‘Radio On’: an underground British road movie featuring a flawless new wave soundtrack
Road movies feel quintessentially American, with films like Bonnie and Clyde, Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, Badlands and Thelma and Louise uncovering the falsity of freedom. The open road might offer a release from the tensions of capitalism, traditionalism or even the law, but these movies present a bleak view of the ‘American Dream’, where violence and disillusionment triumph.
While road movies became popular in the 1960s and 1970s with the dawn of the New Hollywood movement, the genre is not limited to America. Wim Wenders has made both German and American road movies, such as Alice in the Cities, The Wrong Move and Paris, Texas. Elsewhere, Jean-Luc Godard explored the genre with his French New Wave classic Pierrot Le Fou and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries could also be considered a road movie.
However, there have been very few British road movies, perhaps due to the considerably small size of the United Kingdom. In 1979, Chris Petit, a first-time filmmaker, created arguably the most essential British entry to the genre, Radio On. With a title presumably lifted from The Modern Lovers’ ‘Roadrunner’, the movie is a gorgeously shot black-and-white journey through late-1970s England on the precipice of oppressive Thatcherism.
Radio On stars David Beames as a DJ who tries to investigate his brother’s suicide, journeying between Bristol and London. The movie also stars Lisa Kreuzer, who appeared in various Wenders films, Sue Jones-Davies, Kim Taylforth and Sandy Ratcliff. There’s even a cameo from Sting and a minor character played by Paul Hollywood, leading several fans to question whether the teenager is the future Great British Bake Off icon – unfortunately, it’s just someone with the same name.
The film was shot by Martin Schäfer, who was, very fittingly, Wenders’ assistant cameraman, working on projects such as The State of Things, Paris, Texas and The American Friend. His cinematography is one of the movie’s highlights, with his shadowy frames giving Radio On a deeply contemplative feel.
In keeping with the movie’s title, there are many scenes of the characters driving, with the camera focusing on the passing cars and stretches of the motorway, framing the towering apartment buildings and imposing metal signs, encapsulating the country’s irreversible move towards industrialisation. In one scene, David Bowie’s ‘Always Crashing In The Same Car’ plays in the vehicle, with the lyrics “As I pushed my foot down to the floor/ I was going round and round the hotel garage/ Must have been touching close to 94” echoing over the soundscape.
Radio On is a criminally underseen piece of British cinema that is well worth viewing. From its gorgeous cinematography to its incredible soundtrack featuring the likes of DEVO, Kraftwerk, Ian Dury and Robert Fripp, Petit’s film is a truly underrated gem.
