Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie
In 1934, audiences swooned when reporter Clark Gable and heiress  Claudette Colbert bickered and then fell in love on a  cross-country bus trip in It Happened One Night, an early  American road trip movie. America's vast open spaces, colorful  and varied locations, multicultural population, and love for  cars, mobility, and speed make the road movie a peculiarly  (though not exclusively) American fixture. This book is an  academic study of American road movies as a "rebellion against  conservative social norms" with "an embrace of the journey as a  means of cultural critique." The emphasis here is on "outlaw"  road movies. Laderman (film, Coll. of San Mateo) discusses  literary sources and visions (On the Road), gay road movies (My  Own Private Idaho), Native American films (Smoke Signals), and  African American (Get on the Bus) and feminist road journeys. He  dismisses most comedies, saying they fail to "incorporate any  visionary rebellion." Indeed, the author's tone is humorless  throughout. His complaint about "heavy-handed" irony in Raising  Arizona, for instance, seems to be based on the fact that the  irrepressible Coen brothers failed to follow his vision of what  a road movie should be. There are some provocative ideas here,  but Laderman's rigid approach causes the book to run out of gas.  An optional purchase for large American film  collections. Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.