A review of Dirty Real in Library Journal.

“In a challenging cultural rhapsody about the gritty authenticity characterizing films following the hippie era of the 1960s, Stanfield (emeritus, film, Univ. of Kent; Maximum Movies) posits that the 1970s presented problem-based rather than escapist entertainment vehicles. Actors like Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Jon Voight, and Jeff Bridges personified a bohemian reality in Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Midnight Cowboy, and The Last Picture Show. Stanfield usefully presents minute analyses of lesser-known films of this genre, including Ride in the Whirlwind, The Shooting, The Last Movie, The Hired Hand, and Dirty Little Billy. As with many eras, the themes of 1970s cinema do not precisely correspond to eras; antiheroes, usually loners, already existed in biker, working-class, and Western films of the 1950s. Stanfield references The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, released in 1948, as an influence over the era. He also examines how the lifting of the Production Code in 1968 resulted in greater openness in films.
VERDICT A challenging meditation on nonconformity in mid-20th-century cinema that includes a filmography list influenced by Italian and French New Wave cinema. Cultural critics might enjoy this book more than general readers.”
Reviewed by Frederick J. Augustyn Jr , May 01, 2024

https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/dirty-real-exile-on-hollywood-and-vine-with-the-gin-mill-cowboys-1806175

Dirty Real is published on May 1st . . .

Publisher’s Weekly has had a head start:

Dirty Real: Exile on Hollywood and Vine with the Gin Mill Cowboys
Peter Stanfield. Reaktion, $25 (344p) ISBN 978-1-78914-862-6
Stanfield (A Band with Built-In Hate), a film professor emeritus at the University of Kent, delivers a discerning deep dive into counterculture films of the late 1960s and early ’70s. According to Stanfield, such actors as Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson played down the glamour that had previously characterized Hollywood stars in favor of grittier personas that reflected an emerging understanding that movies were no longer “means of escape but a means of approaching a problem.” Astute analysis of key films of the era reveal how they tackled topical issues. For instance, Stanfield contends that Fonda’s The Hired Hand (1971) used the western genre as a backdrop to promote themes of female empowerment, and that Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970) regards with distrust the “bourgeois slumming” of its protagonist, who maintains the privileges of his middle-class background despite seeking out a more “authentic” lifestyle working in oil fields. Stanfield shares Rafelson’s skepticism toward the period’s vogue for authenticity, suggesting that leading actors, writers, and directors showed “an acute nostalgia for the gutter none had known at first hand,” and that the predominantly white casts portrayed a “social realism [that] did not include the reality, or even fantasy, of black lives.” It’s a sharp study of the contradictions of post–flower power cinema.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781789148626