The year he won for Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Nicholson delivered an even better performance
Film Lists Jack Nicholson
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: The Academy Awards are Sunday, so we’re looking back on times when an actor was nominated for the wrong film—and on the performances they should have been nominated for the same year.
The Passenger (1975)
It’s not hard to understand why Jack Nicholson won Best Actor for his role in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Next. By the mid-’70s, the Academy was already overdue to honor an artist who had quickly become one of the most iconic actors of his generation. What’s more, Cuckoo’s Nest is a terrific picture, an ideal pairing of performer and material, electrifying and entertaining in equal measure.
But that’s also kind of the point: Can you really picture anyone else playing McMurphy? It’s a role Nicholson was born to play, perfectly calibrated to his live-wire, movie-star magnetism. And that’s also why it’s not as impressive an achievement as his other major role that year: the lead in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger. In Cuckoo’s Nest, all Nicholson had to be was Jack Nicholson, movie star. It wasn’t exactly a stretch. In the hands of the Italian arthouse provocateur, however, the star power disappears; in its place is a mesmerizing portrait of a man out of his depth—a situation in which Nicholson rarely found himself, either on screen or off.
His David Locke isn’t exactly a man happy with himself. Ten minutes into The Passenger, the television journalist, in northern Chad to complete a documentary, is stranded in the desert by a car that’s broken down—and Locke breaks down with it, raging in frustration and crying in futility. As we soon learn that his disenchantment runs deeper than his current predicament, straight through to his lot in life. Walking back to his hotel, Locke discovers that another guest, a wealthy world traveler named David Robertson with whom he struck up an acquaintance, has died of a heart attack. Locke makes an impulsive decision: As the two men look somewhat alike, he’ll steal Robertson’s identity and fake his own death, assuming the mysterious businessman’s life and belongings. Even after he learns Robertson was an underground arms dealer, funneling weapons to the resistance fighters in Chad’s civil war, he can’t seem to stop himself from following his dangerous itinerary, as though drawn ineluctably into the fate of the man whose life he’s stolen.
What makes Nicholson so effective in the role is the way the actor smothers his traditional confidence-man charisma, just as the character of Locke is desperately wishing he could summon the same. It’s a deeply reactive performance, as Locke becomes Robertson and slowly, cautiously starts to observe all the little elements of this enigmatic man’s life. Here’s someone so desperate to escape his home, his marriage, and his career that he throws himself into a stranger’s existence, letting friends and family alike think he’s dead, without so much as a second consideration. Yet in the film’s steady, methodical unfolding, the past is never done with Locke; any time he starts to think he can settle comfortably into his new future, another colleague or loved one turns up searching for the man he’s impersonating, hoping “David Robertson” can shed some light on Locke’s final days. It’s the ultimate irony of his gambit: By becoming the one person who can connect Locke’s life to his death, he’ll never be free of the past he tries so frantically to escape.
Antonioni lets Nicholson disrupt shot after shot, moving in and out of frame to emphasize how disjointed and fractured his character’s life is, and how even the radical act of becoming another person can’t fix that problem. Despite the gun-running subplot, the film is slowly paced and sharply focused on Locke’s impossible wanderlust, whether cluelessly following the travel plans previously made by Robertson or striking up a relationship with an equally dissatisfied architecture student (Maria Schneider). Yet the theme of alienation is brought into ever-starker relief by Antonioni’s locations, through gorgeous old international settings—Munich, London, Barcelona—whose deep roots and identities highlight the fragility of Locke’s own. By the bravura penultimate shot (one of the the great camerawork tricks of the era, so memorable that it’s often misidentified as the final shot), Antonioni has offered one of his finest explorations of a long-running obsession: Can we ever really know someone, even ourselves? It’s an idea richly underscored by Nicholson, departing from the version of himself the world had gotten to know.
Availability: The Passenger is available to purchase digitally from VUDU.
70 Comments
Jack had such an epic run in the 70s. Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, Chinatown and then this double whammy.
I’m always kind of surprised at how many of Nicholson’s iconic performances are kind of forgotten for lack of a better word. We all know him as this titan of the industry, but so many of his work is under-seen outside of film buffs. Five Easy Pieces comes to mind.
I remember one night when I started to watch a horror flick called The Terror, and guess who trotted across the TV screen playing an officer in Napoleons army but none other than good’ole Jack.
I knew this, but only in connection to Nicholson’s minor obsession with Napoleon (as the story goes, had Kubrick managed to get his Napoleon biopic off the ground, Jack would have been attached).
Then you have probably seen The Raven (also 1963) where Vincent Price and Peter Lorre are riding in a carriage that’s being driven by a crazy Jack Nicholson.
The Terror is an interesting indulgence. Nicholson just finished shooting The Raven with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre on the same sets. That movie wrapped ahead of schedule, so director Roger Corman used the extra time to keep Nicholson, Karloff and Dick Miller around and shoot another movie. There’s not much plot or story, but the movie allowed Corman to delegate (uncredited) work to Nicholson, Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman and others who were still learning their craft. At that time, Corman considered Nicholson his best screenwriter and was sorry his later stardom kept him from working more in that capacity.
The Last Detail is really great (as is almost anything by Hal Ashby.) Though I think Carnal Knowledge is something best left under-seen.
I’ll concur on Carnal Knowledge. I watched that because The Canon podcast covered it, and my recollection was that it was picked as something of a hate-watch.
I’d throw out Prizzi’s Honor as also being under-seen despite being pretty big in its day – 8 Oscar noms including one for Jack and a win for Anjelica Huston.
The Last Detail is one of my favorite of his performances, ever.
I agree on both counts. For anyone who’s been in the Navy, The Last Detail is one of those films that is a must see, along with Cinderella Liberty with James Caan, Eli Wallach, and Marsha Mason. They both came out in 1973 and are based on Darryl Ponicsan novels. Ponicson was a Navy man himself and perfectly captures what the life of a Sailor was like back in the day. Anyone who’s ever worn a set of Crackerjacks can still identify with both stories almost 50 years later.As for Carnal Knowledge, it’s one of Mike Nichols’ best films but it was never one that was going to be a blockbuster. It’s an art film (and not just because Art Garfunkel is in it). It actually breaks some new ground as a dramedey—and definitely for it’s focus on sex—but I don’t think it was made for mass consumption.
Yeah… I greatly respect Mike Nichols and Jules Feiffer’s talents and it’s a pretty great time capsule if you want to see a misanthropic take on 1970s relationships (especially the minds of the men.) Kind of the flip side of all the sappy Neil Simon movies that were so popular back then. But it’s also hard to tell if it’s a commentary on misogyny or just straight up misogyny and the sheer negativity of it was really difficult for me. And.. it’s also boring, in the way that movies adapted from plays have scenes that are just too long and talky. I guess I’d say know what you’re getting into before watching because this isn’t a movie that’s going to play well to modern sensibilities.
True, Carnal Knowledge is a ‘70s snapshot. A man who behaved like Nicholson’s character won’t last too long these days before someone calls him on his bullshit. And Garfunkel’s character would just die alone. I’m pretty sure that was the joke Nichols was going for.
Yeah, I agree. I love Carnal Knowledge as a sharp-toothed bite at masculinity. I wouldn’t disagree with concerns that it steps over the line of becoming the thing it satirizes but I think it does far more right than wrong.
I love it. But I think your reading of it is pretty fair.
I also agree with you on movies adapted from plays in general. One of the defining qualities of the stage is the interaction between actor and audience. You’re watching the performance in a vacuum when you take that away. That’s why film and television often uses a point of view character to act as the audience’s surrogate.I’m sure Carnal Knowledge would play very differently on a stage, where the audience can laugh and groan at these guy’s imperfect understanding of women and their ineptitude in dealing with them.
I have a friend is an old Navy guy (although not an Old Navy guy) who got to talking about his training at the Great Lakes naval base back in the 60’s, and he told some stories that came right out of Cinderella Liberty, right down to certain details. When I asked him about the book, he said he had never heard of it. I believe him . My buddy’s hated former company commander wasn’t named Forshay, but he talked about looking for him everywhere the navy sent him, hoping to find him and beat the shit out of him. Art sometimes imitates life, I guess.
I grew up in a Navy family and heard the horror stories, so I made sure I went to San Diego for basic training. I joined in November 1990 and had no desire to go through boot camp in Chicago in that time of year. Thanks to the all volunteer force I had some choice in the matter. Once I got to the fleet I had buddies who went to Great Lakes. The ones who’d seen the movie or read the book all said they thought Baggs’ tale was an exaggeration until they personally experienced standing guard duty in the middle of a Chicago winter.
Boy, does he play a prick in that one! Most actors would never do that for fear of ruining their careers.
Blood and Wine is another great forgotten Jack performance, as well as being smack dab in the middle of that 4 or 5 year stretch where it looked like Jennifer Lopez might be one of the great character actresses of her generation.
The Last Detail is amazing, with the feeling of freedom on a road trip screeching to a halt, trying to have that barbecue in the park, in the snow. With a super-young Randy Quaid. Saw it by accident on cable years ago, never forgot it. What control of mood.
Just the other day, I was looking at a list of films that came out in 1994 (which, I contend, was the single best summer for movies ever), and I realized I, and probably almost everyone else had completely forgotten Wolf existed. This was a pretty-well received flick at the time, particularly for the surprisingly restrained performance of Nicholson. “Jack Nicholson as a werewolf” doesn’t come off nearly as you might expect in this rather classy horror movie.
It’s a shame that Nichols didn’t allow Jim Harrison—one of the tragically underrated novelists of the last half century—to deliver the rapturous fable of man killing his inner animal that Nicholson (Harrison’s dear friend) wanted. It not only derailed this film, it drove Harrison out of Hollywood altogether.
I think his best performance is in The Last Detail. It’s comparable to Cuckoo’s Nest.
I came here to say Five Easy Pieces. I remember being transfixed by it.
These films are pushing 50. And Jack is 84. Why wouldn’t they be kind of forgotten. I’m not surprised Bebe Daniels is forgotten and she’s only 36 years older than Jack and had long and successful career in theater, in 230 films (silent and talkies,) radio and tv. She was was in the first film versions of the Wizard of Oz and The Maltese Falcon and starred the first big hit musical.
My point was more that Jack Nicholson was a dominant figure in the 70’s – 80’s in cinema and continues to be a living legend that most people would readily recognize. It’s, therefore, surprising that more of his movies aren’t still in wider circulation in 2021. I’d make the same argument for several other stars.I was also commenting on the fact that many of these films were seen as very big deals and yet the films have little recognition today. Prizzi’s Honor, for example, had 8 Oscar Nominations and is rarely on the basic cable circulation. Same with Five Easy Pieces, among others.
Nearly 2/3 of the population wasn’t born when these films were made. This explains why great films like Prizzi’s Honor and huge chunks of the films of the 60, 70, and 80s aren’t often available.
Almost none of us on this comment board was alive when Citizen Kane came out, but there’s a movie about its authorship up for Best Picture right now. The idea that old films are automatically forgotten is fairly reductive when we still very much define greatness by movies written at the same time.
It’s the reason they aren’t in a frequent rotation on basic cable. I’m not saying they’re forgotten they just aren’t that easily found.HBO Max has some Criterion and some of the TCM collection, but its fairly limited. Prime and Netflix used to show the classics but they’ve both fallen off. I used to think there would be a streaming service where all the Dwight Frye films would exist. That’s never going to happen.
Forget it, McMurphy. It’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
“in its place is a mesmerizing portrait of a man out of his depth—a situation in which Nicholson rarely found himself, either on screen or off”He had played a character way out of his depth just a year earlier in Chinatown, the role he really should have won his Oscar for
Chinatown is such a great, great film. It is infinitely re-watchable and just a classic of acting and storytelling. I highly recommend the book from last year, The Big Goodbye, essentially about the filming of Chinatown and Hollywood in the early/mid-’70s. It’s amazing.
I second that, regarding The Big Goodbye. I love a well-researched Hollywood book and that certainly was. (Each main person involved in Chinatown is profiled, with great insight into their careers at the time and subsequently. The book is by Sam Wasson and is definitely worth seeking out.)Chinatown is one of my favorite movies, and every time I watch it I gain more respect and admiration for Faye Dunaway. She’s brilliant in the movie, and had to put up with all kinds of crap on the set. She does her greatest work (I think) in the movie, and her character is, I contend, the only sympathetic character in the film.Although each time I watch Chinatown I come away with a different thing about it to admire. Lately it’s Ms. Dunaway – sometimes it’s the sense of humor the movie has, sometimes its the music, sometimes the script, sometimes it’s the damn set design.
Faye Dunaway is beyond incredible in anything. Jack Nicholson is, well, Jack, because he is what he is. No one else could have played the Joker in ‘89s Batman like Jack did.
The “Jack” in Chinatown has nothing whatsoever to do with the “Jack” playing the Joker. The performances inhabit different planets.
You took a lot away from that, and all of it was taken in the wrong way. Nicholson, Pacino, de Niro, etc, are all great actors. The problem is, they all end up being the same character over time, regardless of who they are portraying. See also: The meet up between Pacino and de Niro in Heat. “We’re not so different…”
I remember seeing Pacino playing what seemed to be a role against type in a bizarre sci-fi film called Simone. Personally, I preferred the other movie he did in 2002 (Insomnia). He also played Jack Kervorkian in You Don’t Know Jack, and his performance was very well received. De Niro gave a great performance alongside Robin Williams in Awakenings, a movie based off of the late, great Dr. Oliver Sacks’ memoir. His character was a catatonic survivor of the 1917-1928 encephalitis lethargica epidemic, and Willams played the doctor who treated him and other survivors with L-Dopa. It’s a great film imo, heartfelt without being too melodramatic.
I just realized that Nicholson hasn’t made a movie in 11 years.
I believe he’s officially retired.
Word is he’s going to come out of retirement for one last performance, kind of a swan song to an amazing career and a way to say thank you to all the loyal fans who’ve made him who he is today. That’s right, he’s going to play “Uncle Gassy” in Dirty Grandpa 2.
I mean, fingers crossed! His very own Welcome to Mooseport!
At one time I read Nicholson was slated to do a remake of the Swedish “A Man Called Ove”. No idea what happened with that, but “Ove” was such a great movie that I’m happy American’s didn’t take the idea and ruin it completely.
At least he’s not doing films with Adam Sandler…
Well, not anymore.
Anger Management, anyone?
Big Red NO.
I kind of liked that one, actually. Watching Sandler and Nicholson go all out in ham to ham combat was entertaining.
He was rumoured at one point to be starring in an American remake of Toni Erdmann, but who knows if that will ever happen?
Yeah, he retired b/c he found himself not being able to remember his lines. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/05/jack-nicholson-retires-memory-lossThe reason I’d heard was that he refused to be one those actors.
If you are going to watch it I would highly recommend tracking down a copy on DVD because it has Nicholson doing a commentary track. I think the only one he ever did and it’s about as wonderful as you might expect.
It includes the insight that one to extras was cast because he was random guy that turned up and spent the day bumming cigarettes’ off Jack.
There’s also a high quality version of this movie on YouTube for free.
You explain that Nicholson’s work in “Cuckoo’s Nest” is a charismatic and iconic performance and then try to contend that “The Passenger” performance was somehow more deserving of an Oscar. Ultimately, your argument – however – rests on an explanation of plot (which is rarely, if ever, the point of an Antonioni film) or elements of the direction. Nicholson’s characterisation of Randle McMurphy is stamped into our collective memories: over a decade since I last saw the film, I recall being charmed by Nicholson’s swagger and pained by the intensity of his performance in the last third. It’s a fully-felt and joyous celebration of a flawed but ultimately resilient character. “The Passenger”? Give me a break. Nicholson does his best to sketch in the illusion of flesh and blood to his director’s puppet master inclinations, but it’s still not clear how that makes for the better role or performance.
It’s kind of become a trope for critics to, if not disparage or dismiss, at least give a bit of side eye to big, spectacular, showy performances that initially garner a lot of praise. It’s supposed to reflect a kind of sophistication, I suspect — I can appreciate subtle performances without being distracted by the showy ones. (Also, I’m not just saying this because we’re both Andrews. Nor are we the same person. Probably.)
To paraphrase a well know saying: those who can do; those who can’t become second rate movie critics.As a posted elsewhere, what a shitty take.
Look- you having an opinion about a movie makes you a critic! You’re just not paid to write it down! Comments like that are fucking idiotic. It kills me every time I see it. You like some movies and don’t like some movies, I would imagine. How on earth is that any different than what a critic does?? Are you making movies? No? Then what right do you have to decide what’s a shitty take? See how that works?Dolt.
If we’re talking about a professional critic, “like” and “don’t like” are not metrics. I hate Citizen Kane. I don’t think it’s bad. See, “like” is not really important. Also, most professional critics (though this is sadly becoming less true all the time) have film and/or journalism educations.
Yeah this is the first one of these that I think is an actively bad, contrarian take. It totally underplays what he does in Cuckoo’s Nest, and overplays what he does in Passenger. Plus, Jack’s always taken weird parts outside of his range, so it’s strange to say nobody but him could’ve played McMurphy (it was originally meant for Kirk Douglas, so it’s not like that was even the plan) without acknowledging that he had already shown he could play a variety of roles – Chinatown certainly, just the year before, was wholly different from Cuckoo’s Nest, and that was his most acclaimed performance to that point.
Personally, I’ve never cared much for the man’s performances but he did have a reputation for being really nice to the crews he worked with and that counts for a lot in my book. Of his films that I’ve seen, I’d go with “Five easy Pieces” and “The Last Detail.” He was flat out awful as the Joker (not that I care.) I saw “Carnal Knowledge” in the eighties and still haven’t been able to shower enough to wash the stink of it off.
I believe James Caan was was offered Cuckoo’s nest and turned it down. Now, i’m not saying he would’ve been better but fuck me i’d alternitve universe watch the shit out of that.
Hm. I like Nicholson fine in Cuckoo’s Nest, but having seen the play in San Francisco a couple times, I can say that Nicholson is not the only actor who could take on McMurphy. And I don’t think I’m alone in wondering what could have been if the timing had worked out so that Kirk Douglas could play McMurphy. (Douglas bought the rights long ago, got too old to play the part, passed the producing job on to his kid and the rest is history.)Anyway, yes, The Passenger is a good example of what Nicholson could do when he wasn’t being paid to display (what we assume is) his regular persona. He’s done a lot of good work. Prizzi’s Honor comes to mind – he plays a not very smart (but very shrewd) killer, and manages to be funny, frightening and charming. Five Easy Pieces has great work by him (and everyone else). I loved him in Reds, and I might be the only person in the world who liked The Missouri Breaks.
In Cuckoo’s Nest, all Nicholson had to be was Jack Nicholson, movie star.
Jesus H. Christ what a shitty take on Nicholson’s abilities as an actor.
He claims no one else could have played McMurphy. If Gene Hackman or Donald Sutherland had played him, we all probably would have STILL loved it.
Wow… now that you put the thought in my head, it is amazingly easy to picture those two in the role of McMurphy, with each giving a very different take.
He’s very good in The Passenger. He’s not better than he is in Cuckoo’s Nest.
Obligatory Alternate Picks For This Week’s Theme Post:Leonardo DiCaprio for The Departed over Blood Diamonds—With all the nominations The Departed got that year, you’d think a Best Actor nod for Leo would be a shoe-in. Instead, he gets one for the Worst South African Accent In Cinema History.Al Pacino for Glengarry Glen Ross over Scent Of A Woman–If the Academy was going to give Pacino an Oscar for flashy, quirky performance, they may as well have done so for one in which the flash and quirks actually work in the performance.
I sincerely appreciate this recommendation, but to say, “In Cuckoo’s Nest, all Nicholson had to be was Jack Nicholson, movie star,” is to profoundly misunderstand the craft of acting and what is necessary to create a performance like the one Nicholson gave. It’s like saying, “In that game, all Curry had to be Stephen Curry, sports star.” It takes a special kind of work and deep devotion to hone raw talent into focused performances as special as the ones Nicholson has given us.
This movie is great – probably my favorite Antonioni, though maybe that’s because it was the first one I saw. I can’t remember Cuckoo’s Nest well enough to compare the two performances, though my inclination is they’re basically chalk and cheese. But he’s very good in this.
Never even heard of this movie and now I really want to see it. Wish it was airing for free somewhere but it seems VUDU or physical media are it.
Great call, terrific synopsis.