Forty years ago this weekend, Michael Mann released his first feature, “Thief”, which in retrospect contained several signatures of the director’s work, such as stories that revolve around lone wolves, told with intricate cuts, ingenious visuals and musical choices unexpected. We asked 11 writers to examine a career filled with memorable films and choose the scenes that still remain in them.
‘Heat’: Work is the Thing
In most of Michael Mann’s films, much of the action is conversation: specifically men talking, sometimes with women, but mostly with other men, about their jobs. The frequency of such conversations is what makes “Heat” (1995) the quintessence of Michael Mann’s film. The scene of the just-famous snack bar is, in this context, Michael Mann-est six minutes in the entire cinema.
In the course of an epic and hectic game of cat and mouse, a tired and exhausted Los Angeles police officer, Vincent Hanna, sits down for coffee with Neil McCauley, the crime mastermind whose plans he is trying to thwart. They are deadly rivals, but also just two guys struggling with the existential demands of professionalism. They talk about marriage, about work, and while they don’t exactly become friends, there is no real hostility between them. Each recognizes that the other is good at what he does, perhaps even the best. Of course they are: they are Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, sharing the screen for the first time. TO SCOTT
‘Collateral’: a face in the crowd
Mann has always been adept at persuading the threat of family unrest from public spaces, and the opening scene of this elegant genre thriller (2004) is a good example. As Tom Cruise’s character, a relentless killer, slowly emerges from the crowd at a Los Angeles airport and approaches the camera, his decisive step is deliberately out of step with the sea of travelers around him. With silvery, expressionless hair behind his sunglasses, he slides through the terminal, his light gray suit neatly cut and his dazzling white shirt revealing a slight sheen. The shark metaphor is not subtle, but perfect: in just 30 seconds of time on the screen, and before I hear him say a word, we know that this man is a predator. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
‘The Insider’: modulating Pacino
Mann is such a distinguished stylist, with such a recognizable visual and auditory aesthetic, that it is easy to ignore how skillfully he directs his actors. For proof, just look at Pacino’s big scene in “The Insider”. In the late 1990s, after his Oscar victory for his resounding performance in “Perfume de Mulher”, the public expected Pacino to work at high volume and high intensity. Instead, Mann keeps the actor on low heat – until this scene, when Pacino’s “60 Minutes” producer, working on a Big Tobacco investigation, finally got tired. Mann and Pacino build the explosion we hope for beautifully, the director modulating the climb as a symphonic conductor, while the actor slowly but surely unloads on his bosses, only to have his closest collaborator take his breath away from his sails. JASON BAILEY
‘Thief’: a vulnerable lap
In “Thief” (1981), James Caan is Frank, a safe-deposition artisan in Chicago. He knows that living outside the law means living on borrowed time. After arriving late for a date with Jesse (Tuesday Weld), he is angry with her and himself, and takes them to a restaurant. The shouting subsides, but the emotional register becomes more surprising. Mann chooses simple pictures of two people in a booth, all of whom are strangers to each other, suddenly relating with complete frankness and vulnerability. “My life is very ordinary,” Jesse protests. Then Frank exposes his past, present and what he hopes will be his ideal and possibly common future – with her. Just like that. GLENN KENNY
‘Ali’: 10 kinetic minutes
A masterful visual narrative class, the 10-minute opening scene from the 2001 biographical film “Ali”, starring Will Smith, sees the boxer as the Louisville Lip, ironically silent as he trains for his 1964 heavyweight fight with Sonny Liston. For this kinetic salvo, Mann cuts between a strident performance by Sam Cooke at the club, a speech by Malcolm X and the boxer’s encounter with his rival and a trainer (Jamie Foxx). This is all corrected by Ali’s intense training and memories of his childhood at Jim Crow South: the colorful section of a bus and the face of Emmett Till on the front page of a newspaper. Mann’s evocative study of Ali’s interiority perfectly presents the impressionable man, instead of the invincible icon of pop culture that he would become. ROBERT DANIELS
‘The Last of the Mohicans’: The World at a Glance
Mann’s great romance with cinema began when he saw 1936’s The Last of the Mohicans in the basement of a church at the age of 4. For Mann, the story by James Fenimore Cooper was a “war zone love story”, personified in Daniel Day-Lewis’s Hawkeye, who struggles to protect both his adoptive native family and his future with Madeleine Stowe’s British emigrant Cora. . Brain stuff, but Mann communicates the powerful ideas of the 1992 film through eye contact. The first recognition of the attraction of the characters is a staring contest that lasts for 40 seconds while the music is tiptoeing in the shadows. While “I will find you!” it became the meme, this moment hits the child in Mann, who was once that appreciative boy who simply knew he liked what he saw. AMY NICHOLSON
‘Public enemies’: a career with benefits
Mann’s 2009 gangster film, “Public Enemies”, is a 1930 Ford with a brand new engine. His tendency to mix classic melodramatic impulses with new video technologies stands out when John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) meet over dinner. Looking out of place in the posh restaurant in her “three-dollar dress”, she asks what he does for a living, and he says to her matter-of-factly, “I rob banks.” Depp and Cotillard interpret the scene with Old Hollywood glamor, but Mann’s digital eye (with cinematographer Dante Spinotti) gives the cute encounter a modern twist. Capturing precise details in his expressions, the director emphasizes the frankness of Dillinger’s admission and Frechette’s fainting spell. Here, Mann shakes a genre like a good cocktail. KYLE TURNER
‘The Keep’: Quiet Madness
Cursed by a history of chaotic production, “The Keep” (1983) emerged as a fascinating and traveled curiosity. As with most of my most beloved scenes from Mann, my favorite in that film is not one of his definite plays, but a quieter, almost silent segment. In it, madness takes over a Romanian village after Nazi soldiers involuntarily release the malevolent entity that was contained in a century-old fortress. A priest drinks his dog’s blood, a white horse wanders the deserted streets, sheets waved on a clothesline. It is frighteningly quiet. This is Mann in the territory of Werner Herzog, with a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream that responds to Popol Vuh’s music for “Aguirre, the wrath of God” and “Nosferatu, the vampire”. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI
‘The Last of the Mohicans’: An Emotional Conclusion
There is a lot to love about “The Last of the Mohicans” (not least the way Daniel Day-Lewis pronounces “Kentucky”), but I definitely watched it in full several times just to get to the end. The last seven or more minutes of the film, almost entirely without dialogue, must be one of Mann’s greatest sequences. Call it a video clip serving as an ending, if you like, but the combination of movement and emotion, human sadness and natural grandeur, all united by one of the great soundtracks of the 1990s, makes it undeniable. GILBERT CRUZ
‘Collateral’: Suspense in Light and Shadow
A trusted trendsetter, Mann has always played with cutting-edge technology, and “Collateral” used the then innovative high-definition video to capture the cascading qualities of light in a night Los Angeles. In the end, Cruise’s visiting killer, trying to kill a prosecutor (Jada Pinkett Smith) in a downtown skyscraper, cuts off the power and chases her through a law library illuminated by almost nothing but the sprawling and indifferent urban landscape in addition. Suspense becomes a matter of pure light and shadow, as the silhouette of a wandering assassin becomes difficult to distinguish from dancing architectural reflections in glass. The scene may have the most inspired use of mirroring since “The Lady From Shanghai”. BEN KENIGSBERG
‘The Insider’: Night Drive
Diffuse white dots on darkness. Perhaps stars in outer space. A golf ball-catching machine passes by, its lamps casting a strange glow. It’s night at the driving range, where a lonely Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) is relaxing with a bucket of balls. But a slow pan reveals another golfer in the distance. The metal clang of his club attracts Wigand and gets nervous. A close up of a golf ball in the net. The spotlight went off. Long shadows, aquamarine tones and an operatic score. Was our insider followed or is the strange scene proof of his paranoia? NATALIA WINKELMAN
Where to watch: “Thief” is available on HBO Max. “Ali”, “Collateral”, “The Keep”, “Heat”, “The Insider”, “The Last of the Mohicans” and “Public Enemies” are available to rent or own on the main platforms.