Jack Nicholson (1937 - )
Related: American cinema - actor
Films: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) - Easy Rider (1969) - Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Image Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (1974) - Roman Polanski
The Shining (1980) - Stanley Kubrick
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Biography
John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is a highly successful, iconic American method actor. He is best known for portraying antagonistic, cynical, neurotic and aggressive characters. He received Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, and has been nominated for an Academy Award a dozen times, winning three of them. He has also won seven Golden Globe Awards. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nicholson [May 2005]
Carnal Knowledge (1971) - Mike Nichols
Carnal Knowledge (1971) - Mike Nichols [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Amazon.com
Still hot from the success of Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson solidified his reputation as the brightest star of the New Hollywood movement when he appeared in this 1971 drama, written by Jules Feiffer and directed by Mike Nichols. The film received mixed reviews, but remains fascinating for its subject matter--the sexual attitudes and activities of two male friends from their college days to middle age--and the performances of its stellar cast. Nicholson is the former athlete-turned-tax-lawyer with a fetish for well-endowed women (which explains why Ann-Margret plays his mistress), and Art Garfunkel is the shy, mild-mannered one who becomes a doctor, marries Candice Bergen, and has an affair with Carol Kane. Over the course of nearly 30 years, we see how their lives and attitudes are reflected through their sexual histories, and it's not pretty. The film deals frankly (and some will say depressingly) with the ways in which people use each other for sex, and this doesn't exactly make for rousing (or even arousing) entertainment. But with Nichols directing a cast of this caliber, Carnal Knowledge remains one of the signature films of the early 1970s, when established Hollywood traditions were giving way to the emergence of more daring films with bolder "adult" themes. --Jeff Shannon
Carnal Knowledge is a 1971 American drama film. The film is directed by Mike Nichols and written by Jules Feiffer.
Sandy (Art Garfunkel) and Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) are college roommates whose lives are explored and seem to offer a contrast to one another. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnal_Knowledge [May 2005]
Carnal knowledge and Jamaican Law regarding homosexuality:
Article 78 (Proof of Carnal Knowledge)
"Whenever upon the trial of any offence punishable under this Act, it may be necessary to prove carnal knowledge, it shall not be necessary to prove the actual emission of seed in order to constitute a carnal knowledge, but the carnal knowledge shall be deemed complete upon proof of penetration only." --http://www.jflag.org/bodyspirit/rights.htm [May 2005]
Carnal knowledge and British Law regarding homosexuality:
1828
Enlighs Parliament closes a loophole in the definition of the capitol crime of
buggery. It is no longer necessary to demonstrate "the actual Emission of Seed"
to convict of buggery or rape. "Carnal knowledge shall be deemed complete
upon Proof of Penetration only."
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) - Milos Forman
One of the key movies of the 1970s, when exciting, groundbreaking, personal films were still being made in Hollywood, Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest emphasized the humanistic story at the heart of Ken Kesey's more hallucinogenic novel. Jack Nicholson was born to play the part of Randle Patrick McMurphy, the rebellious inmate of a psychiatric hospital who fights back against the authorities' cold attitudes of institutional superiority, as personified by Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). It's the classic antiestablishment tale of one man asserting his individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist system--and it works on every level. Forman populates his film with memorably eccentric faces, and gets such freshly detailed and spontaneous work from his ensemble that the picture sometimes feels like a documentary. Unlike a lot of films pitched at the "youth culture" of the 1970s, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest really hasn't dated a bit, because the qualities of human nature that Forman captures--playfulness, courage, inspiration, pride, stubbornness--are universal and timeless. The film swept the Academy Awards for 1976, winning in all the major categories (picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay) for the first time since Frank Capra's It Happened One Night in 1931 --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com
The Shining (1980) - Stanley Kubrick
Shelley Duvall in
The Shining (1980) - Stanley Kubrick
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Shining (1980) is a film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. The film stars Jack Nicholson as frustrated writer Jack Torrance and Shelley Duvall as his wife Wendy. Although it can be seen as a horror film, The Shining defies many of the conventions of the genre.
The film features the first extensive use of the Steadicam to create long and elaborate tracking shots.
Analysis
The Shining seems to comment on the absurdity of the ideal American-style nuclear family. The film underlines the isolation and total comfort of the Torrance family via the huge open spaces and endless food reserves of the Overlook. Jack Torrence's monologues and the "work" he produced ("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.") caricature the Protestant Work Ethic. Critics have also noted the American Indian motifs as well as the Grady character representing as imperialist archetype, suggesting a skewed commentary upon American history. Broadly, then, the film seems to suggest that escape from a tainted and dangerously brutal past of violence (Jack Torrance) is left to a younger generation, embodied in Danny, who "shines" and can detect the evil within the superficially benign Overlook. Thematically this seems to tie The Shining to 2001: A Space Odyssey as one of Kubrick's more optimistic works, via its conclusion, reminiscent of the "new man" or starbaby.
The Grady twins
The Shining (1980) - Stanley Kubrick
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Grady twins footage is unmistakably reminiscent of a photo by Diane Arbus, and much of the abstracted horror appears influenced by Arbus's strange photos of masked revellers and desexualized nudes. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(film) [May 2005]
your Amazon recommendations