Twelve Angry Men (1957)

It's a cynical truism in the eyes of many that a suspect is Guilty until proven Innocent (as a character says in Star Wars spoof Troops, "all suspects are guilty, if they weren't guilty they wouldn't be suspects!") - certainly in a jury like this one. In all the times I've listened to or read about court cases, it perplexes me how seemingly obvious guilty (or innocent) suspects can be forensically scrutinized and pared down to the bone so that the slightest bit of evidence can be disproved. This I realise, is too often the syndrome of personal prejudice.

Step into this corrupt world the man in the white suit: Henry Fonda, as the anonymous (as they all are) Juror No. 8, imbued with all of Fonda's integrity and just a hint of suppressed insecurity; a pet project of Fonda's, it was he who successfully lured Sidney Lumet into faithfully transferring Reginald Rose's gripping TV play onto the big screen, for which international cinema can be eternally grateful.

There can be fewer better first films than this one, exemplifying the theory that when unleashed on a new medium for the first time the artist is at his greatest: I confess I find much of Lumet's work (with one or two exceptions) painfully laboured and dull, but here his camera angles and build up of tension make it his most cinematic film of the lot, and all practically within the setting of one room.

That the subject itself was also riveting and unusual probably helped: in 90 per cent of films with court cases the jury is the bunch of people who retire (and in some of the more cliched trials don't even have to do that) to consider their verdict. The twist here is that this is the first scene of the film and not the last. We are briefly afforded a glimpse of the defendant himself, which is perhaps a dangerous move as his nervous little face clearly informs how the drama will develop - whereas without him we the audience can become just as prejudicial as those in the jury room.

Not just Lumet, but his brilliant ensemble cast (who were so well rehearsed in their roles to have done the play on tour had they wished) all deserve their mention, not just Henry Fonda. Starting with the Foreman himself (Martin Balsam), an inwardly proud but humbled, self-effacing man, like so many of Balsam's later characters, who performs his tricky role as coordinator of the 12 as meekly or as unobtrusively as he thinks he ought to, and never tries to make his personal opinions or prejudices known, either one way or the other. Balsam quickly became a Lumet favourite.

The Foreman however is upstanding and strong-willed in coparison to Juror No. 2, a funny little man as played with expert diligence by John Fiedler, but much smarter than he looks or sounds, often spoken down to by the bigger brutes in the jury who think they Know Better, of whom the most ballistic of the lot is Juror No. 3 (the explosive Lee J. Cobb), a man of deeply troubled convictions who can't help but compare the accused in the dock with his own troublesome son, and thereby becomes the hardest of the twelve nuts to crack. Next to him comes the second hardest, Juror No. 4 (E.G. Marshall) who is in some ways, the flip side of Fonda: an intelligent, educated man, but also very clinical, and for whom the supposed facts of the case easily match the crime.

Juror No. 5 (Jack Klugman) is on the surface, the vulnerable weakling of the jury, quickly betraying his slum origins similar to those of the defendant. It is to the credit of Klugman's skill and versatility that he can play such a nervous outcast as expertly as his later TV work (such as Quincy and The Odd Couple).

Edward Binns is Juror No. 6, another brilliantly versatile character actor, playing to his minor misfortune the least dramatically interesting of the twelve jurors: a principled working man - but only as far as it goes ("I don't suppose, my boss does the supposing..."), perhaps the typical average juror.

The most enjoyable of the twelve is the goofy but still prejudiced Juror No. 7, whose only passion is getting to the ball game on time - the first of many splendid star character roles for Jack Warden.

Next to Fonda is the wonderful Joseph Sweeney as Juror No. 9, the elder statesman of the group who naturally shrivels into the crowd at first (sympathising with one fellow elderly gent in the witness stand), but as the discussion in the jury room grows, so too does his confidence, and it is he who uncovers the key piece of evidence that swings the jury's verdict...

...unlike Juror No. 10 (played with commendable belligerence by Ed Begley), a racist bigot who huffs and puffs (and coughs) his way through his one-sided point of view, ultimately into self submission.

He is also irritated by the obsequious politeness of Juror No. 11 (Russian character actor George Voskovec), who has the perfect riposte to No. 10: it's the way he was brought up. A token immigrant New York presence in the twelve perhaps, but once again, brilliantly and thoughtfully played and sympathetically written. Finally there comes the slick operator Juror No. 12, whose vacuous world of advertising is as far removed from the defendant's as can be possibly imagined ("We were lucky to get a murder trial. I figured us for an assault or burglary, boy those can be the dullest. Hey, is that the Woolworth building?") and played to perfection by another future TV face, Robert Webber.

From all this it is apparent how the verdict will turn out, but it makes the process of watching it unfold all the more riveting. It is rare to find a film where all of the actors give excellent, well-thought out characterisation in almost every level of the drama, not only in the jury room but also in the judge's summing up at the end of the trial...and the finale where all the jurors descend the steps of New York's County Courthouse (below), taking all their prejudices - good or bad - out with them, but not without effect: the last of the jurors to descend the steps is the soberly thoughtful Juror No. 3.

Cabaret (1972)

On the surface, the title suggests simple pleasures and delicious vice in fishnet tights and glamorous (or otherwise) performers in a hot, steamy setting. In the 1970's this was very much the image that was cultivated in publicity - that, and Liza Minnelli in a bowler hat.

But dig deeper. There is a reason why this "divine decadence" is so compelling. I track back to 1989: the fall of the Berlin Wall. The history of that city had long held a fascination for me, and it was shortly afterwards that I started reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, so the whole atmosphere of that period in Berlin had long intrigued me. The tyranny of the Nazi era was infamous and inhumane, but what preceded it is a poignant and compelling illustration of the decadent calm before the storm.

I first became connected with Cabaret (based on Christopher Isherwood's atmospheric semi-memoir I am a Camera) in 1993, when the East Anglian Daily Times featured an article advertising a new theatre group in Walton-on-Naze asking for actors and performers. I had only a vague awareness of Bob Fosse's classic film version, but the reminder that it was set in 1930's Berlin set ears a-twinkling with interest - it's not just about Liza Minnelli, I realise, it's also about the rise of the Nazis.

Weimar Germany was a prime example of what happens when the people get too much of a good thing. Almost by accident or by default, the old ways of the Kaiser were set aside in the course of Germany's severest economic depression, and out of it came an outpouring of artistic frankness - a similar sense to the expression of free love in the 1960s - which is one reason why this subject appealed to the America of that decade, and still has resonances today.

It led however, in almost tragic operatic fashion, to the sweeping rise of Nazism which trounced it - the perfect subject for a Berthold Brecht/Kurt Weill-style opera on the subject. John Kander and Fred Ebb tapped into this rich field, and fashioned the first version of the musical as a grand vehicle not only for the seediness of 1930's Berlin, but also as a partial vehicle for Kurt Weil's widow Lotte Lenya as Fraulein Schneider (as also played by Jean Murphie in 1994, right), the tragic elderly landlady of Christopher Isherwood, in a fictionalised romance with a Jewish greengrocer, Herr Schultz.

To get onto the Broadway stage, it had to overcome many obstacles, not the least of which was the Jewish sensibilities towards the many anti-Semitic overtones, including the sight of a gorilla - Jewish by implication - dancing romantically with the Kit Kat Club's Master of Ceremonies (the unforgettable Joel Grey), and many other satirical moments, which were a true picture of Berlin society and the cabarets and nightspots (many of them Jewish owned) that painted the picture of the attitudes and social mores of the time.

In the local production, I played Ernst Ludwig, the charismatic smuggler of illicit goods into Germany from abroad - who it later turns out, is using these ill-gotten gains to fund the Nazi cause. I based the character on Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, a confidant of Hitler in the early 30's but also a reveller in the sleazy nightlife of Berlin which Hitler was later to exterminate. It was my first realisation that the evil of Nazism had a face. Any demonisation of them would distort the historical context and render them one-dimensional fantasy figures.

(That same year saw the release of Schindler's List in British cinemas, which saw another vicious Nazi, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) portrayed in a semi-sympathetic light in order to try and get into the head of the man, or perhaps more importantly for Steven Spielberg, to understand the reason for such evil.)

The production was a great fun, provocative, entertaining and thoughtful experience, in the process of which I had resisted the urge to watch the 1972 film until afterwards in the spring of 1994.

The film digests some of the operatic theatricality of the musical; it transposes and, where necessary, edits and amends it, back into the real world, bringing Isherwood's Berlin to life. Whilst some of these phases are sluggish, the general atmosphere of underlining decadent sleaziness, mostly in the setting of the Kit-Kat Klub, where most of the original songs from the musical are retained, makes for a brilliant juxtaposition with the growing political and sociological upheval.

And then, to play the starring role, Kander & Ebb found the ideal choice that they'd had in mind from the first: Liza Minnelli, who embodies not only the unflappable spirit of Sally Bowles (American style) but also brings on board the spirit of her mother Judy Garland - particularly in the moving solo "Maybe This Time", one of many extra songs written for the film.

In truth, the stage version captures the political implications much better than the film, but one unforgettable scene (transposed from the stage) still remains: at a seemingly innocent, idyllic outdoor beerkeller, the merriment is interrupted (and embellished) by the sound of an Aryan boy singing a beautiful solo, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" - which in seconds becomes a rousing Nazi anthem, supported by nearly all of the crowd in one giant statement of ominous national fervour. Fosse brilliantly intercuts this with the image of one older gentleman, sitting unmoved at his table whilst all the others are singing - and the MC cuts in just at the end, with a sly, silent grin on his face.

Visually, Fosse's vibrant direction and Minnelli and Grey's performing dominate, but Michael York is also an excellent version of Christopher Isherwood, "Brian Roberts" (although Isherwood himself was mildly offended at the notion of his character being bisexual, when it seems he rarely had any physical attraction towards Sally Bowles.)

Most aficionados of Cabaret will come to it out of their appreciation of Liza Minnelli and then learn about the political context. I came to it from the opposite angle: Liza Minnelli was the finishing touch.

A landmark stage musical became an even more notable film. Both are classics of their medium.

King Kong (1933)

If you'd shown me this particular picture at the age of six, that would probably be as much as I would ever need to see of King Kong. It was around this same time that the (inferior) 1976 remake came along, which, I failed to realise at the time, was a new version of the story and NOT the terrifying original - when the subject of awards came along that year, and the film was nominated for a BAFTA for "special effects", the announcer uttered the words "And the nominations are...King Kong!", and in terror I immediately switched off the television, for fear that the BAFTAs would show clips from the film...

To young children, the idea of anything giant coming down to destroy them was a motif of primal fear, and Kong was probably the ultimate expression of this (the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park don't even come close.) There were adults too, such as film producer Merian C. Cooper who had nightmares on the subject: the idea of Kong came to him once when he dreamt of a mighty beast at the top of the Empire State Building. Whether he intended it as a means of scaring babies is doubtful; what he and his collaborator Ernst Schoedsack were interested in back in the 1930's was exploration - cinematic exploration, to faraway lands and bringing the seemingly impossible to the screen in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard and many others.

In this case, the particular lost world in question is the suitably named Skull Island, where egotistic filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) - a thinly veiled version of Merian Cooper - has learned (goodness knows how) of a something on the island, mighty and monstrous. A thing named Kong.

Having already created vivid monsters in the likes of The Lost World and various other primitive monster films using hand-drawn or frame-by-frame animation, Hollywood found its Monster Man in Willis O'Brien: he and his protegee Ray Harryhausen went on to define a whole generation of often hokey but always inventive "creature features". Not only his meticulous animation, but significantly O'Brien's characterisation of Kong was the genius that made this film what it is today.

The creators of the Kong legend: Merian Cooper, Willis O'Brien, Fay Wray and Ernst Schoedsack

It is on the surface, the Beauty and the Beast story to the Nth degree. I've never fully accepted this analogy, as this particular Beast is so HUGE. Nor does he transfer into a handsome young prince - Kong is what he is: a sheer, unbridled mass of bestiality, and we love him all the more for it.

The brilliance of the enterprise is the scale on which O'Brien and the directors achieve in depicting the story, from amusing conceits such as giving Kong a big enough door for him to be able to walk through and terrorize the Skull Islanders, to the rightly famous climax on the world's tallest building.

Only on occasions does the effect reach tacky and unconvincing proportions, with occasional close-ups of a mechanical full-scale Kong head, that by today's standards shows up as technically naive and fleetingly spoils the suspense - something which Peter Jackson ironed out and "improved" for his overlong 2004 remake. That, and the screaming of Kong's would-be bride, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray).

Another image of childhood terror, the giant hand reaching in to grab you (production sketch).

Wray had already become associated with the fantastic in thrillers such as Doctor X and The Vampire Bat, as well as working with Ernst Schoedsack in The Most Dangerous Game, a macabre mystery set on a remote island and laying some of the groundwork for King Kong. In truth, her repertoire for this, her most famous film role, is not much more than having to look pretty, sitting in a ginormous hand, flapping her legs in defiance, and screaming - like blue murder! It became her forte, and although she admitted herself that her own natural reaction to the monster would be stunned silence, the cavalier Merian Cooper (and Carl Denham) exploited their leading lady to the full, for what film producers perceive to be great horror. Fay Wray was a good enough screamer for people to forget that she was also quite a good (and spirited) actress.


On watching Kong for the first time at long last (in the safety of home during the daytime), my preconceived tears of fear had given way to tears of sadness - Kong has a heart and is fallible after all, like the rest of us. As the Empire State's most famous tourist eventually plummets from the 103rd floor, the aggrieved Carl Denham (whom you secretly wish had been the one to fall off the building instead) looks on at his prize act in a moment of reflection. "It wasn't the airplanes, it was beauty killed the beast."

The viewing gallery at the top floor of the Empire State Building

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

As one generation of blockbuster follows another, this film seems to get better and better with age.

It's ironic to think of the city of Baghdad in the context of more recent troubles, when this glorious film is very much by contrast the stuff of dream-like adventure. Equally ironic is that although the height of fantasy, it was made during the darkest days of World War II, with Alexander Korda's beloved Denham Studios too unsafe for filming, so production was switched to Hollywood, and some very American rocky mountains.

Apparently it was also an utter mess of an undertaking, but a spendid mixture of the exotic, the fantastic, and the humorous production. It's fascinating to delve through and wonder which of the various directors helmed which (Tim Whelan, Ludwig Berger, even Michael Powell, and others), when ultimately the presiding genius over it was Korda.

His scheme was to adapt the epic romantic sweep of the Arabian Knights utilising his two most popular stars of the time: Sabu and Conrad Veidt. Sabu was the star of Elephant Boy and also the original Mowgli The Jungle Book, and whose popularity was rocketing skywards, for which Abu the thief became his lasting legacy, whilst Conrad Veidt had a loyal female following as the mysterious, velvet-voiced romantic hero/villain of The Spy in Black - so The Thief of Bagdad was very much designed as a way of drawing in these two audiences together into the box office.

Abu enters the enclave of the All-Seeing Eye. Arachnophobes beware...

Indeed, the film unfolds very much like two separate narratives revolving around these two figures, with Sabu's impish, adventure-seeking thief who'd probably steal from his mother if he could (and maybe he had!) but has a heart of gold which will fulfill a prophecy, and the terrifyingly magnetic Veidt trying to woo the beautiful June Duprez (as a nameless but quintessential princess) under the nose of her eccentrically oblivious father (Miles Malleson) who is much more besotted with his toy collection - and in particular Jaffar's magical flying horse.

In these days when villains have to be "justified" or given "realistic" terrorist-like motivations, there's just no need to explain Jaffar's villainy; he just is, but with a compelling undertone of devotion that prevents him from hypnotizing the princess into loving him.

Whilst the winsome romantic leads (Duprez and John Justin) are very much idealised heroes who are made for each other, it is Abu and Jaffar who have much more fun and relish - as also does Rex Ingram in one of the great film-stealing cameos. It's no surprise to learn that Ingram's characterisation of the Genie was the inspiration for the same character in Aladdin as voiced by Robin Williams.

It's a film since cherished by the likes of Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, and many others. Indeed, one can see in Star Wars all the the elements of heroism that can be traced back to the Thief of Bagdad: the mysticism, the evil wizard, the wizened sage, the beautiful princess, the roguish smuggler hero, and perhaps most significantly, the magical special effects, which by today's CGI standards might seem primitive, but come with that key secret ingredient: enchantment.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)

A few years ago when a group of us were putting together ideas for an experimental film, we discussed ways to convey unusual visual metaphors in the camera, and a couple of us mentioned how we'd recently seen Once Upon a Time in the West on TV, and remembered in particular a recurring scene of a blurred figure on the horizon, constantly walking in the distance towards the camera. It is one of many indelible images that Sergio Leone would use in his films, and Once Upon a Time in the West is one of his finest, quirkiest, most haunting of epics.

Leone had of course, become famous for his "Spaghetti" Westerns, a new resurgence in the genre with Clint Eastwood immortally linked to the series, but otherwise mostly Italian actors pretending to be American (and seemingly deliberately badly dubbed), and filmed in the Spanish desert pretending to be the Wild West. They made a killing at the box office, in more ways than one. For some it was a cynical, violent reproach to the good old days of the Hollywood Western, but whether or not you liked the method of film making, they had an undeniably rich stylization about them, coupled with Ennio Morricone's lyrical music.

Both Leone and Morricone pulled out all the stops for this one.

Once Upon a Time in the West was also an opportunity for Leone to actually explore these American locations for real - production difficulties only allowed him to film in certain iconic locations such as Monument Valley (used for many a John Ford epic), but in a very unusual, distinctively Leonesque style.

Just take the beginning, where for a whole TEN minutes we have the credits lazily dragging themselves in, whilst three gunmen (Jack Elam, Woody Strode and Al Mulock) sit around at the railroad station......waiting - for someone (Charles Bronson) who isn't going to get a pleasant reception. Legend has it that Leone wanted his three original stars of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach - to play the three assassins, who are thereby killed off within the first reel.

Soon after that, the body count doesn't get any lower, as an Irish family are unexpectedly and ruthlessly wiped out by an anonymous gang of killers, headed by: Henry Fonda, of all people - another of Leone's quirky and darkly cynical touches, turning the Western convention on its head by having Fonda, so often the image of upstanding, dependable American values, to be the ruthless psychopathic killer. It's casting which sits uncomfortably with his other roles, although in a sense it has a perfect logic: Fonda was so often the defender of men, women and children, so naturally he also becomes their exterminator, like the fallen angel: as one critic of the time put it, who else could do such a dreadful deed but Henry Fonda?

A moment of lost maternal comfort for Jill McBain.

It's hard to tell who exactly is the leading character in OUATITW: maybe each of the four main characters (five if we include Gabriele Ferzetti's railway tycoon) cover the various aspects of the West: the frontiersman's wife/widow Jill McBain (in the very Italian shape of Claudia Cardinale), or Fonda's evil gunman Frank, or Jason Robards in fine Doc Holliday-like form as Cheyenne, or Bronson's "man with no name", usually considered the lead role but here bizarrely given fourth billing.

Watching it nowadays, it seems quite acceptable to see Charles (Death Wish) Bronson in a film where loads of people are getting killed, but back in 1969 it was an unexpectedly startling moment - and the flashback scene where the mysterious man on the horizon is finally revealed - is one of the most memorable payoffs in cinema history.

Sergio Leone intended the film as a requiem to the Western of sorts, with the coming of the railroad signalling the beginning of the end of the old ways, and most of the characters are also experiencing the twilight of their active lives. Cheyenne is a grizzled gunfighter who's trod the fiery path many times, Bronson's character is a man with an old grudge, and Henry Fonda himself was already approaching middle age. It's poignant to think that those three actors - Fonda, Bronson, Robards - have all since, indeed, died; only Claudia Cardinale is the surviving member of the four principals.


The melancholy of the film is reflected by Ennio Morricone's beautiful score, with not just one but three main themes - the stirring and startling "Harmonica" theme which covers Henry Fonda's character quite well too, the rickety banjo of Cheyenne's theme, and the beautiful main theme to the McBain family and the railroad; a very operatic Italian perspective on the classic American Wild West. Long, violent, elegiac, and utterly absorbing.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

If Five Easy Pieces was a great evocation of the downside of the American Way, then this is the great affirmation of it.

The life mentioned in the title is actually pretty dark and cruel at times - I mention this by way of contrast in what is generally considered to be a sentimental classic and one of Frank Capra's most beloved of films, and also arguably James Stewart's greatest role.

The darkness wasn't just confined to the screen: in the hardened post-war years of the 1940s, the American Dream was also the birth of film noir with established classics like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Killers, The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Asphalt Jungle, which represented much more the darker side of human nature, so that by comparison to all these, It's a Wonderful Life seemed a little sentimental and old-fashioned, in keeping with the "Capra-corn" values of the 1930s.

James Stewart however, had also come out of World War II as a decorated bomber pilot, and was ready for a return to acting with something a little edgier from his wholesome, regular guy image, and this seemed the perfect niche between the two. His George Bailey is one of life's would-be crusaders, an often selfless champion for other people's welfare, whilst himself always striving to see the world and enjoy all its richness and adventure - the perennial Luke Skywalker or Dorothy figure always yearning to leave the farm, but in his case never able to.

Not that George is unhappy; certainly not when he has the welcome arms of Donna Reed to fall into as his childhood sweetheart Mary, who becomes his wife and mother of their four children. He also has a thriving community in his home town of Bedford Falls, such as taxi driver Ernie (Frank Faylen) and his cop pal Bert (Ward Bond) - apparently the inspiration for the Bert & Ernie double act on Sesame Street. There's also the local vamp Violet (Gloria Grahame in sultry form), and two elderly gents who are a primal influence of George's life; his staunchly upstanding father Peter (a great cameo by Samuel Hinds) and ageing drugstore boss Mr. Gower (H.B. Warner - who by coincidence or otherwise played Jesus in King of Kings some 20 years before), who in a fit of grief nearly prescribes the wrong pills to a customer and is only prevented from committing manslaughter by George's quick thinking. The film also has its incidental charms, such as the prom dance which suddenly turns into a swimming bath, and a great ad lib moment when one of Bailey's customers (during the Wall Street crash) asks for a very small amount of money so that the Building & Loan can stay in business - Stewart gives the actress an impromptu smacker of a kiss.

If there is a weakness to the characters drawn by Capra for me, it is the need to create a physical villain of the piece, in the shape of Lionel Barrymore's Henry Potter: no fault of the actor himself, brilliantly played in Barrymore's distinctive style, just Capra's notion that all the meanness and cynicism of the world had to have a human face, when the real villain of IAWL is Fate itself.

All these disparate elements that weave through the film, and the whole generational span of George Bailey's life, come to their head when his Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) loses a fortune by accident, and George is the one to suffer. Driven to imminent bankruptcy and rapidly sinking into despair and misfortune, he feels his life has become one big waste, and desires to jump off the bridge into the river - until an eccentric old gent named Clarence (the splendid Henry Travers) who happens to be George's guardian angel, jumps in the river first because he knows George's selfless nature to help others.

It's sometimes said that the things we take most for granted are those that we miss so much when they're gone. That certainly applies to IAWL's sinister third act, where George's tempestuous wish that he had never been born is granted, and we see the town Bedford Falls would have/has become without him: a den of vice, misery and corruption - sadly, a slight reflection of the modern world today - now impertinently named Pottersville, with Violet now a prostitute, old man Gower a self-pitying drunkard, and George's brother Harry drowned as a child because George was previously there to pull him out of the lake. Strangest (and perhaps most unlikely) of the lot, lovely Mary is a bookish spinster.

In my view, with this far greater and more sophisticated nightmarish twist in the tale than Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the resultant elation of George when he wishes his life back again and rushes along the street wishing everyone Merry Christmas, is put into context. The finale where all the friends and relatives club together to raise funds to take him out of debt, is pure Capracorn, but beautifully mounted, and quite satisfying - when, once again, you understand the circumstances.

For many people It's a Wonderful Life was first experienced as a perennial favourite for American TV audiences every Christmas. My good fortune however was to see it for the first time in the cinema on a 1997 re-release. Coming out of the auditorium that afternoon left me with a special feeling of deep self-gratification, a sense that one's own achievements, no matter how small or insignificant, have value and enrich the world. And It's a Wonderful Life and an enriching film indeed!

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Oscar Wilde once said that people destroy the thing they most love; whether that maxim applies to Jack Nicholson's Bobby Dupee is debatable, but there's clearly some element of denial in his self-loathing, as he seeks to shirk away from responsibility of anything he might be attached to. Never at any point does he cease to remind us that he is not someone to sympathise with; his actions at numerous points during the film detract from those friends and relatives around him - yet he is compelling and moving in one of Nicholson's best roles, in perhaps his and also Bob Rafelson's finest hour and three quarters, an indictment of the attitudes and neuroses of a disaffected generation of Americans in the post-1960s.

It also has some great cinematic moments that crystallize modern life - particularly the "chicken sandwich" diner scene where Bobby irritably smooth talks the waitress into giving him the order he wants. I'm also impressed by his bowling skills - Jack Nicholson was apparently the star player in the Walt Disney Cartoon Department's bowling team!

At the beginning of the film, Bobby has some measure of disaffected contentment, working on an oilrig with his buddy Elton (Billy Green Bush). But deep down Bobby knows that this is really only a life that he lives at a casual arm's distance, after he rebelled against the life given him by his well-to-do but suffocating family. It's this clash of different worlds, between down-at-heel and affluent, that informs Five Easy Pieces. A perceptive moment in the film is when his cousin chides Bobby for playing at vaudeville musical revue: "You don't really call that music, do you?" "Yes, I do. It's music."

Other men might have taken a benevolent view of the life they have been given, but Bobby is casually resentful (and secretly snobbish) about his pregnant, simple-minded girlfriend Rayette - sympathetically played by Karen Black.

His two worlds come into conflict when he learns from his dysfunctional sister (Lois Smith) that their father has suffered a stroke and is dying. A chance for redemption or some sort of closure presents itself - but all Bobby gets out of the experience is the hots for his brother's gifted but haughty wife Catherine (Susan Anspach), who is attracted to Bobby for his talent but likewise repelled by him, which only turns Bobby further on the road to self-expurgation.

It's perhaps appropriate, given the film's emotional apathy, that Bobby should make his confession to his father as a one-way conversation, with no opportunity for this particularly stern and disciplinarian figure to make his own influence on Bobby's aimlessness. This was quite a difficult scene for Nicholson to perform (his own parentage was as an orphan), but movingly draws upon his own personal upbringing.

In confess I've often felt like Nicholson in the film's unforgettable non-finale, where he stands in front of a mirror and stares at himself forlornly, and though I wouldn't go as far at hitching a lift northwards as he does, the emotional despair is certainly just as prevalent.