40 years of Michael Mann. 11 great moments of cinema.

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40 years ago this weekend, Michael Mann released his first feature film, “Thief,” which in retrospect contained several signatures of the director’s work, such as stories that mostly revolve around lone wolves, told with intricate cutouts, clever visuals and unexpected musical choices. We asked 11 writers to look at careers filled with memorable films and choose the scenes that still accompany them.

In most of Michael Mann’s films, a lot of the action is talking: especially men talking, sometimes to women but mostly other men, about their work. The frequency of these conversations is what makes “Heat” (1995) the quintessential Michael Mann film. The deservedly famous dinner scene is, in this context, the Michael Mann — six minutes in all cinema.

In an epic, hectic cat-and-mouse game, tired and exhausted Los Angeles cop Vincent Hanna sits down for coffee with Neil McCauley, the criminal mastermind whose plans he tries to foil. They are deadly rivals, but also just two guys struggling with the existential demands of professionalism. They discuss marriage, work, and although they don’t really become friends, there is no real hostility between them. Each recognizes that the other is good at what they do, maybe even the best. Of course they are: they’re Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, sharing the screen for the first time. AO SCOTT

Mann has always been adept at convincing the threat of the familiar bustle of public spaces, and the foreground of this chic genre thriller (2004) is a prime example. As the character of Tom Cruise, a relentless hitman, slowly emerges from the crowds at an airport in Los Angeles and approaches the camera, his deliberate stride is deliberately out of step with the sea of ​​travelers around him. Silvery-haired and expressionless behind shades of jet black, he glides through the terminal, his pale gray suit perfectly fitted and his dazzling white shirt giving off a slight sheen. The shark metaphor is unsubtle, but perfect: in just 30 seconds of screen time, and before we hear him say a word, we know this man is a predator. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Mann is such a distinctive stylist, with such a recognizable visual and aural aesthetic, it’s easy to forget how well he directs his actors. For proof, look no further than the great Pacino scene in “The Insider”. In the late 1990s, after his Oscar win for his roaring turn in “Scent of a Woman,” audiences expected Pacino to work at its highest volume and high intensity. Instead, Mann keeps the actor on a low fire – until this scene, when the producer of Pacino’s “60 Minutes,” working on a Big Tobacco investigation, finally had enough. Mann and Pacino wonderfully build the explosion we’ve been waiting for, the director modulating the escalation like a symphonic conductor, while the actor slowly but surely unloads himself on his bosses, for his closest collaborator to take the lead. wind in its sails. JASON BAILEY

In “Thief” (1981), James Caan is Frank, a safecracker craftsman in Chicago. He knows that living outside the law means living on borrowed time. After showing up late for a date with Jesse (Tuesday Weld), he gets angry with her and himself, and drives them to a dinner party. The cries subside, but the emotional register becomes more surprising. Mann chooses simple shots of two people in a cubicle, almost strangers to each other, suddenly relating with total candor and vulnerability. “My life is very ordinary,” protests Jesse. Then Frank exposes his past, his present and what he hopes will be his ideal, and arguably ordinary, future with her. Just like that. GLENN KENNY

A master class in visual storytelling, the 10-minute opening scene of the 2001 biopic “Ali,” starring Will Smith, sees the boxer as the Louisville Lip, ironically silent as he trains for his fight against the 1964 heavyweights with Sonny Liston. For this kinetic burst, Mann cuts between a boisterous club performance from Sam Cooke, a speech from Malcolm X, and the boxer’s encounter with his rival and a trainer (Jamie Foxx). It all ties into Ali’s intense training and memories of his childhood in the 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 portrays the impressionable man rather than the invincible pop culture icon he would become. ROBERT DANIELS

Mann’s great romance with the movies began when he saw the 1936 “The Last of the Mohicans” in a church basement at age 4. For Mann, James Fenimore Cooper’s tale was a ‘warzone love story’, personified in Daniel Day-Lewis’ Hawkeye, who fights to protect both his adopted family and his future with the British immigrant. Cora by Madeleine Stowe. Brain stuff, yet Mann communicates the powerful ideas of the 1992 film through eye contact. The first recognition of the characters’ attraction is a gaze contest that stretches for 40 seconds as the music tiptoes in the shadows. While “I’ll find you!” became the meme, that moment touches Mann’s child, who was once that grateful boy who just knew he liked what he saw. AMY NICHOLSON

Mann’s 2009 gangster film, “Public Enemies,” is a 1930 Ford with an all-new engine. His penchant for mixing classic melodramatic impulses with new video technology stands out when John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) get to know each other over dinner. Looking out of place in the fancy restaurant in her “three dollar dress”, she asks what he does for a living, and he tells her, in a neutral tone, “I’m robbing banks.” Depp and Cotillard play the stage with Old Hollywood glamor, but Mann’s digital eye (along with cinematographer Dante Spinotti) gives the encounter a modern electricity. Capturing precise details in their expressions, the director refines the frankness of Dillinger’s confession and Fréchette’s fainting charm. Here, Mann shakes up a genre like a good cocktail. KYLE TURNER

Cursed by a chaotic production story, “The Keep” (1983) has become a trippy and fascinating curiosity. As with most of my most beloved Mann scenes, my favorite in this movie isn’t one of his vaunted set pieces, but a quieter, almost silent segment. In it, madness takes hold of a Romanian village after Nazi soldiers unwittingly liberate the malicious entity that was contained in a centuries-old fortress. A priest drinks the blood of his dog, a white horse wanders in the deserted streets, the sheets beat on a clothesline. It is strangely quiet. Here’s Mann in Werner Herzog’s territory, up to a Tangerine Dream soundtrack that responds to Popol Vuh’s music for “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Nosferatu the Vampyre”. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

There’s a lot to like about “The Last of the Mohicans” (and notably the way Daniel Day-Lewis pronounces “Kentucky”), but I’ve certainly watched it in its entirety a few times just to get to the end. The last seven minutes of the film, almost entirely without dialogue, has to be one of Mann’s biggest sequences. Call it a music video ending, if you like, but the combination of movement and emotion, human heartbreak and life-size, all brought together by some of the best film scores of the 1990s, makes it undeniable. . GILBERT CRUZ

A reliable pioneer, Mann often played with cutting-edge technology, and “Collateral” used then-new high-definition video to capture the cascading qualities of light across night-time Los Angeles. In the finale, Cruise’s visiting hitman, trying to kill a prosecutor (Jada Pinkett Smith) in a downtown skyscraper, cuts off the power and chases her through a law library lit by almost nothing. more than the sprawling and indifferent cityscape beyond. The suspense becomes a matter of pure light and shadow, as the silhouette of a traveling killer becomes difficult to distinguish from the dancing architectural reflections in the glass. The scene has perhaps the most inspired use of mirroring since “The Lady From Shanghai”. BEN KENIGSBERG

Blurry white dots on the dark. Maybe stars in space. A golf ball collecting machine passes, its lamps casting an alien glow. It’s night at the driving range, where a lonely Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) takes place with a bucket of balls. But a slow panning reveals another golfer in the distance. The metal noise of his club attracts Wigand’s nervous attention. A close-up of a golf ball slipping through the net. The projectors go out. Long shadows, aquamarine hues and an opera score. Has our insider been followed or is the bizarre scene evidence 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 major platforms.

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