon the style and legacy of the French New Wave to construct an allegory of capitalism, and has also been read in reference to McCarthyism.
Plot
After incurring the wrath of the Mafia, a stand-up comic flees Detroit for Chicago. He steals a Social Security card from a homeless man named Miklos Wunejeva. He uses the card to get a job, under the name Mickey One, hauling garbage for a seedy diner.
He saves up enough money from his low wages to rent a room at a local flop house and buy himself some new clothes. Eventually he returns to the stage as a stand-up comic. However, he is wary of becoming successful and afraid that he will attract too much attention. When he gets a booking at the upscale club Xanadu, he finds that his first rehearsal has become a special "audition" for an unseen man with a frightening, gruff voice. Paranoid that the mob has found him, Mickey runs away. He decides to find out who "owns" him and square himself with the mob. However, he doesn't know what he did to anger them or what his debt is. Searching for a mobster who will talk to him, he gets beaten up by several nightclub doormen. Mickey finally concludes that it's impossible to get away and be safe, so he pulls himself together and does his act anyway.
In traveling about the city, Mickey continually sees a mute mime-like character known only as The Artist. The Artist eventually unleashes his Rube Goldberg-like creation, a deliberately self-destructive machine called "Yes," an homage to the sculptor Jean Tinguely.
Cast
::data[format=table title=""]
| Actor | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Warren Beatty | Mickey One | |
| Alexandra Stewart | Jenny Drayton | |
| Hurd Hatfield | Ed Castle | |
| Franchot Tone | Rudy Lopp | |
| Teddy Hart | George Berson | |
| Jeff Corey | Larry Fryer | |
| Kamatari Fujiwara | the artist | |
| Donna Michelle | the girl | |
| Ralph Foody | Police Captain | |
| Norman Gottschalk | the rvangelist | |
| Richard Lucas | employment agent | |
| Jack Goodman | cafe manager | |
| Jeri Jensen | Helen | |
| Charlene Lee | the singer | |
| Aram Avakian | Mickey's invisible tormentor in the theater | uncredited |
| Taalkeus Blank | the homeless man whose identity Mickey assumes | uncredited |
| :: |
Production
Beatty and Penn did not get along while making this film. Beatty later recalled, "We had a lot of trouble on that film, because I didn't know what the hell Arthur was trying to do and I tried to find out ... I'm not sure that he knew himself" and added, "To me, the stand-up gags that the guy had to do in Mickey One were not funny and that was always my complaint with Arthur." Producer Harrison Starr recalled, "Warren and Arthur had go-arounds ... the role was basically a role of an eccentric, a person whose inner demons were reflected in the world he inhabited ... and I think that was difficult for Warren to play." Nevertheless, Beatty and Penn teamed again for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.
Soundtrack
: The soundtrack was arranged by Eddie Sauter and performed by tenor saxophonist Stan Getz.
The film's soundtrack, reverberating with hints of everything from Béla Bartók to bossa nova, reteamed Stan Getz with arranger Eddie Sauter, following their album Focus (1961).
Release and reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The symbolic significance of the film is instantly recognisable and well complemented by an explosive visual style. ...The trouble with Mickey One is that this is the only level on which it works. As a straightforward account of something that happened to a night club entertainer it makes very little sense; the surface plot is obscure as well as unbelievable, so that one is often left wondering what is really meant to be going on. ... Penn has a sensitive touch with dialogue scenes, notably the one in which Mickey and Jenny first meet. Here he draws a remarkably controlled and interesting performance from Warren Beatty, who is on the whole well cast as Mickey. Hurd Hatfield, as the impresario Castle whose toughness borders on hysteria, gives a performance full of the sort of subtle tensions that could, one feels, have illuminated more of the film."
Bosley Crowther in The New York Times praised the visual style but claimed that the film was "pretentious and monotonous."
Time called the film, "never boring but never very precise, and finally goes to pieces amidst the crash of its own symbols."
In 1979, James Monaco wrote that Mickey One "except for Woody Allen's Interiors, is the most pretentious film by a major American filmmaker in the last thirty years".
Accolades
Penn received a nomination for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Rediscovery
The rediscovery of the film began in 1995 with a booking at San Francisco's Castro Theater and a reevaluation by Peter Stack:
References
References
- "Mickey One".
- Amiri, Farnoush. (2017-01-21). "Alan Surgal, Writer of 'Mickey One,' Dies at 100". [[The Hollywood Reporter]].
- Kitchen, Will (2023) ''Film, Negation and Freedom: Capitalism and Romantic Critique''. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 107-140
- [https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F01E5D91130E23ABC4153DFBF66838E679EDE Crowther, Bosley. "Heels Old and New," ''The New York Times'', September 9, 1965.]
- (December 2025). "Mickey One".
- {{AllMusic
- [https://www.variety.com/review/VE1117793100.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0 ''Variety'', January 1, 1965.]
- (1 January 1966). "Mickey One".
- [https://www.nytimes.com/1965/09/28/archives/screen-mickey-one.html SCREEN: "MICKEY ONE" - The New York Times]
- [http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842220,00.html Cinema: The Big Gamble - TIME]
- (1979). "American Film Now".
- [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1995/01/27/DD11622.DTL Stack, Peter. "Dark Side of Hollywood," ''San Francisco Chronicle'', January 27, 1995.]
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