11 classics to kick off 2011…
In conjunction with the exhibition William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, the Film Department will screen eleven classic road movies that typify the nomadic spirit of a rebellious generation. Drop outs, drifters, outlaws, hobos, hippies, and vets, they’re itinerants of all sorts united by a desire to outrun their past and drive their destiny. Launching with Arthur Penn’s groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, in which the archetypal couple-on-the-run is stylishly portrayed by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, cementing its status with Dennis Hopper‘s trippy, counterculture vision quest Easy Rider in 1969, the road movie became a popular genre for the individualistic filmmakers of New Hollywood. This series showcases the work of these filmmakers—Penn, Monte Hellman, Michael Cimino, Jerry Schatzberg—and of their collaborators: exemplary cinematographers (Vilmos Zsigmond, László Kovács, Conrad Hall), iconic stars (Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Clint Eastwood, Peter Fonda, Karen Black, Tuesday Weld, Jeff Bridges), cult writers (Joan Didion, Rudolph Wurlitzer, Terry Southern) and musicians making their big screen debuts (James Taylor, Arlo Guthrie, Dennis Wilson).
Seen together as a single body of work, the road movies of 60s and 70s offer a vibrant portrait of a vast, multifaceted country shaped by violence—the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, the Kent state shootings of 1970, the constant carnage of Vietnam, the atrocities at the Munich Olympics—and of a generation haunted by broken dreams—Nixon’s election in 1968, and the acid burnouts that followed the utopian visions of Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury. Road movies also provide a sharp look at the mundane yet colorful details that make up modern life-truckstop diners, stock car raceways, trailer parks, dive bars, oil fields, highway bottlenecks. From inhabited deserts to empty city centers, the American landscape has never been more astutely rendered than in these films.
“True Grit: The Golden Age of Road Movies” 1.7 -1.21.11 — find the entire schedule here…
