Next film: Five Easy Pieces
The screening will be at 8:30pm at the Curzon in Wimbledon.
Click the image above for trailer and more information.
The screening will be at 8:30pm at the Curzon in Wimbledon. Click the image above for trailer and more information.
Tickets now on sale for members only. Tickets will go on sale for non-members on October 12.
There will be a post-screening Q&A with film historian Nick Smedley.

Class is not an unusual subject in American cinema, even if it too often revolves around nostalgia for the old neighbourhood or clichéd tales of social mobility, but Five Easy Pieces is unusual in its class antagonism. This is a film with little love and a lot of hate. For all that the characters are unsympathetic, they are also very human and finely drawn, largely because of the screenplay by Carole Eastman (under the pseudonym Adrien Joyce) and the excellent lead performances.

In the person of Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea, a former upper-class child prodigy (the title refers to piano exercises) who has rejected his family in Washington state for life as a blue-collar oil field worker in California, this antagonism goes well beyond snobbery (or inverted snobbery) to touch on the sort of existential themes more familiar from European arthouse cinema.

Bobby is unable to rebuild relations with his estranged family but equally incapable of forging a meaningful life with Rayette (Black), the waitress girlfriend whom he both desires and despises. Ultimately, he both fears himself and hates what he has become. 

The angry not-so-young man proved a career-defining role for Nicholson, and a character that he would revisit in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975), where a journalist decides to desert his life for another identity, and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), in which he heads to a place that is “very cold” and clearly the end of the road.

“Five Easy Pieces is considered to be the quintessential film of the beginning of the seventies. This thoughtful character study offers a thorough portrayal of the alienation and restlessness of the American middle classes, rocked into instability by the shifting, unpredictable political situation and leaders like Nixon who proved to be everything but trustworthy.” Sven Mikulec – Cinephilia & Beyond.

“When we sense the boy, tormented and insecure, trapped inside the adult man, “Five Easy Pieces” becomes a masterpiece of heartbreaking intensity.” Roger Ebert (1970).

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Susan Anspach, Lois Smith.

Awards: Golden Globe Best Supporting Actress (Black); Oscars 4 Nominations .


All films and speakers subject to availability. Film notes provided at each screening. Ticket sales are handled through Eventbrite. This includes the opportunity to opt in or out of emails about future screenings.

Coming Up

That They May Face the Rising Sun
October 29

Monster
November 12 Members’ Choice 

The Holdovers
November 26 Members’ Choice 

2024-25 to date

The Taste of Things
September 17

Io Capitano
October 1

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Free for under-30s & full-time students
Free for under-30s & full-time students

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