Nothing says summer like the road trip, and no period captured the blacktop like 1970s counterculture film. From “Easy Rider” to “Hells Angels,” we’ve got your motor running.
As the summer of love ended, a fascinating transition from Old Hollywood to ‘New Hollywood’ brought with it a new preoccupation with and depictions of the working class and its dissidents. The studio system crumbled and counterculture attempted to redefine America. From Westerns to Road movies, the films of the 1970s aimed to accurately represent the quotidian nature of its subjects and their conflict with the establishment, rather than the escapist glamour of the 1940s and 50s. Considered one of the most artistically productive periods in cinema history, the gallery is happy to feature incredible examples from this fecund time, graphic posters calling to the tough, gritty realism of the disenchanted individual. From “Gas-s-s-s,” a post-apocalyptic, youth-centric film, to “Hannie Caulder,” a violent, revenge fantasy Western and the exploitative imaginings of “Angels Hard as They Come,” the posters of this era show the counterculture obsession of Hollywood.