B&W, 1965, 92 mins. 40 secs.
Directed by Arthur Penn
Starring Warren Beatty, Alexandra Stewart, Hurd Hatfield, Franchot Tone, Teddy Hart, Jeff Corey, Kamatari Fujiwara
Indicator (Blu-ray & DVD) (UK R0 HD/PAL), Sony (DVD) (US R1 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)
proof 
that studio films in the '60s were weirder and braver than any other decade, look no further than Mickey One, the film director Arthur Penn made with star Warren Beatty before they became a worldwide sensation with Bonnie and Clyde two years later. Fresh off of being canned from United Artists' The Train, Penn found a home at Columbia for this surreal, audacious sort-of-crime film that became a major box office disappointment but also earned a fervent cult following -- with good reason. 
and filled with elliptical dialogue, Mickey One is a far cry from the splashy Hollywood productions and prestigious British crossover hits that were pulling in audiences just before the counterculture started to explode. It's a loose, strange, jazzy film, percolating with a terrific soundtrack by Eddie Sauter (who later scored many Night Gallery episodes) and a great eye for bit players and oddball character actors. The biggest stumbling block here is actually Beatty, who feels a little too young and awkward in some of his line deliveries, but he's always watchable and certainly doesn't embarrass himself. Try it on a double bill with John Frankenheimer's Seconds for a look at how radically studio films could have transformed had paranoid, experimental visions like this actually found an audience at the time. 
audio also sounds superb and does justice to that jazzy score, with optional English SDH subtitles provided. The film can also be played with a 1981 Guardian interview with Penn and moderator Richard combs at the National Film Theatre, which covers the range of his career to that point with a detailed discussion of his TV beginnings and some of his most 
pivotal films (including Bonnie and Clyde, of course). Penn still seems a bit chafed at the fate of this film in America and seems a bit annoyed now at how "derivative" it is of European art films, but fortunately that aspect has actually dated quite well. A new interview with Stewart (18m35s) covers her early career and her adoration of Penn, including the noted influence of French New Wave films on this production (thus the choice of Bresson cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet), while a second with Penn's son Matthew (19m31s) also touches on the French influence and the film's unique significance in his father's work early in his career. The theatrical trailer is featured along with a Trailers from Hell version featuring an appreciation by Joe Dante (who was very taken with it at the age of 19), while a gallery of 27 production stills and soundtrack and poster art is also included. The 3,000-unit limited edition also contains another of the label's beautifully presented booklets containing a new essay by NIck Pinkerton, a sampling of vintage critical reviews, and press pieces on the production. 
