A road movie is easily recognizable but hard to define. It’s a genre that’s was born as the car and motion picture set the twentieth century in motion. "Road movie" has become an everyday expression, but it’s more varied and complex than meets the eye.
The history of the road movie is closely linked to the history of the United States and its pioneer mythology – the conquest of a vast virgin territory, a land of plenty that has become the most powerful nation on earth. The highways that were built in America after the Second World War created a new concept of open space that was to have a profound influence on road movies.
Photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans are the “godfathers” of the genre. Driving across the United States, they captured America’s heartland on film, with its motels, cafés and straight lines bisecting the desert.
The road movie really became a genre during the liberation era of the 1960s. Jack Kerouac – and with him the beat generation of writers penned On the Road, a personal odyssey and the literary inspiration for road movies. Initially the road movie was a contemporary transposition of the western, usually set in a desert environment and portraying characters who used cars to flee the restrictions of urban society in search of – ultimately illusory – freedom. During this journey on film, the development of the characters and their interactions are more important than the sequence and events of the plot.
Easy Rider(1969) was the first “iconic” road movie. Peter Fonda and Denis Hopper’s ride to freedom brings them into contact with colorful, unforgettable characters, against a backdrop of rock’n’roll and angst, and in counterpoint to a powerful but unequal market economy. The typical road movie involves a duo. It usually depicts two misfits with contrasting personalities, who come to appreciate each other. The formula creates plenty of opportunities for humor and portraying wariness of others and of oneself: the journey is an initiation.
If the main character in the road movie is the road, then the car is its setting. It is a key to mobility for characters who have cut all ties. In the car they get to know each other, find friendship and discover the world. But the automobile can also convey violent passions, conveyed in a plethora of action and thriller road movies. The road movie has had numerous other permutations: science-fiction, horror, vampire, children’s, comedy, drama, B-grade, animation, the “urban” road movie and… the documentary. European cinema has specialized in the “metaphysical” road movie, following the lead of Michelangelo Antonioni, father of modern cinema.
Closely linked to the history of the USA, the car in the road movie car is usually a large American car, a pick-up, a big sedan, a minivan... or a taxi, in “urban” road movies like Taxi Driver, Night on Earth and Collateral.
While it was spawned in the US this genre soon spread worldwide. The road movie emerged in the powerful economies of industrialized countries, first in the USA then in Europe. This is logical since the genre needs an audience that relates to owning cars. At first, European vehicle manufacturers were less naturally associated with the road movie: in Breathless (1959), Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who flirts with authority in his Oldsmobile, openly scorns European cars.. until his double in Pierrot le fou (1965), Ferdinand Griffon, declares his preference for his Peugeot 404. At last emancipated from the US road movie, European filmmakers were no longer afraid to use local vehicles… including in Africa: Jean Rouch’s Cocorico Monsieur Poulet (1974), for example, depicts a drive through the savannah in a 2CV.
While these films embody freedom of movement, many of the films also challenge the capitalist model, which, despite prosperity and improvements in standard of living, leaves some people on the roadside.
The road movie later developed in other countries undergoing radical socio-economic change, such as South Korea's long march to democracy depicted in The Road to Sampo. "Exotic" road movies have been filmed in Niger (Cocorico Monsieur Poulet), Brazil (Central Station), Japan (Sonatine and Kikujiro, by Kitano) and... the Antipodes. The sci-fi road movie appeared in Australia, with Peter Weir's Mad Max trilogy and his other fantasy dramas. The genre also found fertile ground in New Zealand, whose untamed landscapes spawned a wave of road movies in the 1980s (Goodbye Pork Pie, Shaker Run, etc.).
But having been exported and diluted into numerous sub-genres, does the road movie still exist, or has it run out of gas? Some filmmakers have answered in the negative, predicting the end of the genre and the automobile civilization. But Jacques Tati (Trafic), Jean-Luc Godard (Week-end), David Cronenberg (Crash) and David Lynch (Lost Highway) may have been too quick in their judgment, because the celluloid journey is alive and kicking.
The road movie still has a phenomenal power to move audiences (in 2004, for example, The Motorcycle Diaries was a worldwide hit). For one simple reason: through their illusions and disillusions, their self-discovery and discovery of others, and their capacity to learn and mature, the characters in a road movie are a lot like ourselves.
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