Nichols At MoMA

NYTIMES.COM: Mike Nichols, Master of Invisibility
By CHARLES McGRATH -- Published: April 10, 2009
Photo by Tony Cenicola

MIKE NICHOLS, the subject of a two-week retrospective starting Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art, is not an obvious choice for a place as artsy and highbrow as the MoMA film department. MoMA retrospectives tend to be awarded to brooding European auteurs — Milos Forman was the last one, and Bernardo Bertolucci is scheduled for next year — and not to commercial Hollywood directors who include on their résumé pop hits like “Working Girl,” “The Birdcage” and, just recently, “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

Except for a puzzling string of duds in the mid-’70s, almost all of Mr. Nichols’s movies have made money, and a few, like “The Graduate” and “Carnal Knowledge,” have been recognized as cultural landmarks. But because of their commercial shimmer, their way of eliciting exceptional performances by top-of-the-line stars, it’s sometimes hard to say what makes a Nichols movie a Nichols movie. They seem like vehicles for actors, not the director, whose stamp is in leaving almost no trace of himself.

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It's interesting... I would've thought that "The Graduate", "Who's Afraid Of Virgina Woolf?" and "Carnal Knowledge" alone would have sufficient highbrow cachet to merit a MoMA retrospective. But they still made too much money? Sheesh!