The Fortune
Film Comment Selects 2015
February 20 - March 5, 2015
Mike Nichols’s underrated, rarely screened jazz-era farce features Stockard Channing as a young heiress who elopes with a fortune-hunter (Warren Beatty) whose halfwit sidekick (Jack Nicholson) comes along for the ride. As ever, the flair and dazzling skill of Nichols’s mise en scène is unmistakable.
As a tribute to the late, great Mike Nichols, a rare screening of one of his lesser-known and most underrated comedies, made just before his 10-year hiatus from filmmaking. Nichols can be credited with discovering Stockard Channing in this jazz-era farce in which she plays Freddie, an heiress who elopes with smooth fortune hunter Nicky (Warren Beatty). Along with Nicky’s halfwit sidekick Oscar (Jack Nicholson), they head for California—but since Nicky is still awaiting a divorce, Oscar must temporarily marry Freddie in order to evade the dreaded Mann Act (which forbids the transportation of a woman across state lines for immoral purposes). Eventually the duo’s mercenary intentions dawn on Freddie, forcing them to take more extreme measures… Written by Five Easy Pieces screenwriter Carole Eastman (credited as Adrien Joyce due to a falling out over Nichols’s cuts to her 240-page screenplay), shot by Chinatown cameraman John A. Alonzo, and with production design by perennial Nichols co-conspirator Richard Sylbert, The Fortune was met with mostly poor reviews and was a box-office failure—an unjust fate for a film that can be read as a knockabout comedy retake on the claustrophobic ménage à trois of Carnal Knowledge, and one in which the flair and dazzling skill of Nichols’s mise en scène are unmistakable.
Read More
Mark Jenkin and Mary Woodvine on Their Sci-Fi-Tinged Rose of Nevada
This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with Rose of Nevada director Mark Jenkin and actress Mary Woodvine.
Experience 10 Films Entirely on 70mm at “It’s All a Big Conspiracy,” July 1–9 at Film at Lincoln Center
Exploring conspiracy across Hollywood genres, from espionage and sci-fi to superhero cinema, political biography, Shakespearean adaptation, crime drama, cult psychodrama, and the modern action blockbuster, the series includes the first New York City theatrical screening of Tim Burton’s Batman on 70mm since its original release in 1989.
Film at Lincoln Center Unveils Summer 2026 Lineup
Film at Lincoln Center announces its lineup of repertory, festival, and new release programming for the upcoming summer season, from June through September 2026.
