Mike Nichols films: his top 5 hits – and an expensive flop
Five of the late Hollywood director Mike Nichols' greatest films including The Graduate and Catch-22
Mike Nichols, the critically acclaimed director of films including The Graduate and Catch-22, has died at the age of 83.
Born in Germany, Nichols was one of only a handful of stars to win all four major US entertainment awards – an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony, the BBC reports.
"No one was more passionate about his craft than Mike," said ABC News president James Goldston, who added that Nichols had been "a true visionary".
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Below are five of his greatest films (and his most expensive flop).
The Graduate (1967)
Many regard The Graduate as one of the greatest films ever made. The coming-of-age tale launched the career of Dustin Hoffman, a method actor who arrived at acting relatively late but went on to become a huge Hollywood star. The film's bittersweet ending has been discussed and analysed by cinema fans and critics for decades.
Catch-22 (1970)
Joseph Heller's scathing war satire was always going to be a difficult book to turn into a movie – not least because so much of the narrative takes place in the central character Yossarian's head – but most critics agreed that Mike Nichols did it justice. In his review for the New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote "It's the special achievement of Heller's novel, as well as of Mike Nichols's screen version, that Yossarian's panic emerges as something so important, so reasonable, so moving, and so funny.
Silkwood (1983)
Nichols received an Oscar nomination for best director for Silkwood (in total he received four throughout his career). Meryl Streep starred in the film, which was based on a true story. Roger Ebert praised her performance as being "so convincing that we become witnesses instead of moviegoers".
Working Girl (1988)
Throughout his career, Nichols became known for getting great performances out of his actors and actresses. Working Girl is often regarded as a career high for Melanie Griffith, whose "scrappy, sexy, unpredictable" performance as a woman who rises from rise from Staten Island secretary to Wall Street wolf helped to propel the popular picture.
Angels in America (2003)
As well as directing films, Nichols also had a career as a theatre director, so he was a "natural pick" for an HBO miniseries version Tony Kushner's Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play, The Wall Street Journal says. The production won Nichols his second Emmy for directing a television movie or miniseries.
The Day of the Dolphin (1973)
Not everything Nichols touched turned to gold. In 1973, The Day of the Dolphin was billed as "the most amazing outdoor adventure ever made" – and graced with the tagline: "Unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States". The costly ecological conspiracy thriller's poster trumpeted the fact that it had been two years in the making – a fact most savvy moviegoers know was more likely to be a sign of impending disaster rather than success. Roger Ebert concluded that the film "trips on its own stylishness and tries so hard not to be a conventional science-fiction thriller that it fails, alas, to be anything".
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
5 deliciously funny cartoons about turkeys
Cartoons Artists take on pardons, executions, and more
By The Week US Published
-
Crossword: November 23, 2024
The Week's daily crossword puzzle
By The Week Staff Published
-
Sudoku hard: November 23, 2024
The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
By The Week Staff Published
-
Sport on TV guide: Christmas 2022 and New Year listings
Speed Read Enjoy a feast of sporting action with football, darts, rugby union, racing, NFL and NBA
By Mike Starling Published
-
House of the Dragon: what to expect from the Game of Thrones prequel
Speed Read Ten-part series, set 200 years before GoT, will show the incestuous decline of Targaryen
By Chas Newkey-Burden Published
-
One in 20 young Americans identify as trans or non-binary
Speed Read New research suggests that 44% of US adults know someone who is transgender
By The Week Staff Published
-
The Turner Prize 2022: a ‘vintage’ shortlist?
Speed Read All four artists look towards ‘growth, revival and reinvention’ in their work
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
What’s on TV this Christmas? The best holiday television
Speed Read From films and documentaries to musicals for all the family
By The Week Staff Published
-
Coco vision: up close to Chanel opticals
Speed Read Parisian luxury house adds opticals to digital offering
By The Week Staff Published
-
Abba returns: how the Swedish supergroup and their ‘Abba-tars’ are taking a chance on a reunion
Speed Read From next May, digital avatars of the foursome will be performing concerts in east London
By The Week Staff Published
-
‘Turning down her smut setting’: how Nigella Lawson is cleaning up her recipes
Speed Read Last week, the TV cook announced she was axing the word ‘slut’ from her recipe for Slut Red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly
By The Week Staff Published