Cinema's genesis is intertwined with travel. The Lumière brothers' 1896 short film, "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat," showcased the sensory impact of kinetic energy and the bustling travelers at a train station on screen. Early filmmakers soon mounted cameras on moving locomotives, creating "phantom ride" films which simulate subjective experience of "moving landscapes" when traveling on a train.

Scholars like Tom Gunning have reminded us that the rise of modernity is epitomized by transportation, tourism industry, and moving images, which often reflect the colonizers' desire to assimilate and possess exotic landscapes. Giuliana Bruno further points out that film not only captures physical spaces as motion pictures, but shapes collective memory and sensory pathways in its "emotional mapping."

As film unfolds in travel and culminates in desire, this program attempts to explore how travel experiences and tourist landscapes in films become catalysts for the characters' romantic emotions and transformations.

Intimate Strangers in City Landscapes

Walter Benjamin, when writing about the flâneur, likened the fragmented sensory experiences in modern metropolises to film montage. The city itself is a giant phantasmagoria, with the tourist's rapid visual impressions akin to jump cuts across times and spaces that connect memories and fantasies. Benjamin believed that the flâneur's pleasure came from "chance encounters" with the unknown. Whether it's the "meet-cute" scenarios in Hollywood romcoms or the spontaneous filming in real Parisian streets in the French New Wave works, these films capture the magic of romantic encounters in scenic landscapes, making us fall head over heels in love.

Victoria Nelson uses the term "psychotopography" to describe how external landscapes reflect the inner psyche of the authors or characters. In Love at Sea, the lovers' anguish in separation is mirrored in their sensory experiences of the citiscapes when walking in Paris and Brest. In Journey to Italy, the heroine's exploration of Pompeii's ruins evokes memories of a deceased lover and her troubled marriage, yet ultimately confirms the couple's enduring love amid the city's chaotic energy.

Time as a Hymn to Love: The Road Not Taken

Éric Rohmer, known for his philosophical take on romantic cinema, once said that people "have time to reassess their lives" when on vacation, where they can reflect on desires and regrets in their transient life.

In Before Sunrise, the protagonist quotes W.H. Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening" to illuminate the inevitability of the ending of the lovers' night destined by time. As Celine, the heroine, says, "It's like our time together is just ours. It's our own creation." The entire film is a "stolen time," as transitory as the impressionist painting the couple witnesses on the street in Vienna.

In travel romance films, time often signifies a predetermined closure. As the clock strikes, the carriages metaphorically turn back into pumpkins, leaving lovers with regrets over missed opportunities or wistful memories. Yet, the curated films serve as perfect time machines, juxtaposing comparable relationships across different journeys, exhibiting captivating intertextuality among diverse narratives, and mirroring the complex tension between fantasy and reality. These films not only reenact the allure of romantic encounters, but prompt reflection on the paths we have taken or deserted, and the companions who have joined or departed from our lives.

Program Adjustments

【Changes concerning the film rating】(updated 2024/07/31)

• Tokyo Pop：PG12 → PG15
• Two for the Road：G → P