In the very first shot in Bob Rafelson’s 1972 film, The King of Marvin Gardens, we get a long, still closeup of Jack Nicholson’s huge face. It’s a simple setup—Nicholson, as David Staebler, sits in a dark room somewhere and speaks to an unknown entity off camera. There isn’t anything in the frame besides David’s head. We’re so close we can’t see the top of his hairline or the bottom of his neck.
Our vision, with little else to focus on, skates over human textures: the subtle stubble of a recently shaved face, the soft creases in a full bottom lip, wispy eyebrows, pock-like pores, and the occasional glimpse of a chunky knit cardigan. He wears clear framed glasses with smeary lenses, which catch what little light comes from the right side of the screen. In fact, the light and shadow play here are, to my eye, what make this frame so remarkable.
For the duration of this scene—and we’re here for nearly six minutes—David’s face is starkly lit, half in light and half in pitch dark shadows. He is cut down the center of his nose. On the right half of his face, we get all those great textures. On the left half, there is only darkness—darkness and the glint of his clear framed glasses.
There is an obvious metaphor here, something to do with the two-facedness of this character, but because this is the very first scene, we don’t know enough about David yet to make this judgment. Instead, we’re along for the ride as he tells his listener (and us) the story behind why he never eats fish.
It’s a good story, full of significant details and complex actions and emotions. In a scene whose main visual stimulus is the line between light and shadow, so many other images come to life through David’s words: a model train tucked into hamburger meat, breaded fish warming on the stove, a “flat heel” of pumpernickel bread. I won’t give away much more from the monologue here, but suffice it to say that not only does David solidify himself as a great storyteller from the very beginning of the film, but he also doesn’t shy away from depicting himself as an imperfect human, someone who is capable of awful things.
This complexity undermines the easiness of the light-and-shadow metaphor. At no point in David’s story is he either a wholly good or a wholly bad actor. It’s not so stark a contrast. The following scenes, in which we get glimpses of David’s domestic life, only heighten this complexity.
In the context of the rest of the film this first frame, and its refusal to adhere to its own visual metaphor, is a masterful character introduction. After David’s story about the fish, the plot hits the ground running as his semi-estranged brother Jason, played perfectly by Bruce Dern, contacts him for the first time in ages, and the two set off on an ill-fated, illegal adventure in Atlantic City, along with Sally (Ellen Burstyn absolutely devours this role) and Jessica (played by the lovely Julia Anne Robinson, who died tragically in a fire a few years after this film’s release).
When the viewer meets Jason, whose freewheeling charisma and blind idealism shine even through the bars of a jail cell, we might expect David, with his quiet, bespectacled demeanor, to play the straight man to his magnanimous, cruel, and slightly unhinged brother. But no. It slowly becomes clear that, while David might insist he knows better than Jason, he too has too much of that same unhinged nature inside him to put a stop to their obviously doomed activities. He can be magnanimous when he wants to, and just like in the first scene of the film, he can rattle off a story that messes with any listener’s mind. As the film proceeds, the brothers feed off one another, making questionable decisions, unable to stop or separate until the film’s perfect (imho) conclusion.
I have a thing for firsts in films. They’re capable of doing so much good work. They set the tone, establish visual rules and cues, and ideally hook the reader into a story we won’t want to look away from. A first frame is crucial. A character introduction is crucial. Jack Nicholson’s giant head, in all its light and shadowed glory, along with the perfectly calibrated yarn he spins about himself and his brother and a plate of fish, tells us everything we need to know about David Staebler. He’s not a bad man, but when he gets together with his brother he can be a dangerous one. It’s not our fault that when we first meet him we’re so close up we just can’t see that yet.