Jack Nicholson’s second breakthrough film and the first to show his dramatic range is Bob Rafelson and Carole Eastman’s portrait of an unsettled drifter. Bobby Dupea is described by Criterion as an alienated & irresponsible cad — but one caught between a heritage in the arts and a trailer park working man’s life. It’s a solid drama, with the welcome presence of Karen Black, Lois Smith, Helena Kallianiotes and Susan Anspach.

Five Easy Pieces
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 546
1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 2, 2026 / 39.95
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Fannie Flagg, Sally Struthers, Marlena MacGuire, Richard Stahl, Lois Smith, Helena Kallianiotes, Toni Basil, Lorna Thayer, Susan Anspach, Ralph Waite, William Challee, John P. Ryan, Irene Dailey.
Cinematography: László Kovács
Production Designer: Toby Rafelson
Film Editors: Christopher Holmes. Gerald Shepard
Wardrobe: Becky Rous
Music: Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Hank Cochran, Tammy Wynette
Screenplay by Adrien Joyce (Carole Eastman) story by Joyce and Bob Rafelson
Produced by Bob Rafelson, Richard Wechsler, Bert Schneider, Harold Schneider
Directed by Bob Rafelson

Arriving at UCLA in the Fall of 1970, I ignored my economics classes and went straight to the film school and my first screening class with Professor  Louis Clyde Stoumen, whose first assignment was to go out and see the new movie Five Easy Pieces. It was at the Four Star Theater on Wilshire and it was preceded by a short subject called Amblin’.  I thought,’what a perfect film that for a student angling to get a job.’ Old studio executives would not be intimidated by it.

Five Easy Pieces is sometimes considered the first major film of the ‘New Hollywood’ of the early 1970s, when hip directors were calling the shots. It was the first film from BBS, the company formed in the wake of the breakout success Easy Rider. Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson went forward, bankrolling not Dennis Hopper but Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson and Henry Jaglom — and Rafelson himself, co-creator of The Monkees. Five Easy Pieces pleased just about everybody, public and critics alike. America discovered Jack Nicholson as an actor, just as he was making progress as a writer. His few roles for Roger Corman hadn’t clicked, but his personality connected on Easy Rider in a big way. Suddenly there were possibilities … how many remember that Nicholson took a support role for Barbra Streisand in  a big musical?

BBS creative contributors included Nicholson associates of the flaky ’50s and ’60s — from acting classes with Jeff Corey, and odd jobs for Roger Corman. The screenwriter ‘Adrien Joyce’ had been a dancer and had also written the script for Monte Hellman’s distinctive western  The Shooting. The actresses hired were a cross-section of recognized talent. The leading lady Karen Black had paid as many dues as anyone — she should have become a name with her endearing performance for  Francis Coppola, and she stood out in the cast of Easy Rider. She would soon become the unofficial face of New Hollywood.

Rafelson’s fine character study arrived just as America was ready for something other than plot-driven Hollywood product — the storyline has no ‘hook’ beyond the personal problems of its very troubled, very American leading character.

Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea begins as a roughneck without a cause, an oil worker too restless to stay very long in one place. Everything is restrictive, including his live-in relationship with Rayette Dipesto (Karen Black), a waitress almost too clueless to be endearing. Rayette keeps her spirits up by living in a country-western music bubble, dominated by the songs of Tammy Wynette. Bobby understands Rayette and appreciates Rayette, but there are limits. Not even beer can get him through the umpteenth repeat of Stand By Your Man (although Black’s versions are adorable). When Bobby can’t take it anymore, he drinks with his pal Elton (Billy Green Bush) in Elton’s trailer.

We then learn that Bobby Dupea is from a family with a formidable name in music. He has skill as a pianist, as does his sister Partita (Lois Smith). Learning that his famous father Nicholas (William Chalee) has had a stroke, Bobby elects take a trip home, even though he’s been estranged from the family for some time. He can’t talk Rayette into staying behind. On the car ride north they pick up an argumentative lesbian couple, Palm and Terry (Hellena Kallianiotes & Tony Basil).

Bobby has such misgivings about Rayette being among the Dupeas and their circle of accomplished musicians and intellectuals that he parks her in a motel and goes to his reunion alone. He feels just as out-of-place with the Dupea hangers-on, and communicating with his wheelchair-bound father proves impossible. But he strikes up an unexplainable attraction to the initially hostile Catherine (Susan Anspach). Then Rayette takes it upon herself to show up at the Dupea’s doorstep, unannounced.

Five Easy Pieces sketches the American class divide as experienced by a man who can’t seem to make himself fit in anywhere. Bobby Dupea has the talent to play the piano but not the drive; he’s not competitive. He doesn’t judge his friends in the oil fields and in general prefers them to some of the snooty folk that hover in classical music circles. Despite having more freedom than 99% of the world’s men, Bobby is ‘lost in America.’  Is it because he has no outlet for his creativity?  He hasn’t got what it takes to resolve his family or personal problems, and elects to just stay on the run.

Scene after scene strikes us as original. Bobby Dupea and Elton pick up two local girls in a bowling alley (Sally Struthers, Marlena MacGuire) for a genuine low-life night of beer and sex. Bobby’s sister Partita is charming, but she has her issues as well. He watches her try to record a classic piano piece … but she becomes so emotionally absorbed by the music that she can’t resist humming along, ruining the session. Five Easy Pieces earns its place as a worthy film just by giving the great Lois Smith such a substantial, memorable role. She was unforgettable opposite  James Dean yet played mostly on TV until the 1990s.

The standout confrontation is an outrageous exchange in a chain diner between a troublemaking Bobby and an equally surly waitress,compounded by the side-bitching from Palm and Terry. The argument over the waiter ends with the punch line about holding the chicken. It’s a signature scene for Jack in bad-boy tantrum mode, a comedy highlight that nevertheless makes reasonable people despair over the decline in common civility. Again, Nicholson did what he could for old associates. The waitress is Lorna Thayer, who 15 years earlier struggled along in  whatever work could be found, just as had Jack. But ‘starring’ in one of the most famous film clips of the era didn’t make Ms. Thayer’s name more familiar.

Easy Rider freed Bob Rafelson from the Monkees franchise, and he had saved a desire to make more serious material. This show filmed mostly on real locations; it tries to be as aimless as its leading character. The critics thought it fresh and original, and said that it evoked a European style and attitude without some of the attendant art movie pretensions. We sympathize with everyone, not just the maladjusted leading man; we understand Bobby Dupea even when we don’t like what he’s doing, especially his low-key abuse of poor Rayette. He’s an involuntary heel.

The movie’s humor is more surprising than funny. We know many classic comedies that use social incompatibility as an opportunity for fun. Seeing how poorlyBobby treats Rayette, we fully understand her anxiety. Her brave, hopeful invasion of the Dupea mansion is a real do-or-die act. It’s a traumatic variation on a scene in Leo McCarey’s classic  The Awful Truth, in which Irene Dunne sets out to mortify Cary Grant by crashing a party and pretending to be a ‘common floozie.’ For a few minutes the picture becomes an inverted screwball comedy.

What does Bobby’s defense of Rayette prove?  He’s not ready to back up his feelings with any kind of commitent. He’s the kind of guy who wants to make a stand, but what for?  He instead concludes that he doesn’t belong anywhere, or with anybody.

The BBS magic didn’t last long. Rafelson’s subsequent films didn’t pull in audiences, even with positive reviews. Jack Nicholson’s own writing and directing work didn’t win wide distribution. Instead, his stardom became super-stardom in films with top directors and co-stars. Karen Black also enjoyed years of great parts in memorable pictures. Five Easy Pieces feels original, and even its unpleasant scenes are memorable.

We still think the most memorable scene is the one in the traffic jam. It sounds like something that would happen in a Thin Man movie, or a musical comedy. Stalled in traffic and driven to distraction, Bobby climbs out of Elton’s car and climbs on the back of a truck transporting a piano — which he begins to play. It’s our first association of Bobby with music. The man once considered a serious piano prodigy is constructing his own ironic failure. The ‘screwball’ situation ends up taking Bobby off in a different, unexpected direction, literally.

The Criterion Collection’s 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Five Easy Pieces is its third iteration on the label. It was released first on a 2010 BBS collection (from which most of the extras derive) and then on a standalone Blu in 2015. This release is touted as a new 4K digital restoration. The package takes the standard format, with one 4K disc of the film alone and a secondary Blu-ray encoding with the feature and all of the special extras.

Criterion’s copy names not just one but a battery of disc producers. The featurettes and documentaries compiled in 2010 hold up well. Big name talent’s eagerness to participate tells us that they consider the show to be important, too. The longest and most rewarding documentary covers the decade of BBS films. The New Hollywood mode of filmmaking was pushed aside by the Lucas and Spielberg blockbusters, but the independent director-driven ’70s films live on in spirit.

Hey, Criterion’s graphic artist put the truck scene on the cover.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Five Easy Pieces
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Featurette Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces from 2009 with Bob Rafelson
Documentary BBStory with Rafelson, Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Ellen Burstyn, Peter Bogdanovich and Henry Jaglom
Featurette with David Thomson and Douglas Brinkley
Audio excerpts from a 1976 AFI interview with Rafelson
Trailer and teasers
Insert with an essay by Kent Jones.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: July 27, 2026
(7556easy)

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