1 / 9

Road Movies

Road Movies. Speed, Dust and Heat: Richard Salafian’s Vanishing Point (1971). Genre Definition. Bonnie and Clyde (1967 ) and Easy Rider (1969) – genre defining origin of the contemporary road movie Outlaw road movie – Quest road movie

minowa
Download Presentation

Road Movies

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Road Movies Speed, Dust and Heat: Richard Salafian’s Vanishing Point (1971)

  2. Genre Definition • Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) – genre defining origin of the contemporary road movie • Outlaw road movie – Quest road movie • 70s road movies – romanticism, visionary (?) rebellion, and a critique of conformist society + defeated tone in the end • Cynicism about being on the road and denial of the pretense that wandering takes the driver outside of society.

  3. Road Movies in the 1970s • Existential inspection rather than social critique (European influence) • Existentialism – an interpretation of human existence • ‘Existence precedes essence’ (Jean-Paul Sartre) – ‘humans do not have a nature that determines their modes of being (existence), but that these modes are simply possibilities from which they may choose and on the basis of which they can project themselves.’ • Existential choice and existential loss

  4. Road Movies in the 1970s • Road movies as ‘existential quest’ • Road travel as a process through which the protagonist finds her/his mode of existence • Focused on this existential and individual search and social dimensions receded: road movies depoliticized • The evolution of road movies through the 70s 1) the more pronounced dramatisation of the human and automobile

  5. Road Movies in the 1970s 2) a more ‘mechanized’ development of characters 3) a more fragmented, aleatory narrative structures 4) a road trip symbolic of emotional malaise • Apathy rather than rebellion • 60s’s optimism for social changes replaced by political apathy following the disappointments and disillusionments with counter-cultural and anti-establishment movements • This lead to the Me generation and the yuppies in the 80s

  6. Vanishing Point • Vanishing Point a vintage 70s road movie – a quest road movie with outlaw elements • Kowalski’s obsession with speed and mobility – his mode of existence and his existential choice ‘Speed means the freedom of soul’ Supersoul • Spiritual bond between Kowalski and Supersoul – another road movie element ‘buddy’

  7. Vanishing Point • ‘I am a DJ, I am what I play … I got believers.’ • Speeding Dodge GTO and a black inthe predominantly white town are spectacles for Middle America • Minor, typical social criticism of road movies – corrupt and callous policemen

  8. Vanishing Point • Kowalski’s past career revealed through flashbacks – wounded in Vietnam, discharged in 1964, policeman at San Diego PD, two promotions, and demolition driver • Frustration with his job and relationships; difficulty of finding himself and fitting into society • Kowalski as a lost soul – nihilistic escape –existential quest

  9. Vanishing Point • The film depoliticizes and delegitimatizes counter-culture movements and homosexuality, by identifying them with feminity • Its emphasis on masculinity – even ‘reactionary’

More Related