On the road again.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: Movies - Cinema

THE ROAD STORY WAS nothing new when Miguel de Cervantes wrote what often is credited as the first novel, Don Quixote. in the early 1600s, while road pictures have been a movie staple since the early silents, such as Charlie Chaplin's nomadic Tramp forever shuffling down yet another dusty road. Indeed, some of the best examples of the phenomenon fall under the genre umbrella of personality comedy, be it the ongoing misadventures of Chaplin's "little fellow," Bob Hope and Bing Crosby teaming up for all those "road pictures" (seven between 1940-62), Steve Martin and John Candy persevering through "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" (1987), and so on.

The beauty of the road picture, however, is that variations exist in all genres. For instance, romantic and screwball comedy have many classics of the form, including Frank Capra's much celebrated "It Happened One Night" (19.34), in which Clark Gable's babysitting reporter eventually falls in love with the story's runaway heiress (Claudette Colbert). The first movie to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor, Actress. Screenplay. and Director), it has been an unofficial blueprint for many romantic road pictures ever since, such as Rob Reiner's neglected "The Sure Thing" (1985).

The road picture also is a given when it comes to Westerns, America's most mythic genre, whether one is talking about John Wayne's Odyssey-like journey to find a niece kidnapped by Indians in John Ford's "The Searchers" (1956), or Paul Newman and Robert Redford being the object of an entirely different sort of chase in George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969). Another watershed Western by Ford-and starring Wayne--telegraphs its road picture status by its very title, "Stagecoah" (1939).

How about trolling deep dish art cinema for road pictures? One need go no further than the modern father figure for the genre, Sweden's Ingmar Bergman. Arguably his two greatest films embrace the picaresque form: "The Seventh Seal" and "Wild Strawberries" (both 1957). In the former, a knight returning from the Crusades encounters death and drags out the inevitable by a prolonged chess match with the Grim Reaper. In "Wild Strawberries," an elderly professor reviews his past on an extended car trip to receive an honorary degree from his old university.

If one moves to the world of fantasy, what is more famous than Dorothy's (Judy Garland) adventures on the Yellow Brick Road of "The Wizard of Oz" (1939)? A feminist out for a new age melodrama would be hard-pressed to top Ridley Scott's "Thelma & Louise" (1991), with rifle characters Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon excelling at standard road movie shtick. The catalyst for "New American Cinema" was...