“YOU CAN NEVER GO FAST ENOUGH”: THE EARLY 1970s ROAD MOVIE AS THE QUINTESSENTIAL NEW HOLLYWOOD GENRE

Although it is a genre that has taken hold in other countries like Australia, the road movie is most keenly associated with American cinema. Taking its cue from the forward momentum of colonialism, conquest and the wandering search for meaning that characterise the western, and the development of the vast network of highways and byways that crisscross the United States with the coming of modernity and the motor car, the road movie can be regarded – along with the western – as the quintessential American genre. Mixing with comedy, crime, romance and other genres, it took particular hold with the coming of sound. Although often categorised in other ways, such celebrated films as Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934), Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950) and John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) can be productively understood as archetypal or formative “road” movies. But it is in the late 1960s and early 1970s that the road movie reached its apogee in the aftershock of the extraordinary popular success of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) and Hollywood studios’ newfound openness to emerging talent with a very different outlook on cinema and life. The forward momentum of earlier films is hollowed out, as movies like Five Easy Pieces (1970) and Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) reflect the relentless, cyclical but questing motion of burned out, listless yet idealistic figures across a blighted and lost American landscape. In many ways the road movie is the model genre of New Hollywood and the counterculture, and for a few short years it was a dominant expressive force. This season focuses on the first half of the 1970s and highlights the importance of the road movie form to key emerging filmmakers such as Terrence Malick, Bob Rafelson, Monte Hellman and Steven Spielberg. It also includes singular works like Barbara Loden’s remarkable sole feature, Wanda (1970), and the iconic, genre-defining Vanishing Point (1971).

Wednesday 4 February

7:00pm TWO-LANE BLACKTOP

Monte Hellman (1971) 102 mins – M

This aphoristic and metaphysical road movie charts the meandering race between a Pontiac GTO and a stripped back 1955 Chevy across a blighted post-1960s America. One of the defining works of the road movie genre, Hellman’s commercially underperforming opus quickly became a key cult movie. A profound essay on aimlessness, ennui and car culture, it marshals suitably naturalistic and bracingly low-key performances from Laurie Bird and rock stars James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. It also allows space for one of Warren Oates’ most soulful and iconic turns (“If I’m not grounded pretty soon, I’m gonna go into orbit”). With Harry Dean Stanton.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Two-Lane Blacktop
by John Flaus

9:00pm BADLANDS

Terrence Malick (1973) 94 mins – M

A cool, philosophical and troublingly American neo-noir based on the real-life murder spree by Charles Starkweather across Nebraska and Wyoming in the late 1950s. Malick’s remarkable, critically acclaimed, stylistically distinct and extraordinarily controlled directorial debut channels an emerging “TV generation” of disaffected American teens blithely seeking instant thrills and fame. In her breakthrough performance, Sissy Spacek inhabits the character of 15-year-old Holly, whose disarming voiceover matter-of-factly “recounts” the murderous actions of Kit (Martin Sheen, in a career-defining role). With Warren Oates.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Death Comes as an End: Temporality, Domesticity and Photography in Terrence Malick’s Badlands
by Adrian Danks

Wednesday 11 February

7:00pm THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS

Steven Spielberg (1974) 110 mins – M

Based on real lovers-on-the-lam Ila Fae Holiday and Bobby Dent, Spielberg’s assured and riotous theatrical debut stars Goldie Hawn as a woman breaking her husband (William Atherton) out of prison in order for the pair to retrieve their son from child welfare services. Spurred by the extraordinary success of his 1971 TV movie Duel, the film initiated Spielberg’s collaborations with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who delicately captures the sun-dazzled Texan landscape during numerous chaotic car chases, and composer John Williams, whose soundtrack features famed harmonica player Toots Thielemans. With Ben Johnson.

4K DCP.

9:05pm VANISHING POINT

Richard C. Sarafian (1971) 106 mins – M

Propelled by speed-induced mysticism and burning countercultural sentiments, Kowalski, the lone car delivery driver played by a then largely unknown Barry Newman, races through a disaffected America in a white Dodge Challenger trying to escape the powers that be. Although critically panned upon its initial release, the film steadily reached cult classic status, being affectionately referenced by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright and Primal Scream (on their 1997 album Vanishing Point). Scripted by the legendary Cuban novelist and critic Guillermo Cabrera Infante (as Guillermo Cain) it also features Dean Jagger and Cleavon Little.

Wednesday 18 February

7:00pm WANDA

Barbara Loden (1970) 102 mins – Unclassified 15+

Loden’s first and only feature as writer/director – she also stars as the title character – is a bracing portrait of alienated working-class womanhood. Shot on location in Pennsylvania and Connecticut with a crew of around seven people, the film’s realist and partially improvised style was acclaimed upon release, winning the International Critics’ Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Loden’s uncompromising portrayal of a woman down and out was inspired by her own feelings of aimlessness, and is now considered a key work of American independent cinema, feminist filmmaking and the 1970s road movie.

35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

8:55pm FIVE EASY PIECES

Bob Rafelson (1970) 98 mins – M

Rafelson’s quietly combustible portrait of a man forever fleeing himself forged the archetypal Jack Nicholson persona – feral and wounded, each quality feeding the other in a thoroughly embodied, startling performance. Carole Eastman’s screenplay mixes offhand humour with jagged melancholy, capturing the road movie’s core impulse: movement as evasion rather than pursuit. Laszlo Kovacs’ cinematography turns every roadside stop into a study in alienation. With Karen Black, Lois Smith, Bill “Green” Bush, Susan Anspach, Toni Basil and Helena Kallianiotes in one of cinema’s most memorable cameos.