Page 118 - PROTAGONIST 118

A smile that is a dangerous story, an adventure without a

happy ending to experience vicariously, a loose cannon

from which the world refuses to let Jack Nicholson escape,

and to let us forget.

Pages 115 and 117: Jack Nicholson answering One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975, directed Unfortunately, in recent times it has become commonplace to heap tims of the counter-culture of the 1960s. In the part of the lawyer
journalists in his hotel in Paris, December 9, 1974 by Milos Forman with Jack Nicholson, Oscar 1975
© Giovanni Coruzzi / Bridgeman Images Bridgeman Images abuse on Hollywood stars, also on the part of those who couldn’t George Hanson in Easy Rider, alongside Dennis Hopper and Peter
care less about the star system and have made their lack of exper- Fonda, he gives off a confidence based on a concrete, unique per-
tise into a career path. Jack Nicholson—born John Joseph—is one sonality. His scenes are short, yet the nonchalance with which he
of the many sons of the state of New Jersey rapturously praised in takes on the turbulence of life in the soft cement underbelly of the
song by Bruce Springsteen. More than a star, his image is compa- American road becomes the definitive thrust for a career marked,
rable to a revelation. up until that point, by collaborations with Roger Corman and at-
Jack’s filmography is like an autobiography worthy of a pen- tempts at becoming a director.
ny dreadful. His consummate ability to absorb the mad or not so He leapt into New Hollywood after the collapse of the old sys-
unhinged demands of directors—do you think it was easy to work tem, while other renowned colleagues sank into oblivion, losing
with Stanley Kubrick?—has always been a way of getting rid of the their appeal or becoming parodies of themselves. Having kept at
pain (an artist’s way, no doubt) and returning it to its sender. The bay the inferiority complexes he had brought with him to Los An-
clinical history of his work can be summed up in his smile, that geles from Neptune City at the age of seventeen, Nicholson shook
disquieting ambassador of inner conflict that seems irreparable the audience with his dark magnetism. The “repentant monoga-
but attacks the viewer with ferocity. In every film, Jack Nicholson mist” side of his personality resurfaced in many roles, as in Car-
decides to isolate that detail of himself to tell a story—his story. nal Knowledge, never denying the curious a chance to discover his
Whether in the role of the prodigal son in Five Easy Pieces—he libertine leanings, which would have seemed unthinkable to those
invented the final monologue—where his broken smile admits the who knew him in his childhood as “chubby” Jack. In the 1970s,
impossibility of communication with the father (a figure absent on justifiably pampered by great directors like Michelangelo Anto-
our side of the screen), or in The Cry Baby Killer, where he plays a nioni, Elia Kazan, Roman Polanski, and Mike Nichols, he paid
small-town boy trapped in the closed and overgrown reality of New homage to the sort of European cinema he had always admired:
Jersey who makes his smile into a white flag to wave at the police he brutally shouldered his way into the ranks of the greats with his
in his pursuit. Jack Nicholson, with a hedonistic dialectic regard- performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Milos Forman.
ing life, has managed to stand out in spite of his unconventional His aggressive approach to fame, always with one foot planted in
look, taking his distance from the handsome leading men of the indie cinema, led him to The Shining. The personal supremacy over
day (Marlon Brando, above all) while at the same time liquidating others pursued by the actor gained its maximum force in the role
man of his social-climbing cultural upstart contemporaries, vic- of Jack (of course) Torrance. He was no longer the anti-star loved

116 Celebrity Protagonist Protagonist Celebrity 117