Road Movies

1
Road Movies

• Speed, Dust and Heat Richard Salafians
  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
• 60ss 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
• Kowalskis 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 in the
  predominantly white town are spectacles for
  Middle America
• Minor, typical social criticism of road movies
  corrupt and callous policemen

8
Vanishing Point

• Kowalskis 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