Road movie

The term road movie indicates a kind Cinéma tographic. The road movies are “films on the road”. The place of the intrigue is the road itself and not the places which it crosses.

The first road movie was undoubtedly the Grapes of anger ( Grapes off Wrath , 1940) of John Ford, according to the novel of John Steinbeck.
Au exclusively literary level, one finds accounts where the voyage holds place of intrigue as of antiquity: the Odyssey of Homère, the Satyricon of Pétrone or the Metamorphoses of Apulée.

One can see the road as a metaphor of the time which ravels, of the life with his meetings and his separations; while accelerating, one approaches the following meeting, as if time were accelerated. The road movies often represent an initiatory search of the characters, who will mature with the wire of their meetings and their experiments and will become “adult”, the voyage is then a rite of passage. One can also see it like a metaphor of the cinema itself, the dotted line of the medium having a strange resemblance to the perforations of the film. Lastly, the road symbolizes either freedom of movement and thus individual freedoms, or the exile, the suffering, the wandering.

Among the current topics of Road Movies, let us quote:

the Mare
the investigation into a person missing or lost sight of the fact
the race (e.g.: a World insane, insane, insane, insane , by Stanley Kramer, 1963)
the pleasure trip
the escape (of a war for example)
the wandering
evolution of childhood to adolescence

List road movies

1934

New York-Miami ( It happened one night ) of Frank Capra, the USA

1940

Grapes of anger ( Bunches off Wrath ) of John Ford, the USA

1945

Turning of Edgar G. Ulmer

1953

the Voyage of the fear ( The Hitch-Hiker ) of Ida Lupino, the USA

1957

wild Strawberries ( Smultronstället ) of Ingmar Bergman, Sweden

1962

Fanfaron ( It Sorpasso ) of Dino Risi, Italy

1963

a World insane, insane, insane, insane of Stanley Kramer, the USA

1966

Voyage to two ( Two For The Road ) of Stanley Donen, the USA
the Great Ramble of Gerard Oury, France

1969

Easy To wrinkle Refusals Hopper, the USA

1971

Boundary point zero ( Vanishing Not ) of Richard Sarafian, the USA
two-track Macadam ( Two-Lane Blacktop ) of Assembles Hellman, the USA
Duel of Steven Spielberg, the USA

1973

Trotts It wild ( Badlands ) of Terrence Malick, the USA
the Scarecrow ( Scarecrow ) of Jerry Schatzberg, the USA

1974

Alice in the cities ( Alice in den Städten ) of Wim Wenders, Germany
Cock-a-doodle-doo Mr Poulet of Damouré Zika, Lam Ibrahim Dia and Jean Rouch (under the pseudonym common Dalarou), France/Niger

1976