Lost Highways: An Illustrated History of Road Movies

The road movie: a complex cinematic journey that incorporates mythic themes of questing and searching, the need for being, for love, for a home and for a promise of a different future, and yet also serves as a map of current cultural desires, dreams, and fears. Lost Highways explores the history of the road movie through a series of detailed essays on key films within the genre. Through these comprehensive and absorbing studies a clear and concise post-modern picture of the road movie emerges, tracing hitherto neglected intersections with other genres such as the western, film noir, horror and even science fiction. From "The Wizard of Oz" to "Crash", "Apocalypse Now" to "Vanishing Point", "The Wild Bunch" to "Easy Rider", Lost Highways is the definitive illustrated guide to a diverse body of film which holds at its nucleus the quintessential cinematic/ cultural interchange of modern times.