Mike Nichols, one of America’s most celebrated directors, whose long, protean résumé of critic- and crowd-pleasing work earned him adulation both on Broadway and in Hollywood, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 83.
An almost ritual prize-winner, he was one of only a dozen or so people to have won an Oscar, a Tony, an Emmy and a Grammy.
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/20/7254923/mike-nichols
To see this at play, consider perhaps the most famous scene Nichols ever directed, the seduction scene from The Graduate (only the second film Nichols ever made and the one he won his Oscar for). What makes this scene are the little moments when he checks in with Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) as he slowly realizes that Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) is, indeed, trying to seduce him. The closeups of Hoffman's face — occasionally obscured by a fish tank — are the emotional throughline Nichols keeps viewers hooked into.
Nichols was a great film director, yes, but he was a great stage director first
But this scene is also brilliant in the sense of stage direction, where the director often only has the positioning of actors onstage available as a way to suggest complex emotional ideas visually. Look, for instance, at that long buildup to Mrs. Robinson finally getting Benjamin to realize just what she's doing, where Nichols cuts between shots of the two that leave them positioned at the right and left of the screen, respectively, so that our minds subconsciously want the other to fill the frame, thus bringing them together. Or notice how careful Nichols is to keep Bancroft in positions of power and dominance over Hoffman, the better to suggest Mrs. Robinson's predatory nature in the moment.
There's lots to keep an eye out for in this scene — look for Mrs. Robinson's shadow on the door in Benjamin's bedroom, or the way Nichols uses her cigarette as a way to suggest her presence even when she's not there — but even if you're not specifically watching for Nichols's technique and are, instead, just watching one of the great screen comedies of all time to enjoy and appreciate it, his raw skill will trickle down. Nichols was a great film director, yes, but he was a great stage director first, and it was in how the latter informed the former that he found his greatest strength.
No comments:
Post a Comment