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Helaine .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 — Bernardo Bertolucci and Milos Forman were the last two — 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.”
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Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
The director Mike Nichols is the focus of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
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Video Mike Nichols Trailers Charlie Wilson's War (2007) Closer (2004) Primary Colors (1998) The Birdcage (1996) Postcards From the Edge (1990) Working Girl (1988) Filmography: Mike Nichols MoMA Schedule: Mike Nichols
From top: Courtesy MoMA Film Stills Archive, Universal Pictures/Photofest via MoMA, MoMA Film Stills Archive, Photofest via MoMA
A Mike Nichols sampler, from top: Candice Bergen and Jack Nicholson in “Carnal Knowledge” (1971), Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Charlie Wilson’s War” (2007), Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” (1967) and Al Pacino and Meryl Streep in “Angels in America” (2003).
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.
“If you want to be a legend, God help you, it’s so easy,” Mr. Nichols said the other day over coffee in his Times Square office. “You just do one thing. You can be the master of suspense, say. But if you want to be as invisible as is practical, then it’s fun to do a
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