Each month, MovieJawn will be highlighting the work of one star or director, focusing on what makes them unique in the Hollywood (or worldwide) firmament! First up is Jack Nicholson for his birthday month!

by Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

Jack Nicholson is certainly great in his signature roles—as McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Torrance in The Shining, and of course, J.J. Gittes in Chinatown. But one of his most underappreciated performances is as wiseguy Charley Partanna in Prizzi’s Honor. 

One of the reasons Nicholson is so great here is because he steers away from his typical mannerisms and schtick. He plays a vulnerable tough guy, a character who is not the smartest man in the room. Nicholson has a dumb, blank, almost stoned look on his face throughout the film that conveys his practical inability to hold more than one thought in his head at a time. His quizzical reaction shots are hilarious. One comic moment early in the film, has Charley’s former girlfriend, Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston, fabulous in her Oscar-winning role) explaining to him that Art Deco is a style, not an Italian man.

Charley is a hitman for the Sicilian mob in New York, a good soldier who follows orders having sworn loyalty to the Prizzi family, headed by Don Corrado Prizzi (William Hickey). Charley once had a thing with Maerose, but a situation that occurred resulted in her being exiled from the family. She is now back in his life after four years, and he leans on her like one of the few friends he can trust. He is not smart enough to realize that she too, has needs. 

The film opens at a wedding where Charley first sees the alluring Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner). He is besotted and does a double—no triple—take when he catches sight of her sitting in the balcony at the ceremony. Charley is like a lovestruck teenager, and at the reception he fixes his tie and smooths his hair as he prepares to ask Irene to dance. It is kind of charming and pathetic at the same time, and Nicholson plays this scene for all it is worth.

Irene dances with him, but they are interrupted when she has to take a call. Charley hasn’t even learned her name when he realizes Irene has disappeared, possibly never to be seen again. Dejected but determined, he single-mindedly tries to track her down. When Irene calls him out of the blue late at night, she tells him she had to go back home to LA. Charley, so excited to reconnect with this woman who rocked his world, arranges to meet her for lunch the next day. (An amusing running joke features a shot of the airplane at every cross-country trip—and there are several of them). Charley’s expressions of joy and excitement after he hangs up the phone having reconnected with Irene are funny and infectious. 

Nicholson may be exaggerating his eyes, mouth, and forehead as well as his Brooklyn accent, but it all works beautifully. When he meets Irene for lunch, he is wearing a canary yellow jacket that only Jack Nicholson can pull off. Charley’s effort at being seductive is his asking, Irene, a tax consultant, “What do you do when you consult?” He is like a horny teenager, trying to engage in small talk about “a hormonal kind of love” so he can get her into bed. Turner matches him beat for beat which is why Charley declares his love almost instantaneously. Their sex is pure physical comedy. (Director John Huston establishes a real deadpan tone that is perfect for the material.)

Charley is so stupid for Irene that when he makes a return trip to LA to bump off a guy, he is shocked to discover Irene is the guy’s wife. Moreover, he gives her a pass for not knowing the whereabouts of a missing $360,000 from a scam her husband pulled in Vegas. “If you were anybody else, I’d blow you away,” he remarks. Ah, love.

Prizzi’s Honor eventually reveals that Irene is a hit woman—she left Charley at the wedding reception to do a job—and had a part in the Vegas scam. Charley is dumbfounded by this news, but this amps up the fun. “Do I ice her? Do I marry her? Which one of these?” he asks Maerose, in one of the film’s iconic lines. Charley truly needs the guidance, and Maerose’s answer—which is to marry Irene—sets a chain of events in motion. 

But first, there is a terrific sequence involving Irene helping Charley on a job he is asked to do—though he is embarrassed that his wife comes up with the plan; it makes him look bad! During the job, however, a situation arises that complicates things, and long story short, both Charley and Irene are liabilities for different reasons. They are each asked to take the other out. Like not on a date. “Do I ice her? Do I marry her?” indeed.

Nicholson downplays his performance in Prizzi’s Honor, which is why it is so distinctive. One of his best scenes is a meal where he explains to Don Corrado Prizzi what happened on the hit that went wrong. “You’re a thinker,” Don Corrado observes, flattering Charley, and Nicholson absorbs this and smiles slightly, as a young boy might when his father tells him he was good when he was expecting to be in trouble. As Don Corrado floats the idea that Charley will be made Boss, Charley is rendered speechless. Nicholson processes this with his eyes and his tongue in his mouth; Charley just can’t believe his luck. 

Equally good is his exchange with Irene when he learns she lied to him, but also that he has been targeted for a hit—and she is the contractor. He slowly reacts to Irene’s slight—“They wanted the best!”—incredulous that his own wife would be asked to kill him. 

Even if Nicholson’s performance borders on being showy or hammy at times, he is not in his scenery-chewing or self-parody mode like his subsequent turns in Batman or Wolf. Nicholson’s Charley is having a real internal, dramatic conflict. This is what he is expressing when he asks, “Do I ice her? Do I marry her?” because Charley does not have much hope or luck with love. But, as his father (John Randolph) tells Charley, “She is your wife. We are your life.” Decisions. Decisions. This is a tough paradox for Charley, who operates on instinct. Nicholson make his decision paralysis palpable. 

Prizzi’s Honor hinges on the who will kill whom drama, but the real suspense comes from the manipulations done by Maerose and Don Corrado Prizzi, among others. 

What makes the film so satisfying is how unselfconscious Nicholson’s performance here is. He is looser, funnier here, with only a few scenes of his patented raging. Nicholson certainly enjoys his scenes with Turner, which are oddly charming as he swoons over her even as she feeds him lies during their whirlwind romance.

But it is his exchanges with Anjelica Huston (Nicholson’s off-screen romantic partner at the time) that really spark. When Charley comes over to see Maerose late one night, and she proposes that they have sex “Right here. On the Oriental. With all the lights on,” his reaction, “Mamma Mia!” is priceless and why Prizzi’s Honor is classic Jack.