“A touchstone of the counterculture and harbinger of the New Hollywood. Director Hopper, a sly showman and a cunning formalist,
blended the stripped-down muscularity of hot-rod B movies with flights of abstraction and intuition like art-house heroes Antonioni and Godard.
The new 35mm [restored] print returns Captain America and Billy the Kid to a state of youthful vigor.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times. Click here to read entire review

“EDITOR'S PICK! Hopper's counterculture classic transforms with time.
A decade ago, it felt quaint and dated; today is spirit of rebellion and cynical take on the American Dream feels downright visionary.”
– New York Magazine

“PERHAPS THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN ROAD MOVIE! Remains a powerful expression of the open highway’s iconic appeal.”
– The Onion AV Club

“STILL A BIT WIDE-EYED AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! In Film Forum's crisp 35mm restoration, and its accompanying awestruck period rock soundtrack,
this Boomer relic has aged well. There's more than a generational statement here – there's also a black comedy about our ongoing Red v. Blue conflict.”
– Benjamin Strong, L Magazine. Click here to read entire review

“What was once campy, now has a certain pathos—in addition to Nicholson’s star-making performance and Hopper’s under-appreciated one,
the ‘60s equivalent of Sean Penn’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High surfer.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

(1969) “You boys don’t look like you’re from this part of the country,” says hungover lawyer Jack Nicholson to leather-garbed, star-spangled Peter Fonda’s “Captain America” (“like a combination of Clint Eastwood and James Dean” – Village Voice) and Dennis Hopper’s hirsute, fringed buckskin-clad Billy. After a big Mexican cocaine haul, the bikers cash in with wealthy Mod-attired buyer Phil Spector (the legendary record producer and later murder defendant himself), then hit the open road to do their own thing in their own time en route to New Orleans, Mardi Gras and Florida retirement, along the way encountering a real live hippie commune, Nicholson’s football-helmeted ACLU lawyer, hippie-hating rednecks (the diner sneerers were small town Louisianans freely improvising), French Quarter working girls Toni Basil and Karen Black, and the screen’s baddest acid trip ever. From its sensational 1969 world premiere at Cannes — where it garnered Hopper a special award — Easy Rider seemed to feel the pulse of a “non-silent” other America, becoming “the movie that changed Hollywood forever” — when you gross $50 million on a $375,000 budget, people notice — introducing to mainstream moviemaking a New Wave-inspired editing style and the first significant all-rock score, including sensational tracks by Steppenwolf, The Byrds, The Band, and Jimi Hendrix. Not the least, it also kick-started the 32-year-old Jack Nicholson to super-stardom — he was just on the verge of calling acting quits. color; Approx. 94 minutes
1:30, 3:30, 5:40, 7:50, 9:50
A SONY PICTURES REPERTORY RELEASE

“Hopper borrows from the avant-garde to suggest the LSD experience – the trips have a definite flavor of Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren. The film may be a relic now, but it is a fascinating souvenir-–particularly in its narcissism and fatalism—of how the hippie movement thought of itself.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“Filled with beautifully controlled little surprises that are usually on the anxious edge of going out of control. The impact is terrifying, its effect on audiences seems to be catatonic catharsis. Most people come out saying ‘I’ve got to see that again.’”
– The Village Voice (1969)

“Like opening a time capsule…
it captures so surely the tone and look of that moment in time.”
– Roger Ebert

“Easy Rider could have settled for catcalls and rebellion. Instead it has refurbished the classic romantic gospel of the outcast wanderer. Walt Whitman might not have recognized the bikes—but he would have understood the message.”
– TIME (1969)

“Ninety-four minutes of what it is like to swing, to watch, to be fond, to hold opinions and to get killed in America at this moment.”
– Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker (1969)

NOTES ON THE 2009 RESTORATION OF EASY RIDER

According to Grover Crisp (Senior Vice President, Film Restoration) Sony Pictures initially restored Easy Rider in 1999 through a complicated mixture of photochemical techniques and old digital technologies; however, there were many other issues that couldn’t be fully addressed at the time. For this new restoration, Sony began with a 4K scan of the best surviving 35mm film elements; following an extensive digital restoration, with the repair of all torn frames and scratches and the removal of all dirt from the image, a brand new 35mm negative was created, from which new 35mm prints have been struck.