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The
Road Movie
by
Sam North
'The
irony of the road movie is that the weak leave, but
only the strong survive'.
From
the earliest days of American cinema, the road movie
has been synonymous with American culture and the
image of America to the world. By my definition, the
road movie is a vehicle for either one or a small
group of individuals who seek to escape the world
they are living in and set out towards redemption
on the road. Who were most likely to be on the road?
The strong or the weak? The irony of the road movie
is that the weak leave, but only the strong survive.
The road either makes or breaks a person. One might
have the intelligence to recognise that in a difficult
situation it would be best to move on, but leaving
for the future without a map can be a daunting task.
The road movie reflects a cultural psychosis that
not only is tomorrow another day, but the road is
the passage to which a new beginning is possible,
free from the bonds of the past.
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In
this article I will explore the development of the 'Road movie'
and highlight some of the many films that had been made within
the genre. One might argue that the 'road movie' is not a
specific genre, that because it reflects the styles of 'Film
noir' or the thriller, as in Hitchcock’s 'North By Northwest'
or comedy, such as 'It's mad, mad, mad world.' There is the
gangster road movie, the trucker road movie, even the horror
road movie such as 'Kalifornia'. Some might say it is impossible
to so categorise the road movie, lump all of them together
and call it a genre.
Nevertheless, from the darkest, to the most banal, all road
movies have something in common, a road and a socio-economic
reason d'etre. If Myerson's 'Steelyard Blues" is a road
movie and a post-industrial essay, it matters not if it doesn't
seem so easily connected to Spielberg’s "The Sugarland
Express' or Tati's 'Traffic' which is more about alienation
with the road than a desire to get on it. All are road movies
because they reflect the times they are made in and the road
is the great leveler.
Yet, for the sake of this article, however, I shall tend to
exclude many so-called road-movies, such as McEveety's ' Herbie
Goes Banana’s' a film about a Volkswagen that talks,
or Hewitt's 'The Girl's from Thunder Strip' a rocker-film.
Indeed, one could argue that most rocker, biker, trucker films
are not 'road-movies' in the spirit or style that I define
the 'road movie'. Just because there is a road and someone
is driving on it, does not, I would argue, make it a 'road
movie'. There are always exceptions. 'Gas-Oil' directed by
Gilles Grangier in 1955, is a trucker film, but it has the
essential elements of searching for meaning of life and economic
poignancy that mark the essential road movie. Yet, Cahn's
"Dragstrip Girl' 1957, which is a hot-rod film where
boy has car and girl gets hot, is not really within the scope
of this article.
Neither would Walter Hill's otherwise excellent 'The Driver'
which though certainly about a skilled driver for a bank-heist
gang and has some thrilling driving in it, overall, the film
has no heart and soul and it is simply a cop chasing a bad
guy movie and going absolutely nowhere.
Road movies such as Hopper's "Easy Rider', or Sarafian's
'Vanishing Point', and Scott's 'Thelma and Louise' reflect
characters trapped in lives that seem pointless, rootless,
intellectually stifling. The road seems to offer an easy escape,
set within a western landscape that is at once beautiful,
but, as is the nature of the convention of a road movie, all
manners of dangers may lurk. Not all characters in road movies
have to be helpless. That is not really what these people
are. These people who seek escape often have courage and determination
they never knew they had. It is just that the road is there.
It is the road movie that enables them to find that courage,
but there is always a warning. Taking a cult movie, Guerico's
'Electra Glide in Blue' from 1972, there, for all those who
would ride the road to freedom, lies a cop in wait (Robert
Blake), knowing his job is to frustrate those who seek freedom.
The cop as menace, frustrator and obstacle to freedom is a
common theme of the road movie.
In Ridley Scott's 'Thelma and Louise' an early 1990's movie,
two women escape their petty, nowhere lives, hit the road
and find 'liberation'. Neither woman is weak, or stupid, or
dim, but somehow life has conspired to make one a waitress
and one a housewife married to an overpowering moron who has
seemingly crushed her identity. These two wounded creatures
are not to be pitied. They always knew the road was there,
only now, as circumstances have arisen, has the opportunity
come that could give them the breath of fresh air they need.
The convention of the road movie however is to allow a little
freedom and then let it bite you and bite hard. In 'Thelma
and Louise', the two protagonists discover freedom for a mere
moment, but a foolish encounter with a 'rapist' which leads
to a lethal shooting in a car park outside a dance hall, will
haunt them for the rest of their journey. It matters not that
the characters seek escape and not danger, in the road movie,
danger seeks them. The road, it seems, is always a dead end.
The Road Movie is not a new phenomenon, however. The need
to escape, the lure of the open road, or undiscovered trail,
is not a uniquely American trait, but one firmly established
in folklore. It belongs to a society that was initially based
upon religious freedom. America of the seventeenth century
was peopled with settlers who had escaped European religious
oppression and founded a society based upon their own concept
of what culture should be. That these new 'societies' produced
their own kind of internal oppression, or intolerance meant
that for those who could not abide by these rules sought escape.
Escape could be West or South; there was no going back to
Europe.
There were economic factors too. From early days, the American
settler was a farmer and something of an all rounder. The
conditions from the beginning were immensely different to
Europe. There, good land was scarce and almost impossible
to own. In America land was plentiful and almost free. The
American settler would simply burn the forest and plant in
the ashes. Slash and burn agriculture became systemised. When
the new soil was exhausted, the farmer or settler would move
on. Waste and a lack of appreciation for the local landscape
were almost genetically implanted into the American mindset
from the seventeenth century onwards.
In seeking new pastures, people were no longer restricted
by borders, or petty bureaucracy, the only limit was the terrain,
or absence of roads. The early road movie was possibly the
travelling panorama, a popular cultural event in the 1850's.
The showman, or orator would slowly unfold a lavish, often
completely exaggerated or fictitious panorama, sometimes a
hundred of feet long, and tell the tale of travelling down
the Mississippi River or crossing the Rockies to California.
Here, the punters could experience the dangers and wonders
of travel without personal loss. But for many, this introduction
to 'travel' was inspiring and possibly triggered a desire
to see more of their unexplored country. The literature of
the time was often about making trails, finding a way to an
imagined paradise, overcoming the hostile 'natives' and wild
animals. The West had not yet been perceived as a panacea
for all problems. As yet California lay in Mexican hands and
seemingly had no value. Freedom and wealth were associated
with land grabs, farming, the coming railways, and cattle.
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America
was ever expanding and filled with vast hope. One
would travel a little further west and found a new
city. The Mormons after several bad starts were one
of the great forerunners of taking the known boundaries
of the West and building a new life for everyone.
Salt Lake City was considered remote enough to be
safe from the influences of others and other religions,
but it was as west as one could go at that time and
hope to make a go of things. For at least the first
one hundred years of American history, the chances
of making a fortune by travelling west were limited
by the absence of communications, hostile Native Americans,
harsh weather and ill health. Yet, the West, and the
road west were always perceived as the way of escape.
For heroes and villains.
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The Wagon Train was not just a manifestation of a population
seeking new opportunities, it was a public confirmation that
the new American society was not actually able to provide
for all and the route west was considered always as liberation
from poverty, or reality, or both. The first road stories
are Wagon Train yarns, not stories about lone fur trappers,
or Lewis and Clarke geological expeditions. They were stories
of people seeking escape and a change of luck. Often they
would be new immigrants who had found that the East Coast
lacked the space or career chances they had sought. These
people would pack all they had into fancy wagons, join the
next 'train' leaving St Louis and hope God would provide.
Quite often, many never reached the West. Disease, corrupt
or inept wagon masters, misfortune, bad weather, discontent,
or just the plain reality of seeing the desert and hostile
terrain of the Rockies would make people turn back, or try
to settle the plains. That they'd try to do this in places
that had no access to cities, markets, schools, and doctors
says something about the hardiness of these settlers or their
foolishness.
As Americans sought a new life, a parallel experience was
going on in South Africa where the Boer farmer, who did not
like the British was trekking north to seek a new land where
they could self-govern with God and no English rules. Their
harrowing stories where dead babies are tossed out of the
wagon as drought and starvation grip the trekkers was mirrored
many times by American Wagon train settlers. It formed the
basis of many legends (not least the horror of Cutter's Pass
where one Wagon Train were caught out by the onset of winter
and resorted to cannibalism). For the generations that followed,
the monumental experiences of their forbears in getting West
provided them with a moral justification for their own existence.
The real change to the perception of the West came when California
was bought from the Mexican Government in 1848. What looked
like a huge expense then, looked to be the bargain of the
century six months later when gold was discovered.
One of the first successful works of literature to fully address
the hope and despair of the move west was Mark Twain's ( Roughing
It) ' where he travels out West to witnesses the gold rush
and the newly formed wild and lawless society that was evolving.
It was a time of magnificent opportunity riding on a crest
of endless optimism and chronic failures.
The discovery of gold in 1849 created a world-wide fantasy
with 'going west' that was to continue up until the present
day. The West at once became mythic and psychologically linked
with success. It was the nineteenth century lottery ticket
to a new life and the 'road west' is forever linked in American
minds with escape. Slash and Burn culture had already ensured
that 'moving on' was a way of life, but now, here was a chance
to take a short cut on life, get rich quick. The road became
a signifier for freedom and the romance of the 'road' became
a way of life that would be celebrated in literature and film
for the entire twentieth century.
One might never call Charlie Chaplin's film 'The Gold Rush'
a road movie, yet, many of his films were directly associated
with the road. The opportunities and pitfalls that come to
the lone tramp walking the road were understood by the first
cinemagoers. Rootless men, unemployed men travelled the roads
and rails in search of a life, little understanding that their
very rootlessness was a causal factor in their never ending
poverty. Men and women all over the world laughed at Chaplin,
but equally understood that the road and poverty was never
distant from their own lives.
D.W. Griffith understood the lure of the unknown place. His
film 'The Wind' manifestly opened out cinema, took it into
hostile territory and proved that film could go on location.
But 'The Wind' is not a 'road movie'.
One of the most successful early road movies is John Ford's
'The Grapes of Wrath'. Based upon Steinbeck’s novel about
the great social disaster that followed with the clearing
of vegetation and people from farmlands to create vast farms.
Without trees, the soil began to literally blow away to create
huge dust storms. This, combined with the Wall Street crash
of '29, resulted in the great clearing. People literally left
the land in hundreds of thousands.
They all headed to the land of opportunity California, and
took whatever they could with them, on the road. It isn't
known how many died, or even how many eventually succeeded,
but the influx into California of millions of impoverished
people who needed food, schooling and hospitals was a great
shock. It was a society ill equipped to deal with this influx.
Yet for all the immediate suffering those migrants must have
felt, history was on their side. When the Second World War
came to the USA, it was California that had the massive pool
of cheap labour that could be put to work in the Navy yards,
aircraft manufacturing and vehicle production. For these people,
a golden age was about to begin. Once again, California was
to provide sustenance to the myth that there really was a
pot of gold at the end of the road. There were dissenters
from this view however.
In the 1973 Robert Altman's film 'Thieves Like Us' about criminals
on the run in the impoverished 1930's landscape provided a
brilliant companion piece to the earlier film 'The Grapes
of Wrath’, which was more about dignity among the poor,
than honour among thieves. The atmosphere of poverty and lack
of trust combined with the quite vicious desperation of Carradine
and Duvall's characters seems now to be a more accurate portrayal
of what really happened in the depression than Hollywood was
prepared to let their audiences know at the time. 'Thieves'
Like Us' with it's haunted characters, the car and the sleazy
motels; they are all part of the essential constituents of
the road movie. The impending sense of doom is another. Authur
Penn's 'Bonnie and Clyde' 1969 was another stylish take on
the road/gangster movie in the same vein and of the same period.
The fantastic rainstorm of bullets at the end in slow motion
was a defining moment in 70’s cinema.
Made at around the same time as the 'Grapes of Wrath', 'The
Wizard of Oz' was a road movie with a difference. Dorothy
takes the yellow-brick road and finds herself in Oz. The great
adventures she has, the wonderful friends she meets, wicked
witches aside, all leads her to the city where all mysteries
will be explained, all problems will be solved, all prayers
answered. For Oz one might read Jerusalem, or Mecca, or Las
Vegas. Each one, just like Oz, turns out to be an illusion.
Dorothy not only gets no answers, but also discovers the wizard
of Oz is a phony. The Wizard of Oz has just one message for
the people of America, 'There's no place like home.' Tell
that to the people driven off the land by the dustbowl. The
Wizard of Oz has a happy ending, and a message that seemed
at odds with the times it was made (1939). Perhaps it was
addressing a wider audience, that of America versus Europe.
For eyes looking East to Europe where Fascism was sweeping
all before it, perhaps 'No place like home', meant more to
an American faced with a millions of immigrants from Europe.
That and the building resentment that came with 'cheap labour'
displacing 'American' jobs. The net effect to the explosion
of Europeans arriving was to trigger more people on the East
Coast having to go on the road to seek their fortunes West.
Not all the people travelling the highway were angels, or
economic victims. Some were villains.
In the film 'Petrified Forest' starring Bogart in his first
villain role and Leslie Howard as a poverty stricken English
poet and migrant, here emerged another icon of the road movie.
The Roadhouse. The dusty roads had yet to be beaten into highways,
the Roadhouse was the lone refuge in a hostile environment.
Here be shelter, food and gasoline. 'Petrified Forest' was
itself a neat metaphor for a lost world. It is a place where
Duke Mantee takes a stand against the cops in a dust storm.
The bad guy takes over the Roadhouse and a philosophical discussion
takes place between the sucker, the guy on the road, and the
criminal, who is just taking advantage of what ever comes
his way.
Here, at last is a road movie that exposes the heart of what
forms the basis of its structure. The arduous journey, the
scent of hope and the bitter cup of reality when the seeker
of freedom comes up against nemesis. The road movie is very
rarely about the road, or even the journey. Even then, it
was about hope and despair. Another film that covers the heart
of darkness that is the Roadhouse is 'The Postman always Rings
Twice'. Here, when a drifter comes by, the roadhouse owner's
wife bored by her situation and married to an 'older' man,
seizes her opportunity. Passion with the stranger leads inevitably
to murder. If 'Petrified Forest' didn't signal enough, Postman
told it in neon, the road movie was a phenomenon and was always
going to be an article of the state of society, America and
a reflection that told the truth about it, cold heart and
all.
It could be argued that the road movie must, to be true to
the genre, involve a road. Yet, many of the essential ingredients
of the road movie were and are encompassed by the 'Western'.
'The Searchers' may be about a man searching for his niece,
but nevertheless it is also about a man on a horse, on a trail,
meeting with hostile elements and the outcome isn't necessarily
what the protagonist desired. From John Ford's 'Stagecoach',
to 'Butch and Sundance' and Eastwood's 'Josey Wales', men,
on horses, on the trail, encounter always more than they bargained
for and the trail might not always lead West, but in all cases,
they hope it might lead to El Dorado. For comic relief one
can add Laurel and Hardy's 'Way out West' or Bob Hope's 'The
Paleface'. No, not exactly road movies, but all the elements
are in place, a dusty road, a small town, hostile receptions
and the strength to surmount all obstacles. Road movies are
in the end about searching for Utopia and often ending up
with Dystopia.
The journey West was synonymous with that search..
Continued
in Part Two... From Detour
to Sideways
©
Sam North 1999-2008 www.samnorth.com
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