The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

Director: Bob Rafelson
Writer: Jacob Brackman, from a story by Bob Rafelson and Jacob Brackman
Stars: Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Julia Anne Robinson and Benjamin "Scatman" Crothers

Index: The First Thirty.

This journey through the First Thirty of Jack Nicholson feels like it has a gap in it. He began shakily and gradually became the best actor in films not known for their acting. He found his footing as a counterculture anti-hero but took film jobs in other roles to diversify his talent.

And then, almost overnight, he was turning out award-worthy performances as natural as breathing. Suddenly he was nailing deep roles in movies like Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge and this one. It’s like he woke up one morning as a jobbing actor in exploitation movies and decided to suddenly win a bunch of Oscars.

That realisation hit especially hard here, as Nicholson and Bruce Dern were both in Psych-Out and The Rebel Rousers a few years earlier, two films shot by László Kovács. Suddenly, all three of them were back together again but on a film about as different as could comfortably be imagined. The times they were a-changin’.

I’m sure there’s a thesis that looks at how anti-heroes in biker flicks, acid westerns and counterculture films led to dark and nuanced roles in New Hollywood for graduates of the Corman school as the studios completely lost touch with their audience and the Production Code vanished into the rear view mirror. I get all that, but while it did take a few years for all that to happen, in the context of a career like Nicholson’s it feels like it was merely a snap of someone’s fingers.

Like other BBS Productions films, this is less of a story and more of a character study, most obviously of a pair of brothers, the Staeblers, David and Jason. However, while Nicholson is David and Dern Jason, they were cast the other way around and swapped during rehearsals at the request of director Bob Rafelson.

We meet David first, quietly telling a story. In fact, he’s the first thing we hear, as the film has no ident music and no opening theme, just Nicholson’s subdued voice emerging from the silence. Ironically, David is a DJ hosting a late night program in Philadelphia called Et Cetera.

It’s a very unusual role for Nicholson. It isn’t just that he’s quietly spoken, but he’s set in his ways, comfortable in his routine. I see people suggest that David’s depressive but that may be because he’s often depressing. For someone who lives by his voice, he doesn’t speak much, but everything he says is thoughtful.

While he hasn’t heard anything from Jason in eighteen months, phone calls start coming in during that opening broadcast and keep on coming until he answers them. Jason’s in New Jersey and wants his brother to come out so he can share in his good fortune.

What David finds is that Jason’s in jail as he awaits trial for something or other. After he’s let out on bail, he asks David to stay with him (and Sally and Jessica) in his hotel suite, where he can start explaining all about the nightclub and casino he’s going to be building in Hawaii.

Now, I don’t know how much optimism that paragraph might give you, but I’ll highlight in this one that we never make it to Hawaii. This isn’t about a pair of brothers making it big in the Aloha State. It’s about one who believes he will and one who knows he won’t and the slim slice in the Venn diagram of their lives where they can connect.

If David is quiet, detailed and thoughtful, it must be said that Jason is the precise opposite. He’s a conman, pure and simple, so everything is layered in pageantry to obscure how little it really is. He has Sally meet David off the train with a five piece brass band. Everything’s loud, the details are all hidden in fine print and the only thoughts are schemes.

Jason isn’t as much of a change for Dern as David is for Nicholson, as I’ve long felt that he had an inherent sincerity to him that would serve a conman, preacher or politician well. It was just that he played messianic sculptors or space gardeners rather than more traditional hustlers like Jason.

Both of them are incredibly good here, even against type and perhaps because of it. Dern is able to leverage his powerful grin to dominate conversations, corralling the participants into whatever pen he wants. Nicholson, however, can’t rely on stark emotions that he’d used so well in recent films. He has to turn everything down a few notches and keep things minimal.

While the story is loose and impressionistic, making us feel like Rafelson improvised most of it, these characters are two of the four key reasons to watch. The third is another acting performance, because Sally is played by Ellen Burstyn, who, like Nicholson and Dern, wasn’t ever afraid to bare her soul for a performance.

She’s a fading beauty here, doing all she can to keep beauty queen dreams alive vicariously through Jessica, who we’re shocked to find is her stepdaughter, given that they apparently perform together in bedrooms, not just stages.

She clearly has mental issues, likely bipolar given her extreme mood swings, so losing her beauty is important to her. However, she fears that she may also be losing her man and that leads to some powerful scenes late in the film. This was her final role before The Exorcist and it’s yet another reminder why she’s criminally underrated by the filmgoing public.

She watches Jessica innocently take over all that matters in her life and that’s a fantasy vs. reality conflict unfolding behind a fantasy vs. reality conflict between brothers. None of it is going to end well and we know that early.

However, the fourth reason to watch this is not Julia Anne Robinson as Jessica or indeed a supporting role for Scatman Crothers, though both are very good indeed. It’s the location.

Not only was this shot during Atlantic City’s off season, so everywhere is uncannily empty, it was shot in the early seventies, soon before everywhere was knocked down and gentrified.

That lends this picture another layer in the 21st century that wasn’t there at the time. We can see Jason as representing the old spirit of Atlantic City, with the biggest convention hall and the loudest organ in the world. In fact, he represents the old American dream, in which any snake oil salesman can build a hotel casino in Hawaii and make it rich. David, however, is the grim reality of the new era, in which only the rich can get richer.

It’s a pessimistic film but a quirky magnetic one anchored by towering lead performances that fill the vast empty spaces of a people city out of season and out of time. Even as I write this, it’s starting to feel like a dream.