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Road movie
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A road film is a film genre in which the film's plot takes place during a journey.
genre has its roots in spoken and written tales of epic journeys, such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid. The road film is a standard plot employed by screenwriters. It is a kind of bildungsroman, a kind of story in which the hero changes, grows or improves over the course of the story. The modern "road picture" is to filmmakers what the heroic quest was to Medieval writers.
The on-the-road plot was used at the birth of American Cinema but blossomed in the years after World War II, reflecting a boom in automobile production and the growth of youth culture.
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Encyclopedia
A road film is a film genre in which the film's plot takes place during a journey.
History
The genre has its roots in spoken and written tales of epic journeys, such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid. The road film is a standard plot employed by screenwriters. It is a kind of bildungsroman, a kind of story in which the hero changes, grows or improves over the course of the story. The modern "road picture" is to filmmakers what the heroic quest was to Medieval writers.
The on-the-road plot was used at the birth of American Cinema but blossomed in the years after World War II, reflecting a boom in automobile production and the growth of youth culture. Even so, awareness of the "road picture" as a genre came only in the 1960s with Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde.
Structure
Like their antecedents, the road movie tends towards an episodic structure. In each episode, there is a challenge to be met, although not all of them will be met successfully. In most episodes, a piece of the plot is revealed - knowledge or allies are gained, and so on. Sometimes, as Heart of Darkness, this progress is inverted, and each episode represents a loss rather than a gain.
Road movies traditionally end in one of four ways:
- having met with triumph at their ultimate destination, the protagonist(s) return home, wiser for their experiences.
- at the end of the journey, the protagonist(s) find a new home at their destination.
- the journey continues endlessly.
- having realised that, as a result of their journey, they can never go home, the protagonists either choose death or are killed.
Notable Examples
Notable examples include
Filmography
Bibliography
- A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library
- The Road Story and the Rebel: Moving Through Film, Fiction, and Television by Katie Mills
- Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
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