Easy Rider (DVD)

'Easy Rider' is the best film made in the Sixties. I'm just throwing that one in to make sure I get some comments from fellow film fans. I will accept votes for 'The Wild Bunch', 'The Manchurian Candidate' and 'Lawrence of Arabia, but 'Easy Rider' is the one that makes it for me. It's a fairly plotless film, with some variable performances around the fringes (though a quartet of superb ones at the centre), the direction is sometimes too loose, and there are moments (particularly when Billy starts tripping out on LSD) when the film-makers are experimenting too self-consciously. But you can't get beyond it ...

Easy Rider – the 1969 classic is the latest entry to my (rather small) video collection. After seeing Easy Rider a few days ago I can now see what all the fuss was about… Two motorcyclists set off on a coast-to-coast road trip in hope of discovering and experiencing the real America. Along the way they pick up hitchhikers, smoke a joint here and there, get pissed every now and then and even visit a hippie commune. The two “hippie” motorcyclists are played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Fonder is the more relaxed of the two and perhaps the most messed up, Hopper appears slightly more edgy throughout most of the film. The ...

Easy Rider is the original road movie, there were others before it, but in terms of the expression of the restless questing of a gneration it has no equal. The later part of the 60's was a time of social unrest and upheavel across the western world. It was a time when, for a brief while, young children believed that the world was changing and stood together to try and reshape that world. The generation of the 50's challenged their parent's authority, the generation of the 60's challenged the authority and necessity of the State. Society was experimenting with new ways of living. Personal expression and development was the order of the day, ...