"The joy of a road movie is its very simple narrative nature, which is that you know you're going to go through different places and you're going to meet new people. At the same time, you have to not make it feel too obvious and too crudely episodic. "-- Sam Mendes
The theme of this series is “the road movie.” This is a broad category of film that includes everything from light comedy to film noir and horror. What road movies have in common, other than the obvious idea that they center around a journey, is that the characters are as much on a journey of self-discovery as they are literally on a journey to a destination. In fact, often there is no destination. What defines a road movie is that the journey itself is more important than the destination. And that is true of the three films in this series. Whether the characters are traveling across America (“Lost in America”), England (“Sightseers”) or India (“The Darjeeling Limited”), the plot is not centered around where they are going but on what they learn about themselves and their fellow travelers.
The idea of a story whose plot is centered around a journey goes way back in literature, even predating the written text. Homer’s Odyssey, for example, follows Odysseus on a ten year trek from Troy to his homeland, Ithaca. The plot is driven by his encounters with mythical creatures along the way – the Cyclops, the witch Circe, the Sirens, etc. – who test Odysseus’s resolve.
The encounters with strangers along the way is typical of this type of story. You can find it in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the first “best-seller” after the advent of the printing press. It’s there as well in the first modern novel, Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote.
And so it is with the road movie. In a typical road movie, the plot is driven by the encounters its characters have with strangers they meet along the way. It differs from a quest movie, which also involves a journey, in that, in a quest movie, the quest itself is vitally important to the characters and to us (through our shared experience with the characters.) In a road movie, the quest (if there is one) is of importance to the characters but not as much to us.
The movie of The Wizard of Oz (dir: Victor Fleming et al., 1939) will help illustrate the difference. It contains both a quest movie and a road movie – actually two road movies. In the first part of the film, in Kansas, Dorothy is confronted by Miss Gulch, who threatens to take her dog Toto away from her and have him euthanized. In response, Dorothy runs away from home.
She has no destination in mind, as is frequently the case in a road movie. On her journey, she encounters a stranger, Prof. Marvel. Here, the journey is cut short. Prof. Marvel convinces Dorothy to go home. So we have a road movie in miniature.
Once Dorothy finds her way to Oz, the second road movie begins when Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road.
True, she has a destination. She is “off to see the Wizard,” as we are repeatedly reminded, but what is really important to the plot (and to the audience) are the strangers she meets along the way – the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion – as well as the Wicked Witch of the West.
After Dorothy meets the Wizard, the movie changes into a quest. Dorothy is given a task: to bring back the broom of the Wicked Witch. She undertakes a journey, but this journey is different from the journey on the Yellow Brick Road. Dorothy’s quest is specific, and the audience is invested in her success.
In the early days of film, the brief running times of the films did not lend itself to a full-fledged road movie, but there were many chase movies which, in miniature, have the features of a road movie. Typically, some incident occurs that causes one person to chase after another. Then another joins in, and another and another. The chase, as in the journey of a road movie, has no destination, and also, as in a road movie, strangers are met along the way. A typical example is La course a la saucisse (The Race for the Sausage) (dir: Alice Guy, 1907) in which a dog steals a sausage and is given hot pursuit by the butcher and then seemingly everyone in town.
The apotheosis of the short chase film is Cops (dir: Buster Keaton, Edward Cline, 1922) in which Buster sets out on the road with a wagonload of household goods that he has accidentally stolen..
The road movie, as we now think of it, doesn’t become a staple until the 1930s. Likely the Great Depression was a factor in the rise of this genre. Hoboes traveled the country in search of work, living in temporary encampments called Hoovervilles, as portrayed in movies like My Man Godfrey (dir: Gregory La Cava, 1936) and Sullivan’s Travels (dir: Preston Sturges, 1942). Whole families migrated from their homes due to the dustbowl, as memorably portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath (dir: John Ford, 1940).
And so the movies changed to reflect this change in American life. A typical early example is Wild Boys of the Road (dir: William Wellman, 1933) in which two boys leave home to alleviate the strain on their parents.
Another is I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (dir: Mervyn LeRoy, 1932), in which James Allen (played by Paul Muni) travels the country seeking to make his fortune until he is wrongly convicted for a robbery. Warner Brothers Studios specialized is this type of social realist film.
The Western genre, a staple of film since at least 1903, evolved to include not just stories about homesteaders and bank robbers, but also the migration from the East to the West. The Covered Wagon (dir: James Cruze, 1923), an early example of this sub-genre, does predate the Great Depression, but after 1930, there was a flood of such “road movies,” from The Big Trail (dir: Raoul Walsh, 1930), to Stagecoach (dir: John Ford, 1939) and Wagonmaster (dir: John Ford, 1950).
The greater mobility in American society is thus reflected in the movies, whatever the genre.
Road movies can be categorized in a number of ways:
The Solitary Traveler
The solitary traveler is the rarest type of road movie. An example is Harry and Tonto (dir: Paul Mazursky, 1974) in which a retired man (Art Carney) goes on a cross-country journey accompanied only by his cat. Of course, one could consider that Tonto takes on the role of the companion, as does Toto for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. A pure example is The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999) in which an old man (Richard Farnsworth), determined to mend his relationship with his estranged brother, sets out to see him by riding on his lawnmower. (He no longer has a car or a driver’s license.)
Even when a characters starts out alone, he or she usually picks up a traveling companion shortly thereafter. That could be a friendly companion who shares the same goals (e.g. the Scarecrow and Dorothy), but it could also be someone who impedes the traveler. Thus is the case in I Know Where I’m Going (dir: MIchael Powel and Emeric Pressburger, 1942) in which Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller), on her way to meet her fiancee, encounters Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), who is determined to stop her from doing so.
That leads us to a second category:
The Mismatched Couple
Drama is conflict. So is comedy. Conflict is automatically created when two characters travel together who do not share a common goal. In It Happened One Night (dir: Frank Capra, 1934) the heiress played by Claudette Colbert is running away from her wedding; she has no goal in mind except to get away. Not so with her traveling companion, the newspaper reporter played by Clark Gable, whose goal is to get a story. Also in a comic vein is Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941) in which the great movie director, John Sullivan (Joel McRae) sets out to experience real life, disguised as a hobo. His unwanted companion, the Girl (Veronica Lake), is a wannabe starlet.
The same dynamic occurs in thrillers as well, especially in the work of Alfred Hitchcock. In The 39 Steps (1935) Hannay (Robert Donat), wrongly accused of murder, travels cross country to prove his innocence. He winds up handcuffed to Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) who would prefer to turn him in if she could get away from him.
A similar premise of the wrong man forced to flee cross-country with a stranger (helpful or not) can be found in Hitchock’s Young and Innocent (1937) with Derrick De Marney and Nova Pilbeam, Saboteur (1942) with Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, and North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.
Even when two characters share the same goal or destination, conflicts can develop due to clashes in personality. This can be between two strangers (Steve Martin and John Candy) in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (dir: John Hughes, 1987) who want to get home for Thanksgiving. It could be between two family members as in Rain Man (dir: Barry Levinson, 1988) in which a selfish yuppie (Tom Cruise) travels cross-country with his autistic brother (Dustin Hoffman) to claim an inheritance. Or it could be between two people who may or may not be related, as in Paper Moon (dir: Peter Bodgonavich, 1974), a film set in the depression, in which a con man (Ryan O’Neal) travels across Kansas with a girl who may or may not be his daughter (Tatum O’Neal) defrauding gullible strangers along the way.
The mismatched couple generally results in a film with a lighter tone. When the travelers are well-matched, the tone can become much darker.
The Outlaw Couple
In this sub-genre of the road movie, the traveling couple are either outlaws or become outlaws in order to survive, with predictably tragic results. This is the case in You Only Live Once (dir: Fritz Lang, 1937) in which a legal secretary (Sylvia Sidney) marries Eddie Taylor, an ex-con (Henry Fonda). The couple is forced to flee when Eddie is accused of murder. Similar stories of outlaws on the run are They Live by Night (dir: Nicholas Ray, 1948) with Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnel, Gun Crazy (dir: Joseph H. Lewis, 1950) with John Dall and Peggy Cummins, Bonnie and Clyde (dir: Arthur Penn, 1967) with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and Thieves Like Us (dir: Robert Altman, 1974) with Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall. A feminist take on the genre is Thelma & Louise (dir: Ridley Scott, 1991) with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis.
The Happy Couple
Rarest are films in which an apparently happy couple go on the road and nothing terrible happens to them. In the short On the Wrong Trek (1936), directed by and starring the underrated comic genius Charley Chase, a man goes on vacation with his wife and, needless to say, things do not go as planned. This is true also of the honeymooning couple played by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in The Long Long Trailer (dir: Vincente Minnelli, 1954). The first film in our series, Lost in America (dir: Albert Brooks, 1985) also features a couple (Brooks and Julie Haggerty) on a road trip in an RV. In the non-married category of compatible couples are the motorcyclists (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) in Easy Rider (dir: Dennis Hopper, 1969), a film referenced in Lost in America.
The Family Road Trip
Most of the films in this category are pretty bad. (Are We There Yet? (dir: Brian Levant, 2005), anyone?) Maybe it's just easier to establish and resolve the tensions between two people than among a large group. Certainly, most people can relate to the disastrous family road trip, so it's not surprising that many have tried. But for every decent effort in this sub-genre, e.g. National Lampoon's Vacation (dir: Amy Heckerling, 1983), there are many more misfires, e.g. National Lampoon's European Vacation (also dir: Amy Heckerling, 1985). Among the best are the last film in our series, The Darjeeling Limited (dir: Wes Anderson, 2007) and Little Miss Sunshine (dir: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006). In the latter, a family road trip to a beauty pageant exacerbates the tensions between the parents, their children, the grandfather and the uncle. Spoiler alert, if you haven't seen the film, this clip gives away a key plot point:
The Anthology Road Movie
In a category of its own is the road movie that hops from place to place, but not in one movie. This anthology approach is familiar from television programs, beginning in the 1950s, in which travelers change locations from week to week in an endless road trip (or at least, endless until the ratings decline). Shows in this category include Wagon Train (1957-1965), Route 66 (1960-1964), The Fugitive (1963-1967), and, more recently, Poker Face (2023- ). Each show has a central traveler or travelers who meet strangers each week in a new location. You can think of each show as one long road movie.
Predating the TV era, the movies, too, had a similar concept: a film series in which each movie took the main character(s) to a new location. The concept is inherent in the very titles of the films, from Charlie Chan in London (1934) to Charlie Chan in Rio (1944) with stopovers in Paris, Egypt, Shanghai, Monte Carlo, Honolulu, Reno, Panama, and New York. Or in the Bob Hope- Bing Crosby series of films from The Road to Singapore (1940) to The Road to Hong Kong (1962) by way of Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia, Rio, and Bali. None of these films is, individually, a road movie, but taken as a whole, each series is.
Feel free to add your own comments with your favorite road movies, or come up with your own categories.