Cross Country Cruise

"It Happened One Night" suddenly made bus trips popular at the cinema. "Cross Country Cruise" was made in the middle of Alice White's comeback.

"Cross Country Cruise" is a very strange but enjoyable film that is a bit like "Grand Hotel" in that it's made up of lots of little stories all brought together by, of all things, a bus instead of a hotel! I think you could call it a lower-class version!

Movies set almost entirely on trains - like 'The Tall Target' and 'The Narrow Margin' - practically constitute a genre in their own right. The train's humbler cousin, the bus, frequently features in movies too; but the more cramped setting, which forces various varied individuals into close proximity for the duration, combined with the need to occasionally get out and stretch your legs, lends the bus movie a more vivid sense of time and place, be it depression-era America in 'Cross Country Cruise', rural Japan in Hiroshi Shimizu's 'Mr.