Introduction
The road movie is one of the most beloved and enduring genres in Hollywood cinema. A road movie can be comedic, thrilling, or romantic, but its essence is always the same: an outward journey that triggers and signifies its characters’ inward transformation. The story usually sets against the gorgeous landscape in American West. Through out the cross-country travel either by car or motorcycle, there would be a series of adventures that challenge and change the characters. That expedition is sometimes solo, sometimes man with man, man with woman, or woman with woman. The act of traveling, in the purpose of searching for something, maybe a connection or some meanings that bring people closer when travel further.
The birth of the road film seems to reflect two phenomenas in the post-war period in the United States, as the advent of the technology in automobile industry that allows more people owned cars and hence travelled around. This transformation gradually cultivate the automobile culture in United States which is a symbol to express freedom and individuality. Another phenomena was the baby boom which create a large strata of restless, often suburban, youth from 1946 to 1964. The United States in 1960s in the history were famous as the most active period for social movements, and during the 60s, those restless youth culture evolved into a countercultural movement, known as the hippies movement.
The hippies rejected established institutions, criticized the mainstream middle class values of American life, most of the hippies even came from the middle class family and rebelled against the values that their parents believed in like the middle class materialism. They opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy, sexual liberation, and believed in harmony with nature, having vegetarian lifestyle and promoted the use of psychedelic drugs which they believed expanded one's consciousness, and lived in intentional communities or communes. It originated on college campus in United States and spread to other countries like UK and Canada.
The advent of the automobile industry seems to match this countercultural movement, the road trips were considered by the youth as restlessness and a rebellion sign against the traditional nine-to-five normal working days. The idea of voyaging was reflected many times before in the epic journey such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid, in which the hero changes, grow or improves over the journey. It also corresponds to the ideology of expansionism and imperialism which construct the fundamental structure of modern capitalist society where enterprise and mobility dominated.
The first road movie was made in Hollywood, and this genre has a very strong “American” taste. Maybe it is because of the variety of the country’s landscapes, or the fact that traveling overland could reminisce the 19th Century in American history, the “Go West” ethos, which was essential for the settlement of the US.
Literary Inspiration
The road movie genre was a continuation from the literature. Jack Kerouac’s 1955 novel On the Road can be understood as the literary inspiration of the road movie genre. It tells the story of two young male friends, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, who trek back and forth across America, finding the truth about themselves by rediscovering the landscape. On the road quickly became a hit at that time and used as a countercultural manifesto that promote the bohemian lifestyle, which by all means, as a weapon to turn against traditions like conservative “family values”, the protestant work ethic, and middle class materialism, which were the mainstream American values.
The basic theme and style of On the Road highlight the ideological contradiction between rebellion and tradition, which made this book become the bible for the Beats, bohemians, and hippies. The automobile was also glorified, not only because cars were the tool to travel, but also as a figurative vehicle of transformation. Many lengthy, poetic descriptions of riding in cars and driving cars suggest a fusion among Sal, Dean and the car. The road became a motif for the wilderness beyond urban and suburban territory. For the vast dominant frontier imagery of the American wild west, it served as an heaven to purify the souls of those young restless hearts.
The road film genre followed the ideology in this book, and characterized by this general contradiction between rebellion and tradition. Characters who went beyond the social laws and boundaries through road travel represent an alternative to society's conventions. At the same time, the road film's generic structure also inherited many traditional conceptions of classical film values.
Road Movie And Other Classical Genres
Road movie and Western genre are quite similar in some extents, as they both originated from United States, which focused on the exploration of the wild and unknown area in American’s wild west. However there are distinctive differences between this two genres, in the Western genre, the time was usually set in the 19th century or early 20th century, when the hero rode horse for adventure, and the conflict was usually between man and nature; whereas in Road movie the time was often set in the modern society, and protagonist drove car on adventure, the conflict was more towards man and himself. In the western, the hero usually carried a mission, and in order to achieve the mission, the hero went on the journey. However in the road movie, the protagonist treats the journey as an escape from reality, the journey itself is the mission, and usually it will bring them to nowhere, and either gain the enlightenment or end up even worse. In some way, the western was more focused on the adventure of the hero, and the road movie was more focused on the inner world of the protagonist.
Road movie not only took inspiration from Western genre, but also inherited the classical elements from gangster genre and film noir. Similar plots like an ambitious outsider usually tries to succeed (often financially) by breaking society's laws, or show sympathy towards the fugitive like the gangster films in depression-era. All as a mean of social commentary to criticize the society.
Bonnie and Clyde(1967)
Bonnie and Clyde is one of the sixties' road movies that people like to talk about, it is a road movie combing elements from gangster films, with comedy, terror, love and ferocious violence. It was produced by Warner Bros, which is the studio responsible for the gangster films of the 1930s, and it seems appropriate that this innovative, rebellious films revolutionized the way people perceive gangsters.
Bonnie and Clyde is a 1967 American crime road genre film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the title characters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, a pair of Texas desperadoes who roamed and robbed the southwest and midwest during the bleak Depression days of the early 1930s. The film received Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons) and Best Cinematography (Burnett Guffey). It was among the first 100 films selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
At the beginning of the film, Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) is portrayed as trapped at home, through a series of carefully framed jump cuts, she was bored, restless, and static. She spots Clyde (Warren Beatty) outside, planning to steal her mother's car, however she was fascinated by Clyde and decided to join his crime. In the spirit of On the Road, the idea of liberation with motion was persist throughout the film, as long as they were on the road, they were happy and free, and when they stopped, they became irritable and vulnerable to attack.
In this film, the two young and good-looking gangsters become an iconic hero for the counter cultural movement, with their romantic relationship and fugitives identity, they captured the likeness from the audience. The film was inspired from a real life story during the Great Depression, the actual Bonnie and Clyde couple who were real gangsters and robbed banks, but eventually shot down by the police in 1934. Some critics disagreed about this film as they considered this film as “glorifying the gangsters”, considering this film was visually extreme violent and brutal. Whereas the film did performed extraordinarily well in box office, as it was one of the top five grossing films of 1967 with $50,700,000 in US sales, and $70,000,000 worldwide.
This film deploys road travel as a way of to achieve self-conscious, and it reflects as a social critique and a rebel lion. Bonnie and Clyde is the precursors of American road film, and this outlaw couple in the Great Depression serves as an incisive allegory for the 1960s counter cultural critique of Big Business and conservative values. And the real life Bonnie and Clyde's mystique, their visionary, and their sensual lifestyle, also became a hot topic among people. The influence of the film extended to commercial merchandise in the form of hairstyles, authentic period music of the 30s, and gangster retro-clothing (such as double-breasted suits, berets, fedoras, and the maxi-skirt).
Two important themes that came from the book On the Road were visionary ambition and sensual restlessness. They were reflected and elaborated in this film. Even though Clyde was inarticulate and clumsy, he could “sees” Bonnie, knows with prophetic insight all about her, and tells her so. And his insight was complimentary with Bonnie's overt, restless sensuality.In the film, Bonnie is a sexy, lusty, beautiful femme, and discovers with deep frustration that Clyde is impotent, but stays with him. Late in the film, it is inferred that he becomes a man in every sense of the word.
The structure of this film was also revolutionary, as it follows the traditional formula originated from gangster films, however it rebelled the conventional gangster films with fresh road film elements. Fresh new blood was injected to the film industry, a rebellion of conservative within the alternative. All the themes that mobilized in Bonnie and Clyde, like glorified transience, the alternative lifestyle, sociopolitical critique, visionary ambition, and sensual restlessness were molded into the generic standard for road films in 1969 for the next milestone of road movie genre: Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider.
The most iconic: Easy Rider(1969)
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie, written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper, it tells the story of two bikers (played by Fonda and Hopper) who travel through the American Southwest and South.
This film introduced hippie culture to the big screen through the cross-country journey of Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper). Like many young men, Wyatt and Billy are trying to find direction in life, but as representatives of hippie culture, their methods are untraditional. Wyatt, nicknamed "Captain America”, dressed in American flag and looked like an patriotic American, with Billy, who dressed in Native American style. They made money from selling cocaine, and then use part of the proceeds to buy motorcycles. They hopped on their bikes and rode to New Orleans for Mardis Gras, hoping to find meaning and direction along the way. Rebelling against the conformist suburban culture of post-World War II America, these young men believed in living off the land, rejecting existing social institutions in favor of creating something new, but eventually killed by the rednecks who represented the American mainstream values.
Easy Rider is an explicit rebel road film, Wyatt and Billy were so patriotic, with American flag, cowboy decorations, long hair and use drugs. They were so expressive about their hippie identity, but they couldn’t hide their loneliness, criminality and alienation. The movie celebrates road travel aesthetically as much as narratively, and it is less reliant on a traditional generic formula, such as the gangster film. It sets in the present, it possesses more political relevance, as their hippies lifestyle was strongly rejected by the mainstream American.
This movie also explored the theme of American dream. In the movie, American dream made them believe that financial security will enable them to live an easy life without a clear destination. They began as hippies who were happy and friendly, but later in the movie they became desperate for food and crops, their hope and individualism had been stripped away at the end and their American dream failed miserably.
Easy Rider is a landmark counterculture film, and a “touchstone for a generation” that “captured the national imagination”. The significance about this film is that the film is about “A man went to look for America”, however they found an independent film. The success of Easy Rider helped sparking the New Hollywood phase of filmmaking during the early 1970s, as cinematically, it recreated the myth of the American West as the American ideal of freedom for a new generation. There were many artistically great films, like Taxi Driver which owe their existence to the success of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider. This film was also added to the Library of Congress National Registry in 1998 for the reason that Easy Rider explores the societal landscape, issues and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise and fall of the hippie movement, drug use, communal lifestyle and the subtle political message.
New American Cinema
Bonnie and Clyde(1967) and Easy Rider(1969) are the landmark films, and both are regarded as the catalyst for "New American Cinema", since it broke many cinematic taboos and were popular with the younger generation. Its success prompted other filmmakers to be more open in presenting sex and violence in their films.
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", is the period from roughly the late-1960s (Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate) to the early 1980s (Heaven's Gate, One from the Heart) when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and marketing, and it also changed the way major studios approached filmmaking. The films they made were part of the studio system, and these individuals were not "independent filmmakers", but they introduced subject matter and styles that set them apart from the studio traditions that an earlier generation had established from 1920s–1950s. New Hollywood has also been defined as a broader filmmaking movement influenced by this period, which has been called the “Hollywood renaissance”.
The variation: Thelma & Louise (1991)
In origin, road movie genre was constructed as a male escapist fantasy, with masculinity, individualism, and aggression inherited from Western genre. Road movie genre was not appealing for the female audience due to the lack of attention of female characters in those movies, for example, in Easy Rider, women are marginalized as either burdens or sex objects. However, over the years, the road movie genre has made a departure from its patriarchal, masculine roots, and people started to use this genre as a vehicle for something else, especially make spaces for those traditionally been marginalized, in terms of race, class, gender, or sexuality. One good example is Thelma and Louise by Ridley Scoot in 1991.
Thelma and Louise are best friends living in a small town in Arkansas, which is a small state in the Southern part of the United States. Both seem to be living somewhat depressing working class lives. Thelma is the unloved housewife of a sexist and obnoxious husband, and Louise is a struggling waitress whose boyfriend seems unready to finally commit to a long-term relationship with her.
One day, these two women decide to leave town for a weekend vacation together, in order to get away from their unhappy lives. While on the road, they stop in another small town in order to get some drinks at a local saloon. Unfortunately, Thelma decides to dance with a disgusting man who later tries to rape her in the parking lot. Ultimately, Louise ends up shooting this man, and thus the two of them suddenly find themselves in a lot of trouble, unable to have the relaxing vacation they had intended to have.
Thelma and Louise head out on the road, far from their hometown, and hopefully, stay as far away from the police as possible. They soon decide to drive to Mexico, but on the way, they continue to dig themselves deeper into trouble with the law, and eventually, both realize that they can never go back to the lives they had before.
Instead of talking about how a man changed through a journey, this movie turned the focus on the women in the United States, more specifically, the working class women who did not have many options in life. The film shows the traditional stereotypes of man and woman relationship, transforming the gender roles in the road movie genre. From a woman’s perspective, some of them never realize the potential and freedom that they have, especially in the world that the freedom came from the male dominated society which seems locked women up over the years. And few of them was trying to break the unconventional and traditional mindset, but in this film, sarcastically, all their efforts were failed miserably. The journey on the road for the Thelma and Louise was like a trap and the situation just kept getting worse. In the final scene, where the two embrace each other before driving off a cliff, has become an iconic scene.
This movie was more or less a reflection of the feminist movement, a rebellion against male dominated society. And road movie is the perfect vehicle to carry this kind of theme, as rebellion is the essence in road movies. There are many comments on the overtones of the feminism, and this film was even titled as a “neo-feminist road movie”. However, on the contrast, the film also received significant criticism from those who thought it was "male-bashing" and “man-hating", as in the film, the depictions of men were unfairly negative.
The film became a critical and commercial success, receiving six Academy Award nominations and winning one for Best Original Screenplay (Khouri). Both Sarandon and Davis were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Nebraska (2013)
Alexander Payne’s Nebraska in 2013 is an American comedy-drama road movie in the classical sense. It is a black and white film that tells a story about the relationship of father and son, and it is probably the newest road genre so far. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where Bruce Dern won the Best Actor Award. It was also nominated for six Academy Awards; Best Picture, Best Director for Payne, Best Actor for Dern, Best Supporting Actress for Squibb, Best Original Screenplay for Nelson, and Best Cinematography for Papamichael.
The film stars Will Forte as a directionless man, annoyed by his increasingly senile and difficult father, played by Bruce Dern, who is convinced that a misleading junk mail flyer is a true promise of riches. Forte volunteers to drive his estranged father hundreds of miles to collect his ‘prize’, and during the journey, he found out another side of his father which come away with a new understanding.
Alexander Payne clearly knew what he was doing when he set this movie on the road. And casting Bruce Dern, a veteran of many important ‘New Hollywood’ classics, is equally significant. Nebraska is not a counter-cultural rebel yell like Easy Rider or Bonnie and Clyde. It is simply a relationship study, minus the politics and romantics. But still there were fresh blood, like senility, the death of dreams, the uncertainty of life when you can practically go anywhere. Nevertheless, the possibility of connection and transformation, so integral to the road movie form, is still there. Like all great road movies, Nebraska tells us that the first step toward a new beginning is to put your foot on the accelerator.
It is an interesting fact that the road genre had been in this world for eighty years, and the road picture is not fading away. Although this genre could hardly achieve commercial or critical success, it still remains among us. Take the movie The Guilt Trip in 2012 as an example, starring Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, it is about an estranged mother and son on a cross-country journey, which means that, of course, they are in for some comedy exploits. But journeying a distance together on the road ends up being just the thing they need to bridge the emotional distance between them. Like so many road movies before it, The Guilt Trip seems to say that petrol and axle grease are better than psychotherapy.
I have never notice one characteristics of the road genre until I finished my research, and I realized that road movie is enormously flexible, it can take in other genres, comment on political issues or set out a philosophical worldview. This is one of the reasons that the road movie has remained consistently popular since the advent of sound cinema.
Road movie in China
Geometrically America and China are quite similar, both has gorgeous landscapes in the vast west. Road movie genre is a flexible genre, Chinese directors adapted this genre into Chinese content and came up with the road film with Chinese characteristics. In the recent years, there were many localized road films in China that demonstrated a significant impact which stretched out the boundary of filmmaking in China, for example, the Lost In Thailand(人再囧途之泰囧) in 2010 is a comedic road film as a lightweight entertainment with a budget of US$2.2 million and Box office US$208 million. This film was so successful in box office, that it has shaken up the landscape of the movie industry in China, where big-budget historical epics and martial-arts and action films often dominate the box office.
Another good example is director Ning Hao’s No Man’s Land in 2013. The film is a combination of western genre and road movie that set the story in the vast wild land in Xinjiang province. It made on a budget of US$3.3 million, and ended up grossing US$42.6 million at the Chinese box office. The significance of this film is not only about the box office, but it is a film that banned for three years. This film was banned at the first place probably due to the reason that it provoked the authority in the Film Bureau for its black humor and anti-authoritarian attitude, especially the role of the police, as the police was portrayed as imbecile in front of the crime. Although this film was deemed by the Film Bureau as lack of social responsibility, lack of reality and a betrayal of artistic beauty, it luckily had its chance to be screened in the cinema. And the result was out of expectation, it also had a high anticipatory score on the website. Perhaps it was because people were very curious about the movie and the Film Bureau accidentally promoted this film in a sarcastic way. Three years is long enough to change a person’s mindset, and I think it is certainly a good news for the growth of China film industry.
Getting Home(2006)
Getting Home (落叶归根) is a 2007 Chinese comedy drama road film directed by Zhang Yang and starring Chinese stage comedian Zhao Benshan. Getting Home's original title derives from a Chinese proverb meaning "A falling leaf returns to its roots." It is also based on a true story. It had won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival.
This film is about the friendship between two construction workers in their 50s, Zhao (Zhao Benshan) and Liu (Hong Qiwen). It opens when Liu unexpectedly dies after a night of drinking and Zhao decides to fulfill a promise to his friend to get him home, beginning a long odyssey from Shenzhen to Chongqing with Liu's corpse on his back. Zhao travels hundreds of miles across extraordinary countryside, encountering a number of colorful adventures and characters—and even discovering love in some unlikely quarters. Zhao meets a variety of figures along the way, from good people to village gangsters, played by several of China's better known character actors. Director Zhang Yang’s humorous and moving tale of friendship offers a powerful, and sometimes slapstick, making a commentary on the value of community and human connectivity in modernizing China.
In most of the Mainland movies, farmers are usually stereotyped as either hard working or poor people, but in Getting Home, it’s not the main theme of the picture, as the viewer gradually learns, Zhao is actually repaying, in his own way, a promise to his dead friend Liu once made to him, a journey for the loyalty to his friendship.
Conclusion
Comparing the road genres between American and Chinese, they all have the literature inspiration, Odysseys in the West and the Journey to the West in China, and both see the journey as a way of transformation. Whereas in China, the automobile culture is not as strong as American, due to the fact that America is the country on wheel, and the car had a deeper meaning for the Americans. Hence the car acts as a vehicle of transformation is more obvious in American road genre. Comparing to China, the journey usually linked with family and home, and home usually is the destination, and the purpose of the journey is to get home. It is a very common phenomena that in China, especially in the southern provence like Guang Dong, there are so many workers from the inner province, they are separated from work and home hundreds of miles away. And during the Chinese New Year, billions of people would go home on the train, with only one target in their mind: home.
Reference
What A Trip: The Road Film And American Culture
"Bonnie and Clyde” by Pauline Kael- New Yorker Magazine
filmproject - D. Hopper. Easy Rider.
