Mike Nichols took an eight-year break from dramatic features after the back-to-back failure of The Day of the Dolphin (’73) and especially The Fortune (’75). In fact Nichols had slipped into a funk. He was in a gloomy, self-doubting place. The guy he’d been during the mid ’60s to early ’70s heyday had gone into hiding if not eclipse.

When he finally returned with Silkwood in ’83, Nichols was a different man in terms of a certain aesthetic signature that he’d used between ’67 and ’75 — that studied, carefully choreographed, long-take visual scheme that defined The Graduate, Catch 22, The Fortune and particularly Carnal Knowledge. Nichols didn’t use this shooting style as much in Dolphin and Fortune, but when Silkwood appeared it was obvious the classic Nichols scheme was no more.

A Silkwood Bluray pops on 7.25.17