Five Easy Pieces, written by Adrien Joyce and directed by Bob Rafelson, fulfils the promise of the 1969 films that came before it. NEXT: Chinatown: 10 Reasons It’s The Best Film Noir Movie Ever Made. Five Easy Pieces had to be a children’s theatre performance which was risky, unprecedented and virtually impossible. Five Easy Pieces is the very definition of a character study, and one of the best American cinema has produced. A writer and film fan. For other uses, see, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, Best Drama Written Directly for the Screenplay, "Librarian of Congress Names 25 More Films to National Film Registry", "Complete National Film Registry Listing | Film Registry | National Film Preservation Board | Programs at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress", "Taking a bite out Nicholson's 'hold the chicken' legend", "Five Easy Pieces and the Loss of Sexual Innocence Come to DVD", "Leading repertory cinema Film Forum to showcase Digital Cinema Packages", "Auspicious Beginnings: Nicholson's Leitmotif in Five Easy Pieces", New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Five_Easy_Pieces&oldid=1015821976, Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe-winning performance, United States National Film Registry films, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 3 April 2021, at 19:25. Once again, Bob leaves everything behind, seeking out something else but not knowing what it is. [2] [2] For the Belgian audience it is interesting because it stages a … He leaves his family's estate feeling no better about his life then he did before. Following Jack Nicholson’s breakout supporting turn in Easy Rider, director Bob Rafelson devised a powerful leading role for the new star in the searing character study Five Easy Pieces. Despite personality differences, Catherine and Bobby are immediately attracted to each other and later have sex in her room. In involves us in these people, this time and place, and we care for them, even though they don't request our affection or applause. Shot by Lászlo Kóvács, the movie’s first half revels in images of Americana. [4] Filming primarily occurred near Victoria, British Columbia, with additional photography occurring in Florence and Portland, Oregon. Storming from the room in search of Catherine, he discovers his father's male nurse giving Partita a massage. —alfiehitchie. He likely doesn't care that much about the toast but is going through the motions simply because he is being told he can't do something. [8] By 1976 the film had earned $8.9 million in North America. There was a certain irony about the word "easy" in the title. RELATED: 10 Funniest Road Trip Movies, Ranked. Roger Ebert claims that there were only three women in the movie that Nicholson’s character got involved with. However, Black brings a lot to the role and makes her more complex. [12], John Simon criticized Five Easy Pieces for its pretentiousness and oversimplification but said if anything saved the film from triviality, it was the performances, especially those of Karen Black, Lois Smith, and Billy Green Bush. As he is getting to know his brother's fiancé, Catherine, she asks him to play a piece on the piano. One of the main themes of the film is alienation and it captures that idea … Jack's five easy pieces were piano pieces, easy for him to perform, less so for others. Still, Five Easy Pieces has something to say about class politics and elitist gatekeeping, primarily using its two contrasting settings to do so. When he gets word his father is ill, he heads back to his upper-middle-class home along with his waitress girlfriend. He went on to direct the marvellous The King Of Marvin Gardens, then his decline began, all too soon. While Bobby acts the part of a blue-collar laborer, he is secretly a former classical pianist who comes from an upper-class family of musicians. The four are thrown out of a restaurant after Bobby gets into a sarcastic argument with an obstinate waitress who refuses to accommodate his meal order. According to Variety, the film earned $1.2 million in North America in 1970. RELATED: 10 Most Culturally Influential Movies Of The 1970s. It holds an 88% "Certified Fresh" rating on online review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 52 reviews, with an average rating of 8.60/10. That notion of being so unhappy with the state of society around you was not something you saw in movies up until that point. [13], On November 16, 1999, Columbia TriStar Home Video released the film on two-sided DVD-Video, featuring both fullscreen (4:3) and widescreen formats. Tonight’s classic is Five Easy Pieces, the seminal 1970 drama directed by Bob Rafelson. Alienation being presented in this way was new in Hollywood but represented a feeling many people at this time were feeling. Glad to be a part of Screen Rant's positive and fun community and have the opportunity to share my thoughts with you. The critics' consensus states: "An important touchstone of the New Hollywood era, Five Easy Pieces is a haunting portrait of alienation that features one of Jack Nicholson's greatest performances. The title of "Five Easy Pieces" refers not to the women its hero makes along the road, for there are only three, but to a book of piano exercises he owned as a child. Report This. CAMPO always ask directors who they are sure have no idea about working with children. He does and it moves Catherine very much only for him to dismiss it as the easiest piece he could think of. Shortly into the trip, they stop for gas, and while Rayette goes into a diner for coffee, Bobby abandons her, hitching a ride on a truck headed north. Bob is willing to leave, he feels he doesn't deserve to be happy. Rayette threatens to kill herself if Bobby leaves her, so he reluctantly asks her along. As the hippie culture was beginning to fade away, there was still a divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. From The Shining to Chinatown to Batman to As Good as it Gets, his great performances are too many to name. I always assumed that it was about a series of women that the protagonist slept with; hence, “Five Easy Pieces [of Ass].” It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, so I don’t remember the exact tally. He walked away from that privileged life years earlier, but he returns to it quite easily and even feels embarrassed by his less-cultured girlfriend. [9], The film opened to positive reviews. Edit. Released in 1970, "Five Easy Pieces" heralded a renaissance of highly personal character driven films championed by not only since film's director, Bob Rafelson, but also Robert Altman and Hal Ashby, among others. Entry of the Gladiators, 1897, by Julius Fučík. That is why you keep seeing them making horrible e-discovery bloopers. When Bobby learns that his father is dying, he travels to his family home in Washington to visit him, taking along his uncouth girlfriend. Also listed are four songs sung by Tammy Wynette: "Stand by Your Man", "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", "Don't Touch Me", and "When There's a Fire in Your Heart". By 1976 the film had earned $8.9 million in North America. The traffic jam on the freeway was shot on a new and unopened section of Interstate 5 near Bakersfield, California. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards, and in 2000, was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation.[2][3]. I'm amazed that you don't hear much about this terrific film these days. It includes audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson (originally recorded for a Criterion laserdisc); Soul Searching in "Five Easy Pieces", a 2009 video piece with Rafelson; BBStory, a 2009 documentary about the BBS era, with Rafelson, actors Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Ellen Burstyn, and directors Peter Bogdanovich and Henry Jaglom, among others; and audio excerpts from a 1976 AFI interview with Rafelson. He picks a fight with the very strong nurse, who easily subdues him. Their clients’ reaction to these mistakes is the truly amazing thing. The film tells the story of surly oil rig worker Bobby Dupea, whose rootless blue-collar existence belies his privileged youth as a piano prodigy. Bobby Dupea works in an oil field in Kern County, California. Edit Report This. The opening credits list the five classical piano pieces played in the film and referenced in the title. “Five Easy Pieces” is a great example of the “new Hollywood era”, which started with 1967’s “Bonnie & Clyde” and lasted through the ‘70’s until blockbusters like “Jaws” & … Rayette runs out of money at the motel and comes to the Dupea estate unannounced. Bobby tries to persuade Catherine to go away with him, but she declines, telling him he cannot ask for love when he does not love himself, or anything at all. As written by Carole Eastman (under the pseudonym Adrien Joyce) and directed by Rafelson, Five Easy Pieces is American Antonioni, with its associations between characters and landscapes and its willingness to subvert conventional narrative for character exploration (the irony, of course, is that Antonioni made a film in the U.S. that very same year, Zabriskie Point, which bombed with audiences … Did he really thoughtlessly pick an easy piece out of laziness and indifference, or did he pick a piece that meant something to him as a child but refuses to acknowledge its importance? The movie deals with this class division in an interesting way with Bob being a part of both worlds. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. Released half a century ago this week, Five Easy Pieces was the film that cemented Jack Nicholson’s status as a Hollywood leading man, following his star-making supporting turn in Easy … After being told he can't order a side of toast, Bob orders a toasted chicken sandwich, hold the chicken. Though a simple story, the film has become a touchstone in American filmmaking and a prime example of some of the greatest work being produced at this time. Partita tells him that their father, from whom Bobby is estranged, has suffered two strokes, and urges him to return to the family home in Washington. An important touchstone of the New Hollywood era, Five Easy Pieces is a haunting portrait of alienation that features one of Jack Nicholson's greatest performances. These are just some of the reasons it's such a classic. We slowly realize this is just another place Bob has runaway from in his life. While the film's earlier scenes were shot in California, the majority was filmed in the Pacific Northwest. He doesn't feel like he fits in with any of it and thus lives a generally unhappy existence. 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Driving north, they pick up two stranded women headed for Alaska, Terry and Palm. [18], This article is about the 1970 film. The film, one of the best American films, is about the distance between that boy, practicing to become a concert pianist, and the need he feels twenty years later to disguise himself as an oil-field rigger. He is funny and charming while also displaying a bad boy edge and a sense of danger. Five Easy Pieces is considered to be one of the greatest American films ever made. We remember Bobby and Rayette, because they are so completely themselves, so stuck, so needy, so brave in their loneliness. We are introduced to Bob in his blue-collar life. When Bobby gets Rayette pregnant and Elton is arrested, Bobby quits his job and goes to Los Angeles, where his sister Partita, also a pianist, is making a recording. The era of New Hollywood was a massive movement that changed American filmmaking forever. He spends most of his time with his girlfriend Rayette, a waitress who has dreams of singing country music, or with his friend, fellow oil worker Elton, with whom he bowls, gets drunk, and philanders. He is unhappy in his job, his relationship and seems completely directionless. It focuses on character over plot and isn't afraid to show us a lead character who is not easy to like. Younger filmmakers began to emerge as unique voices who got the opportunity to tell complex stories that Hollywood would never have made a decade earlier. [17], On June 30, 2015, Five Easy Pieces was released as a stand-alone DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection. This can also be seen of the hitchhikers they pick on their road trip up who are obsessed with 'filth'. Nicholson’s Dupea embodies the self-destructive dissatisfaction that was common to a lot of movie characters in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but his unhappiness resonates more, because he isn’t the kind of person that usually gets movies made about him. Well, you know, I'm really interested in Greek tragedies and art house movies and folk music – things that children don't really like! In fact, almost any movie with Jack Nicholson will feature him as a wise-cracking, social misfit of sorts. Five Easy Pieces is your first collaboration with children. But when he sees that pomposity in others, it angers him to the point of lashing out. Without a jacket to handle the cold northern weather, Bob refuses the trucker's offer to use his spare coat. Five Easy Pieces is a 1970 American drama film written by Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) and Bob Rafelson, and directed by Rafelson. He drew more headlines in 2016 with “Five Easy Pieces,” about Marc Dutroux, a notorious Belgian pedophile and murderer, in which the actors were … Another very powerful scene comes late in the film as Bob is home at his family's estate. This is a very interesting moment for the character of Bob. However, he also shows more vulnerability than he has in most of his more famous roles. Five Easy Pieces was his first shot at a leading role in a big movie and he certainly showed his talents. Five Easy Pieces (1970) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. One of the main themes of the film is alienation and it captures that idea in such a unique and powerful way. Jack Nicholson wrote some of his own lines for the monologue Bobby says to his father. At first glance, Rayette could be seen as comic relief or a simple ditsy girlfriend role. Five Easy Pieces is a prime example of a young film-maker creating a personal project that deals frankly with contemporary social problems (Lev, p.6). After trying to talk to his unresponsive father, Bobby leaves with Rayette. The film really shares the voice of a generation, echoing many of the issues and complaints people in the early 70s had. I don't know why they do this. According to Variety, the film earned $1.2 million in North America in 1970. It's a powerful roots-oriented record filled with double-barreled rock & … Five Easy Pieces was and is not only a fine achievement by all concerned, but a key film from a creative moment in American cinema. Five Easy Pieces came in the early days of the movement and perfectly encapsulates it. Then comes word of his sick father and he decides to return home. The latter launches into a monologue about the evils of consumerism. In terms of the performances in the film, Nicholson gets most of the attention, but it's hard to ignore Karen Black as his girlfriend Rayette. Again, despite Bob's privileged past, he seems eager to stand up for the little guy and push back against those in power. Alienation. However, he feels alienated from the world around him. Even his final talk with his father isn't forgiving his father for mistreating him, but rather Bob apologizing. It is another brilliant example of the rebellious nature of Bob. The title Five Easy Pieces refers to a book of music which piano students must master before going on to more complex compositions, and it also suggests, through the Chopin seduction linking music and sex, Bobby's sexual conquests. The film tells the story of surly oil rig worker Bobby Dupea, whose rootless blue-collar existence belies his privileged youth as a piano prodigy. 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