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After the success of "The Graduate," the counter-culture exploded onto screens across the United States. But it was a surprise hit from the Cannes Film Festival in France that really cemented the movement's place on the silver screen, a film about two drug-dealing and drug-consuming drifters, on motorcycles, headed from Los Angeles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. First-time director Dennis Hopper, who also starred in the film with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, made 1969's "Easy Rider" into a spiritual monument to the culture of the youth of the day, as well as becoming an indictment of the intolerance and bigotry those who participated in such communities faced, especially in the U.S. south, during the late 60s. The film also continued the trend of using modern music in lieu of an instrumental score to provide an emotional floor for the story, creating one of the first great rock and folk soundtracks in film history. And the trio unveil which two films, featuring first-time actors-turned-directors, make up their next pairing.?

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As cinema developed, as a medium and as an art, it went through periods of significant change, both in form and content. The late 60s was one of the most drastic turning points, as the free love movement, the hippie movement, and the anti-war movement all dovetailed together, creating what film scholars refer to as the "counter-culture movement" in film. The style, stories, and structure of the stories being told on the big screen started rejecting traditional Hollywood in order to craft new narratives, tales of the youth of the day and what their lives were like, that reflected their experiences living in the America they'd inherited from their parents, whose culture they soundly rejected. And the poster-child of counter-culture films arrived in 1967, an examination of the ennui experienced by those coming out of college and looking ahead at their futures with bleak and detached hearts and minds as they realized that they wanted something different than their parents had, but not knowing what that might be or how to find it. Directed by Mike Nichols, and starring William Daniels, Katherine Ross, Anne Bancroft, and a very young Dustin Hoffman, "The Graduate" took all of that existential angst and wrapped it into a story about a young college graduate so morally and spiritually adrift that an affair with an older woman becomes both a distraction and a crisis, and when that woman's daughter enters the picture, things take several turns for the worse... or do they?

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The second film in our pairing honoring the late Raquel Welch is one of the best-loved versions of this particular story. Originally penned in 1844 by French Author Alexander Dumas, 1973's version of "The Three Musketeers" had such an impact on both audiences and other filmmakers that some of the elements it established would go on to become traditions that later versions would honor. Directed by Richard Lester, of "A Hard Day's Night" fame, and starred a veritable "Who's Who?" of talent in the early 70s. The story follows young D'Artagnan (Michael York), who is off to Paris to join the King's Musketeers. Of course, things don't go quite as planned. After running afoul of the villainous Rochefort (the incredible Christopher Lee), he gets to Paris only to find out that he lacks the experience to become a Musketeer. Following several mishaps that earn him three successive duels, he meets up with Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finley), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) who end up becoming his companions for his stay in town. He also meets Conastance de Bonacieux (Raquel Welch), the wife of his inn's keeper, and with whom he falls passionately in love with. The film also features Geraldine Chaplin as Queen Ann, Jean-Pierre Cassel as King Louis XIII, Roy Kinnear as Planchet, and Faye Dunaway as Milady. Plus, the trio reveal the two counter-culture films they show in class that make up the next pairing!

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On February 15th, 2023, we lost a member of cinematic royalty, a great actress and one of the screen's classic beauties. Raquel Welch passed away at the age of 82, and we're pushing our scheduled pairing back in order to celebrate her work in film. We begin with a film so accurate in its depiction of human physiology, it was show to in medical school as late as the 1980s. Directed by Richard Fleischer, "Fantastic Voyage" tells the story of cutting edge miniaturization technology being used in an attempt to save the mind and life of the scientist at the core of its creation by shrinking a submarine with a specialized crew and sending them take out a brain lesion from the inside. The film stars Ms. Welch as Cora, alongside Stephen Boyd as Grant, Edmond O'Brien as General Carter, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels, Arthur O'Connell as Colonel Donald Reid, and a couple "blink and you'll miss them" cameos from James Brolin and James Doohan!

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