#Easy rider movie movie#

Hanson gets the cyclists sprung from jail and then promptly joins them.

The way another man might use a four-letter word. As played by Nicholson, George Hanson is a marvelously realized character, who talks in a high, squeaky Southern accent and uses a phrase like 'Lord have mercy!' Only defense against life is a cheerful but not abject acceptance of it. Wyatt and Billy are in a small Southern town- in jail for having disturbed the peace of a local parade- when they meet fellow-inmate George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), a handsome, alcoholic young lawyer of good family and genially bad habits, a man whose There comes on the scene a very real character and everything that has been accepted earlier as a sort of lyrical sense impression suddenly looks flat and foolish. Suddenly, however, a strange thing happens. Like a group taking a break, the cyclists stop (and so does the music) for quiet encounters- with a toothless rancher and his huge, happy family or with a commune of thin hippies, whose idyll seems ringed with unacknowledged desperation. They roll down macadam highways that look like black velvet ribbons, under skies of incredible purity, and the soundtrack rocks with oddly counterpointed emotions of Steppenwolf, the Byrds, the Electric Prunes- dark and smoky cries for liberation.

We accept them in their moving isolation, against the magnificent Southwestern landscapes of beige and green and pale blue. They simply exist- they are bizarre comic strip characters with occasional balloons over their heads reading: 'Like you're doing your thing,' They don't communicate with us, or each other, but after a while it doesn't seem to matter. Two not-so-young cyclists, Wyatt (Peter Fonda) who affects soft leather breeches and a Capt.Īmerica jacket, and Billy (Dennis Hopper), who looks like a perpetually stoned Buffalo Bill, are heading east from California toward New Orleans. I felt this way during the first half-hour of 'Easy Rider,' and then, almost reluctantly, fell into the rhythm of the determinedly inarticulate piece. What I mean to say is, if you don't groove, you don't groove. What scene? Whose? Why? Man, I can't tell you if you don't know. Right away you know that somebody is making a statement, and you can bet your boots (cowboy, black leather) that's going to put down the whole rotten scene.

#Easy rider movie movie#

How else are we to approach a movie that advertises itself: 'A man went looking for America. 'Easy Rider,' which opened yesterday at the Beekman, is a motorcycle drama with decidedly superior airs about it. 'Easy Rider': A Statement on Film By VINCENT CANBY