Jack Nicholson Quietly Brilliant in 'Five Easy Pieces,' Tues Night at the Enzian Theater

Like his own inwardly-collapsing face, Jack Nicholson's acting skills seem to have gradually condensed over the years into a lazy self-caricature of eyebrows, teeth and sunglasses. Yet there was a time when he was a seriously gifted actor, and nowhere is that more evident than in Five Easy Pieces (1970), showing Tuesday night at 9:30 PM at the Enzian Theater in Maitland, as part of the Enzian's "Cult Movie" series.

Directed by Bob Rafelson (Blood and Wine, 1996) from a script co-authored by Rafelson and Carole Eastman (writing under the pseudonym "Adrien Joyce"), the film is regarded as a masterpiece of American cinema, and is famous chiefly for being the movie that made Nicholson a star.

Before Five Easy Pieces, Nicholson had already established himself as a dependable supporting player. On television he had appeared in Hawaiian Eye, Sea Hunt, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, and three episodes of Dr. Kildare. His big screen credits included such movies as The Cry Baby Killer (1958) and Ensign Pulver (1964), however his most famous early cinema work was in a trio of entertaining, low-budget Roger Corman flicks, The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Raven (1963), and The Terror (1963). In Little Shop and Raven, Nicholson was amusing in comic supporting roles; in The Terror--a full-on horror film with Boris Karloff--Nicholson did a respectable turn as the heroic leading man, showing that he could "carry a picture," as they say.

In 1969 Nicholson was cast in the supporting role of George Hansen, an uptight attorney who ends up getting high with a pair of cross-country bikers played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the counter-culture classic, Easy Rider. Rip Torn originally was cast in the role of Hansen but quit after a confrontation with director Dennis Hopper during which Torn later claimed that Hopper pulled a knife on him, which is difficult to believe considering Torn's legendary reputation as a violent drunk. (Watch this excruciating outtake from the movie Maidstone, 1970, in which a wild-eyed Torn viciously attacks writer/director Norman Mailer with a claw hammer--for real.)

In any case, the role of Hansen ultimately went to Nicholson, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The following year, Nicholson starred in Five Easy Pieces, for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. He lost to George C. Scott for Patton, about which Nicholson once said, "I expected to lose, and deservedly lose, to George C. Scott."

The irony is that Nicholson's finely textured performance as Bobby Dupea in Five Easy Pieces is actually a far superior performance to that of Scott's Patton, which is mostly a lot of bluff and bluster.

Critics tend to praise Five Easy Pieces as a classic exponent of seventies-era drama, but what makes the movie so great--and the reason it has endured--is its timelessness. Aside from the hairstyles and clothing, and the models of the automobiles, the movie really has nothing to do with "the seventies," or a loss of innocence in post-Vietnam America, or any of the other socio-political contexts that have been lathered onto it over the years. The movie is less specific and more universal than that. It is a thoughtful, sometimes amusing, occasionally anguished existential meditation on how difficult it can be for a complex individual to find his or her place in world where they never quite seem to fit in.

Nicholson's Bobby Dupea initially appears to be a crude, raucous, under-ambitious cad who, when he isn't working on oil rigs, spends his free time bowling, slugging beers and cheating on his hopelessly co-dependent girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black). One day, while Bobby and his buddy, Elton (Billy "Green" Bush), are stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway, Bobby gets out of the car and climbs onto the back of a truck hauling a piano. Seating himself, Bobby begins playing ragtime music, oblivious to the fact that the truck has begun to pull away. Clearly, there's more to Bobby Dupea than meets the eye.

A quarter of the way through the film, the usually grimy, denim-clad Dupea suddenly shows up in a suit and tie at a recording studio in Los Angeles, where his pianist sister is cutting a classical record. Turns out that Bobby is a former classical pianist and child prodigy from a wealthy musical family, who, for whatever reason, turned his back on success and affluence in favor of an itinerant life as a knockabout blue-collar worker. Bobby is more than an underachiever--he's downwardly mobile.

Bobby Dupea is one of American cinema's great lost souls. If the reasons for his life choices appear to be vague and somewhat inexplicable, that's part of the slice-of-life authenticity of Five Easy Pieces. Rafelson doesn't try to "explain" everything--human nature being the capricious, incomprehensible thing that it frequently is--but merely takes us along for the ride on what director Don Siegel would call a "journey to nowhere" as the events in Bobby's largely aimless life eventually force him to acknowledge uncomfortable truths about himself and his relationships.

There are no dramatic character arcs in Five Easy Pieces, no redemption or resolution. Near the end, there is a moment of bracing self-awareness in which Bobby makes a half-hearted lunge at honesty--and a chance for happiness--but the timing is all wrong. Which is the way things often turn out in real life.

Fact is, Bobby would probably have screwed it up anyway. A lot of us do that. I don't know why. But that may be why Rafelson's film resonates so deeply: because on some level, deep down inside, there's probably a little Bobby Dupea in all of us.

Five Easy Pieces will be showing at 9:30 PM at the Enzian Theater in Maitland.

For further information contact the Enzian Theater at 1300 South Orlando Avenue Maitland, FL 32751 Info Line: (407) 629-0054 Theater Offices: (407) 629-1088

Watch the theatrical trailer for "Five Easy Pieces"