Watch: Criterion Collection Presents 3 Reasons To Check Out 'Five Easy Pieces' Plus Jack Nicholson Talks Making The Film

No matter what variety of cinephile you might be, it’s pretty damn hard to settle on a favorite Jack Nicholson performance from his golden run in the late '60s to the early '70s. Some swear by his crazed, magnificent turn as mental patient Randall P. McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next,” while others may be partial to his reefer-mad, conspiracy-spouting lawyer in the seminal outlaw flick “Easy Rider.” My personal pick would have to be Nicholson’s pitch-perfect turn as private dick Jake Gittes in Roman Polanski’s immortal “Chinatown,” but there’s no denying the power and magnetism that he exhibited in “Five Easy Pieces,” the 1970 film for which Nicholson was deservedly nominated for his first Oscar (he lost, but ended up taking one home five years later for his stellar work in 'Cuckoo’s Next').

Bob Rafelson’s drama, about a hard-living blue collar sonofabitch named Bobby Duplea who's running away from his past as a pampered musical prodigy, is a bruising, blackly funny...