Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
Welcome to today’s AMAD, the third of three films in our mini-Mike Nichols-a-thon.
Is it horrible if I start this off for saying godbless this film for its gratuitous Ann-Margret nudity? Does it make me a horrible person? I hope not, because I have already committed to starting off that way.
I don’t know what it is with Mike Nichols and dysfunctional relationships, but the dude seems to love to make films about people in love or lust being absolutely rotten to each other. I think if I watched CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and CLOSER all in a row I’d swear off relationships and join some sort of celibate priesthood.
Not that I’m any expert on crazy sexcapades or anything. I’ve never had a one night stand and have only had two serious relationships in my life. Sure, I’ve dated a bit, but the two serious ones… well, one ended badly and the other one, a four year long relationship, just ended period.
But that doesn’t stop me from being a hopeless romantic. I love the idea of finding my soul mate. I’ve known people in my life that found exactly that. It’s possible. So, I honestly do prefer the Richard Curtis brand of films focusing on the joy of romance, but damn do I like good cynical, gritty movie like this one every once in a while.
Especially this one… I don’t think it’s high on the rewatch factor… it’s a bit too tough of a movie, a bit too harsh to subject myself to routinely. When this started off I had no idea how epic this would be. I thought it was strange to see Jack Nicholson playing a college kid in the early ‘70s, but it didn’t strike me that this film was going to explore 30 years of horrible, desperate, hate-filled relationships.
In fact, they tricked me into thinking it was a love triangle movie, when in the giant scheme of things all the relationship signifies is how just horribly sexual relationships start with our two leads.
I say two leads, but it really is Jack Nicholson’s movie. Art Garfunkel (yeah, that Art Garfunkel) plays Sandy, Nicholson’s best friend and the first act is his. The focus is on Garfunkel’s relationship with Candice Bergen’s Susan while in college. Art and Jack made a pact to finally get laid (over the opening credits, no less) and you can tell Jack doesn’t think Sandy has it in him.
Nicholson’s Jonathan Fuerst doesn’t show any interest in Bergen at first. Even when Garfunkel hits it off with her. Nicholson actually gives him advice, which we see is horrible, but Garfunkel coasts by on his nervous innocence. Bergen finds him to be her intellectual equal and she does love him, in her own way.
She loves him, but isn’t excited by him. It’s an odd relationship… it’s clearly more than friendship, but she doesn’t seem to want him sexually. When Nicholson hears that she gave Garfunkel a handjob, suddenly he’s very interested and tries to date her behind Garfunkel’s back.
What is lacking in animal magnetism between Garfunkel and Bergen is there in spades with her and Nicholson. She fucks him, while holding out on the one she actually loves. Mike Nichols has a great visual representation of this triangle in a dance montage where we see her on dates with both Garfunkel and Nicholson, dancing in the same bar. With Garfunkel there’s no energy, no passion, but with Nicholson it’s a rush. They’re swinging, laughing… but it feels frivolous.
In fact, there’s one brilliant scene where it’s just a long, long take of the camera focused on Bergen sitting at a table. We can’t see them, but both Garfunkel and Nicholson are there, on either side, off camera and Bergen is laughing so hard at their conversation that she can hardly catch a breath. This take is maybe 2 or 3 minutes long, the camera not cutting or moving, featuring only Bergen and her hysterical laughter as the conversation goes on. If you need any evidence that Mike Nichols is one of the screen’s greatest directors just watch the first act of this movie, culminating in this scene, and marvel at just how much he says visually in his shot selection and length of takes.
I took it to mean that her perfect mate would be if you could splice Nicholson and Garfunkel together. Each on their own doesn’t give her everything she needs, but in this one scene she is the most at ease and natural that we ever see her in the movie. Maybe that perfect person is out there for Susan, but I don’t know what her fate is.
We know that she marries Garfunkel and they disappear for most of the second act… Nichols plays with time passage here. There’s a cut and suddenly Garfunkel and Nicholson are hanging out in Manhattan, both prominent in their business fields, years out of college. Garfunkel is married and Nicholson a walking boner.
This is when we focus almost completely on Nicholson meeting Ann-Margret, bedding Ann-Margret and her doing her damndest to nail him down. What’s really tragic about Nicholson is you can see a part of him is fighting his desire to be a permanent, life-long bachelor, some side of him that wants to settle down and be happy with one woman. I truly believe that he was hurt when Bergen chose Garfunkel over him and that she could have been his only chance at salvation… however, even that would have been some pretty long odds.
It just seems Jonathan Fuerst is wired to be a womanizer. He gets bored, he gets demanding. He’s a bit of a chauvinist prick. But Ann-Margret falls for him.
Garfunkel pops up a little bit, telling us that he’s bored as shit in his relationship with Bergen and wants to have an affair. Nicholson sets that up, but by this time the focus has completely shifted over to Nicholson. Even this subplot only serves to drive another wedge between Ann-Margret and Nicholson.
There are a lot of themes and recurring moments at play here. I won’t pretend I’ve figured them all out after having just watched the movie, but the most obvious I see is Nicholson’s constant desire to shower. It feels like he showers every 10 minutes in this movie. After sex, after arguing… it makes you wonder just what he’s trying to wash away.
Nicholson turns in a strong, strong performance, taking a character that should be impossible to sympathize with and making him relatable on some level. This movie falls in-between FIVE EASY PIECES and CHINATOWN for him, the very beginning of his big upswing in fame post-EASY RIDER. He’s hitting his stride as a performer here, a few years from one of my all-time favorite films and a damn near career best performance in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.
Garfunkel is surprisingly strong in his role of best friend to Nicholson. He isn’t given nearly as much to do as Jack, but he has some pretty meaty stuff at the beginning of the film and he handles it well.
The girls are all great in their parts. Bergen is absolutely gorgeous here… I’ve seen other films around this era from her, but growing up in the ‘80s it’s hard to shake Murphy Brown, who always felt like a mom and not a sex fantasy, so it’s always a bit shocking for me to see her early stuff. Her character is very complex and I think if her character had survived past the first act in more than just a mention from Garfunkel she would have been nominated for this performance.
Rita Moreno and Cynthia O’Neal are also good in their much, much smaller roles (O’Neal playing Garfunkel’s affair and Moreno a prostitute that closes the movie), but if there’s an MVP of the movie it’s Ann-Margret.
What a mini-powerhouse she is in this movie. Her character is both needy and independent. She both hates and loves Nicholson. She wants to escape, but she asks for more of the same. In short, her character, Bobbie, is a walking conflict. I don’t know why she sets her heart on Nicholson and that’s the point. I don’t think she does either. And Nicholson certainly has no fucking clue.
It’s a great role and one she was nominated for, losing out to Cloris Leachman for THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.
Final Thoughts: There’s little hope to be found here. If you believed all relationships happen like they do in this movie then the human race would end because no one would ever want to meet another living soul. But somehow by showing us the worst of people, the worst at love and lust, we somehow end up thinking it might be possible to find what you truly desire. I think Nicholson finds it at the end and while I believe what he finds is completely hollow, it’s a perfect match for his character. Great performances, masterful visual storytelling by Nichols and a great script by Jules Feiffer make this an easy recommend, just don’t watch it on a date.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Thursday, December 4th: THE CINCINNATI KID (1965)
Friday, December 5th: POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES (1961)
Saturday, December 6th: MIKEY & NICKY (1976)
Sunday, December 7th: TWO MINUTE WARNING (1976)
Monday, December 8th: THE SENTINEL (1976)
Tuesday, December 9th: HOW TO STEAL A MILLION (1966)
Wednesday, December 10th: WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? (1965)
Tomorrow we follow the beautiful Ann-Margret over to the Steve McQueen poker flick THE CINCINNATI KID! See you folks then!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
