Monday, April 15, 2013

Film - The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)


The 1970s was the heyday of a certain kind of American movie which stressed gritty, real performances, scene writing that jumped into the middle of things in-progress, captured accident and unease, told stories with human behavior as the medium, and sported the message - break out and be free.  It was a great time for American movie making that doesn't have a mainstream equivalent now. The King of Marvin Gardens: Bruce Dern as a bullshit artist who believes his own hype, an unusually quiet and vulnerable Jack Nicholson, and a brilliantly unhinged Ellen Burstyn (dir. Bob Rafelson).

2 comments:

Sheila O'Malley said...

Love this movie! Love the atmosphere - and the shots of Atlantic City. Really haunting.

Ted said...

S - this is one of those movies I could have sworn that I had seen, but it was obvious once I started watching that I never had. I'm crazy about it.