Search & Destroy: Best Understated Jack Nicholson Performance

I haven't seen Ironweed since I was in high school but I liked it then. (of course at the time I approved of anything with Tom Waits in it)

I like him lots in Prizzi's Honor, but using a broad Italian Nu Yawk accent ain't subtle.

Tho the patronage reading is fair enough, now I think of it. But surely not?

(xpost)

If you wanna criticise the misogyny of Kathy Bates' character, I'm with ya.

sucks they won't cut to him anymore.

Goddamnit, I read this thread as "Best UnderRATED Jack Nicholson Performance," and it took me several days to realize my mistake.

Jack Nicholson as gorilla = Futurama bit

http://i56.tinypic.com/2pobkih.gif

five easy pieces...what an amazing and odd film.

He's really good in The Border. I think it was around that time when Nicholson slid over into mannerism--you could argue that that started earlier, but I'd trace it to the early '80s. Not any one film...The Shining, in a way, but his performance there is obviously intentionally over the top, and it succeeds in that context; I just think some bad habits stuck, and carried over into subsequent performances where they were out of place. Anyway, he's peak-era in The Border. The only limitation is that he's so grim and unflashy, none of the humour of Five Easy Pieces/Chinatown/Cuckoo's Nest is there. His very best performances integrate both sides. So this is just shy of his very best.

Keitel's excellent, too. I sometimes forget how good he could be back then, in part having to do with something we discussed on another thread: seeing him on a talk show once, and discovering how pompous and stodgy he was when discussing his work. But here and in Blue Collar (don't even need to get into the Scorsese films), he's just such a natural.

Five Easy Pieces

I thought The Shining was over the top but not at all standard Nicholson? I feel like Kubrick beat him down with so many takes that he was able to build his performance back up from the ground floor without phoning in standard Nicholson.

I'm surprised that The Border gets so much love. I saw it on the big screen at a second run theater as it was going out of its initial release. At the time I was so broke that even spending a dollar for a movie was a special treat and I was looking forward to the experience. All I recall is that it was the first movie I ever walked out on midway, because it felt too manipulative and the characters felt too untrue. I deeply regretted the loss of that dollar.

If you get the chance, give it another look. It didn't seem especially manipulative to me; I mean, I'm guessing it presents something that was actually happening at the time.

The Shining is a special case, and not the best example of what I was trying to say. For that film, he's perfect. (Although Kael said the problem was that you can't cast Nicholson in a film about descending into madness, because he automatically looks crazy right from the first shot.)

Although Kael said the problem was that you can't cast Nicholson in a film about descending into madness, because he automatically looks crazy right from the first shot.

A Shining fundamentalist, even I will concede that she has something here.

which is why The Shining sucks.

also he "slid" into mannerisms when Cuckoo's Nest hit paydirt. Fortunately he slid back from time to time, and sometimes "big" worked (Prizzi, Mars Attacks).

Keitel's excellent, too. I sometimes forget how good he could be back then, in part having to do with something we discussed on another thread: seeing him on a talk show once, and discovering how pompous and stodgy he was when discussing his work.

Although Kael said the problem was that you can't cast Nicholson in a film about descending into madness, because he automatically looks crazy right from the first shot.

i've always felt this was an unfair charge, because a) even at his worst nicholson rarely literally acts 'crazy,' in the sense of a scary homicidal maniac as opposed to a goofy, sarcastic, hammy, over-the-top 'character,' b) his performance in the first 45 minutes of so of the shining doesn't project 'seems crazy from the start' to me at all. he seems like an alcoholic jerk who's struggling to hold it together. the specific character he builds in the shining seems very different to me than the 'jack' caricature you see in other movies.

can we go back to were "Wolf" is held up as an example of one of Jack Nicholson's understated performances?

Thought I'd better check Kael's review, and now I'm not sure that it's her I'm thinking of. I'm positive I read someone express his problem with Nicholson exactly as I paraphrased it above, but maybe it was King himself--it's implied in what Kael wrote, but she doesn't exactly say it:

Nicholson's acting, though, suffers the most, because there are so many shots of him looking diabolic--his eyebrows looking like twin Mt. Fujis hovering in his forehead--and so many echoes of his other freaks, in Carnal Knowledge and The Fortune and Goin' South. There's nothing he can do with the role except express the gleaming-eyed hostile undercurrents of incipient madness while waiting to go whole-hog crazy.

were "Wolf"

i like this capsule review of the shining by greil marcus:

Every mannerism, tic, gesture, or look-at-me move that through the rest of the decade would be death (until Bat­man, when all were exploded) was working here in Jack Nicholson’s performance, giving pleasure, taking it back, a buzzer in every handshake with the audience. What you saw was a man–the character and the actor–so completely absorbed in himself he has to eat the world to keep going. As such the film was as cold as Kubrick must have wanted it to be, as cruel, and likely far more nihilist–more of a prophecy.

http://greilmarcus.net/2014/06/27/film-comment-the-eighties/

There's a line in Marcus's Eyes Wide Shut review I love:

The Shining is a film of sensations, not ideas; it’s a great movie because Kubrick was able to put up a setting of unparalleled elegance and austerity, and then let it bleed.

The Last Detail!

ok not understated exactly but still

yea 'wolf' is not an understated perf but the beginning of him hitting a wolf w/ his car and his reaction shots vs. nothing is oscarworthy in itself

When Nicholson was a human in that film, I remember him as being reasonably understated. When he was a werewolf, he acted like a werewolf, so no, he wasn't understated in those parts.