THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS

 "The King of Marvin Gardens" was the film Bob Rafelson made after his success with "Five Easy Pieces", again with Jack Nicholson in the lead and it's one of the best American films of the seventies but it was a commercial flop. It's certainly as good as "Five Easy Pieces"; a bleak, cautionary fable on the failure of the American Dream. Just the kind of thing the public didn't want.

Nicholson is the introvert, cynical disc jockey and Dern, his extrovert day-dreamer of a brother and they haven't seen each other in two years when Dern contacts Nicholson asking him to come to Atlantic City where he's shacked up with the unstable Ellen Burstyn and her step-daughter Julia Anne Robinson. His proposal is that he and Nicholson go into business together in Hawaii though it's clear from the moment we meet Dern that it's all a fantasy.

Jacob Brackman wrote the superb screenplay from his and Rafelson's original story and all four leading players are terrific. Critics felt at the time that the film would have been more successful if Nicholson's and Dern's roles had been reversed but I think they are perfectly cast. This is one of Nicholson's best and least ostentatious performances allowing Dern to fully stretch himself with one of his most full-bodied performances while Burstyn is totally fearless. As the step-daughter who finds herself in the middle of a strange menage a trois Julia Anne Robinson is also remarkably good; surely she would have had a major career had she not died tragically only two years later.

Of course, the film itself is a true American tragedy and its setting of Atlantic City in winter is inspired. You can almost smell the rot in the hotels with no guests and the funfairs with no customers with its characters capable of doing nothing but playing games and imagining a life none of them are destined to have. A misunderstood masterpiece that shouldn't be missed.