Road Movies

ICONOGRAPHY, STYLE, AND THEMES

Filmmakers from all over the cinematic map have been drawn to the road movie: low-budget independent, mainstream Hollywood, experimental, documentary, gay, feminist, and most national cinemas. Yet certain consistent features can be identified among them. The genre prefers cars or motorcycles at the center of the action (though travel by train, bus, or simply walking are not uncommon). It also tends to rely upon the iconography of interstate highways and border crossings. Related visual motifs are vast, open landscapes and expansive, seductive horizon lines. Highway signs, motels, diners, and gas stations also recur for various plot twists.

Whether characters in road movies ramble at a leisurely pace or speed frantically with cops close behind, one of the genre's most compelling aesthetic characteristics is the mobile camera. Positioned inside the car looking out or outside the car—on the hood, alongside in another car, close by in a helicopter—the moving camera helps represent plot-driven motion and also affords the viewer a kinetic sense of being on the road. Other important stylistic features include dynamic montage sequences designed to convey the thrill of driving; long takes and long shots, expressing an exaggerated traversal of space and time; and the framing devices of front and rear windshields, side windows, and side- and rearview mirrors. Another of the genre's signature means of enhancing the cinematic sensation of driving is an exuberant music track—usually rock and roll, with its back beat propelling the journey.

The road movie also reflects upon technology, depicting an ambivalent modernist fusion between (human) driver and (machine) vehicle. At the same time, a romantic, pastoral attitude often inspires characters to leave culture behind and rediscover nature. Road movie journeys generally involve some kind of cultural critique, an exploration beyond the social conventions associated with home, work, and family. The narrative structure of the road movie tends to be open-ended and modernist, as opposed to formulaic and classical. Two general narrative designs prevail: the quest and the outlaw. Quest road movies meander and probe the mysterious experience of discovery, as in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) or Paris, Texas (1984). Outlaw road movies are more desperately driven by crime, where characters hit the road fleeing from the police. Outlaw couples, along with more sex and violence, figure prominently here, as in Deadly Is the Female (rereleased as Gun Crazy , 1949) and Natural Born Killers (1994). Many of the best road movies combine elements of both the outlaw and the quest narrative.

Typically, the genre focuses on a driver/passenger couple—usually boy-girl, as in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), or buddy-buddy, as in Easy Rider (1969). Female buddy films such as Thelma and Louise (1991) became more popular in the 1990s. Other less common variations include parent-child and cop-prisoner. Even more rare are road movies focusing on large groups, as in Get on the Bus (1996), or on a lone driver, as in Vanishing Point (1971). Other car-oriented variations include road comedies like Flirting with Disaster (1996), road horror films such as Near Dark (1987), and racing films like Death Race 2000 (1975). Rock concert touring films such as Almost Famous (2000) offer yet another generic offshoot. Roam Sweet Home (1997) and The Cruise (1998) display some of the quirky directions experimental road documentaries have pursued. Urban "enclosed" driving films like Taxi Driver (1976) and Speed (1994), where a circular route or city grid displaces the genre's more classic border crossings and linear distances, are a distinct group as well.