MIDTERM ROAD MOVIES. 15/03/2017
1.In her essay on the film Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969): “The Road to Dystopia: Landscaping the nation in Easy Rider”, Barbara Klinger writes that “the film is a celebration of the freedom of the road and the beauty of the landscape and a dissertation on the end of the road and the repulsive banalities and industrial blight that disfigure the scenery … Easy Rider thus invokes both affirmative and critical visions of 1960s America, making it more of a measure of its time than either its original or later audiences could imagine.” Indeed, the movie shows us beautiful natural landscapes of America with extended passages of Southwestern scenery letting us discover the Rocky Mountains magnified by panoramic travelling point-of-view shots, the deserts, the forests and the magnificent sunset in Monument Valley emphasized by a nearly 360-degree pan of the horizon but, also the Growing Interstate Highway System. Furthermore, the add of an exhilarating rock music reveals the freedom and the joy of riding of the two bikers riding across the country and sleeping in the nature. But this portrait of America is not so idealistic. In fact, the themes of hippie culture, drug, sex and racism portrayed by the main characters relate some true happenings in the American society in the sixties. But as Klinger said, the main ideology conveyed by this film is the notion of freedom. On their bikes, the two main characters, Wyatt and Billy want to be “free” and are in search for an American Dream lifestyle place. However, it seems they can only find a racist, critical and corrupt society, even until arriving to the conclusion, as Wyatt said, that they “blew it”. That displays the fact that the two men have not been able to find the America they were looking for. Finally, they arrived at the end of their road (“the Road to Dystopia”) and are killed by two American men in a truck because of their Hippie culture making them alienated in the American society. The movie also shows America as a country of celebration when there is the parade with music but the happiness ends at the sound of the police sirens, when, Billy and “Captain America” were put into jail. This creates once again a critical vision of America. The main character’s appearance, the clothing codes and especially the long hair soon display the fact that they belong to a controversial culture. In the panning shot filmed in the bar, America is depicted as being a homophobic and racist society. The sheriff in it, arbitrarily, refer to Wyatt, Billy and George (the lawyer) as “trouble makers”, alienated from the society. Before the incomprehension of the protagonists, George tells that, in reality, people are afraid of what hippies represent: freedom. Another pessimistic and sad vision of America is also shown when we see weak and dependent women not leaving the conventional American dream as they sell their body and wait desperately men to pay. So, during all the trip, Wyatt, Billy and then George confront the profound, racist and conservative America, which refuses the evolution of the sixties.
In another scene in which Wyatt and Billy arrive to a commune, the first seconds of footage makes us think this is a place that represents the “beautiful America” because of the mid shot of this quiet valley and the diegetic sound codes of singing and laughter. But a few seconds later, the sounds change when close up shots of feet that walk on bare ground make us understand the desperation of people for food and crops. Their depressed faces are shown through a long camera pan. In the scene in the cemetery, where the effects of drug are shown through various mixed cross cuts, we see Wyatt sitting on a sort of statue of liberty asking: ”why did you leave me like that ?” This emphasizes the feeling that America has let him down.
In conclusion, these specific different ways of filming are really expressing at the best the two different, often contradictory visions and experiences of the road and of America stated by B. Klinger in her essay.
2.The Road Movies, through particular film strategies carried out, attribute different specific meanings to the representation of characters on the Road and express various notions.
For example, in the movie The Grapes of Wrath (john Ford, 1940), the road reveals a representation of different goals for the different characters. However, in this film, the main purpose of the road is the obligation and necessity to escape from the unfortunate social conditions brought by the Great Depression in the thirties. And the characters (as Gran Pa) that refuse to leave, die. Because of the mechanization of agriculture (new machines and cars represent the power), farmers are hunted from their lands and must take the road (here the Road 66 to California) for the search of a new home and to find a job. This is shown in the first part of the film, by the use of low angle shots, in the scene where machines take down houses, revealing the emptiness and dirt surrounding the houses, therefore expressing the consequences of the Great Depression. So, when the Joad family decide to leave their original home, the road functions as a sense of hope, and a potential of revelation, especially for the mother: Ma Joad, even if in the scene without dialogue where she tries her earrings, we understand she knows that she lost her memories and that it will be no return. The numerous shots on her character make us us understands that she is the citadel of the family: she tries to keep the family united and is the arbiter of its arguments. To follow the evolution of the different characters, the narrative is constructed with an alternation between wide plans and views centered on the family. Indeed, the Joad family members are not talking a lot but better express themselves much in a way of looking and standing. A specific important scene also reveals the important character of Tom Joad when, thanks to his friend Casy, a former preacher, he becomes aware that he has to head off to fulfill Jim’s task of organizing the migrant workers. Many shots on him let us understand he is thoughtful and that he represents a great source of vitality for his family. Furthermore, in the scene at the end of the film, we see that the road having no end symbolizes the fact the family is not giving up and have incentive to keep going.
In the film Detour (Ulmer, 1945), what puts in motion Al Roberts, is the desire for stability; he wants a home and getting married. But in this film noir, the road functions as a space of the demise of the main character who will be trapped into something that will happen and that could happen to everyone. Therefore, the road will become a space of dark fate and a prison for Al. Indeed, the way of filming reflects that darkness by a constantly reminding that anybody can be evil and that crime can be within each one of us. The road also connects isolated characters. In the scene at the beginning of the film, we see Al in a bar who doesn’t want to communicate. Nevertheless, he starts talking and tells us (only to us) its entire story because a song played in the café triggers his memory; the lighting is focusing on his eyes. We enter in his mind through a subjective point of view and a particular perspective. But the way it is presented put a distance between us and him because it is his not reliable point of view. Indeed, he catches every chance to insist that only the destiny is responsible for all his troubles, like in the scene when he tells once more that it was just his “luck” picking Vera up on the road. In the final shot, he also warns up that “fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all”. The scene of his fatal rendezvous with Vera is a great example of the film’s oblique and cryptic narrative method. Furthermore, during the movie, numerous flashbacks make us understand what will happen to him and why he is such in a darkness. The filmmaker, Ulmer, uses short and special elliptical, expository sequences to define his main character as a man who lacks purpose and who unconsciously rationalizes his convenience on all occasions for his own interests or in order to absolve himself of responsibility for his actions. The other important character of this film is Vera, a strong character that needs to reverse the inequality of the sexes in the society. In various scenes, she dominates Al by the way she is speaking to her “prisoner”. So, in this movie, the road is also a metaphor used to connect individualism (Al and Vera are isolated persons who only dedicate their lives to private purposes).
The film: The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) tells the story of the five-year journey of its two male protagonists. The main character, an outsider, Ethan, is a mysterious lonesome horseman we see arriving and leaving from inside a home by the shooting in a field of vision reduced and dark, in opposition with the wide bright landscape. This character must face a tragedy and take the road to solve a problem: bring back home his niece who was kidnapped by Indians. In many scenes, Ethan’s character turns out to be tough, physically skilled, ruggedly self-sufficient, racist and driven by his own codes of behavior and set of values. And, as time passes, when Martin hopes to bring back his sister, Ethan considers the case of the surviving sister as hopeless because she has spent a lot of time with the Comanches. In fact, the search is lasting a long time (the illusion of the passage of time and space on the screen is created by the montages of the different seasons, and people waiting for years but receiving a few letters that summarize the search trip and maintain the connection with home, letting the viewer understanding the evolution of the travelers and their successive goals). In the movie, we can notice that It is during the moments of break (like campfires) that the characters are better revealed. Nevertheless, Ethan redeems himself at the very end. So, in this movie, the road can be seen as a transitional space between primitiveness and modernity and the character of Ethan is imagined to be a victim of modernity and cultural progression. The contrast between the old, racist America and the new one is well expressed through the dialogues, the body language and the facial expression of the characters.
3.Some film techniques are frequently used to represent particular features relating to the act of travelling on the road like the driving scenes that are often shot with the cameras under cranked in order to make believe that the cars are driving faster than they are and convey the appearance of speed. For example, it is the case in the scene, in Vanishing Point (Sarafian, 1971), of the race between the Challenger (Kowalski’s white car) and the Jaguar where the camera was cranked at half speed so that the cars that were driving at approximately 50 miles per hour appeared to be much faster at regular camera speed. This emphasizes the chase and pursuit road movie’s genre and the notion of motion and speed on the road.
In a lot of road movies, very often, there are not a lot of dialogues and communication between the characters. The characters are often weird, tormented psychologically and speak better through their silence or through their thoughts or internal reasoning. In Vanishing Point, Kowalski even turns the radio off, silencing Super Soul and always tries to avoid linguistic communication. This reinforces the idea of nihilism and emptiness of existence that prevailed in the early seventies, in the post- hippy years. It also allows the viewers to focus on the action of driving, on the images and on the feelings expressed silently by the characters and, provide the spectators suspense or adrenaline. The absence of dialogues also gives the film a particular atmosphere: in Vanishing Point, Kowalski is quite trapped in his car and we hardly see how he could get out of it and make it. Furthermore, it emphasizes the idea of the lack of time, of the speed (Kowalski has not much time to speak, he wants to win his bet and finally succeed in something in his life).
Another specific film technique that allows us to understand why the character is on the road, is the editing of flashbacks, that is to say an alteration of the story order in which the plots moves back to show events that have taken place earlier. This allows to explain what the driver is thinking in the current scene. In Vanishing point, some scenes showing Kowalski looking at his mirror allow the transition from the present to the past and let him remind fragmented parts of his life. The flashbacks also reveal information about the character and explain the reason of his trip. These reasons can be the sadness and despair, or the lack of hope like in the scene in the desert in which Kowalski remembers his lover Vera who seems has drowned.
We could study a lot of other film devices (lighting, music…) and many other examples about this question but we’ll surely study and explain them in other student works.