Veronica Lake
Robert Warwick
William Demarest
Margaret Hayes
Porter Hall
Robert Greig
Franklin Pangborn
Eric Blore
Photography:
Black and white
Distributed By:
Paramount
Release Date:
1942
Runtime:
90 minutes
Sullivan's Travels is a 1941 American comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges. It is a satire about Hollywood's top director of comedies, played by Joel McCrea, who longs to make a socially relevant drama, but eventually learns that creating laughter is his greatest contribution to society. The film features one of Veronica Lake's first leading roles. The title is a reference to Gulliver's Travels, the famous 1726 novel by satirist Jonathan Swift about another journey of self-discovery.
Why It Rocks
It’s the single most captivating film about filmmaking to come out of a Hollywood studio. Few of its kind have matched the friendly, breezy quality of this film.
The film is a ramshackle affair and a destruction of the Hollywood system that undergoes severe shifts in mood. Most Sturges films were seen as having expert dialogue but were a bit stiff visually, so here he tries to compensate with broad physical comedy: such as undercranked chases, elaborate pratfalls, and an oil portrait whose expression changes. In a story that esteems the value of comedy, Sturges incorporates just about every kind of comedy: visual, verbal, and aural. There’s physical slapstick, witty dialogue, sophisticated irony, and cartoonish sight gags and sound effects.
There are references to real filmmakers, such as Frank Capra and Ernst Lubitsch, and numerous satirical jabs at Hollywood, from its heavy-handed dramas (Sullivan has to sit through a triple feature of them at one point) to studio brass wanting to inject “a little sex” into every picture.
Veronica Lake's character -- simply known as "The Girl" -- is deliberately not given a name as a reference to one of the movie’s jokes, that “there’s always a girl in the picture”
Despite being mostly a comedy, the filmintegrates poignant—even grim—dramatic scenes. A character dies a shocking death in a train yard. Later, Sullivan is sent to a prison, forced to work on a chain gang, and confined to a torturous “sweatbox” for a day. Then there's a six-and-a-half-minute wordless montage of Sullivan and The Girl living in a slum, scavenging for food—a powerful piece of silent filmmaking. That these scenes fit into a picture known mostly for its humor is a testament to Sturges and even reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin, the ultimate master of blending comedy and pathos. Like Chaplin, Sturges clearly understood how and when to make an audience feel safe to laugh.
The director made a stab correlating his script to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver's Travels. Like Gulliver, director John L. Sullivan goes on several journey meant to teach him about different aspects of both humanity and morality. Sturges quickly dropped direct parallels to the novel, although there’s still some self-referential flashes in Sullivan’s exasperation over the failure of his first three “travels”
He wrote the film's script as a response to the preachiness he saw in other recent comedies, which in his view had “abandoned the fun in favor of the message.” Light-comedy director, John L. Sullivan, wants a hard-hitting drama but feels he must first experience what hardship and suffering are really like. However, by the end of his adventures, he realizes “there’s a lot to be said for making people laugh,” and the audience is in complete agreement.
The gist of the film is contained in a four-minute scene done in one take. The film actually begins at the end, the end of a clichéd adventure movie featuring a fight to the finish on top of a speeding train. Similar to Citizen Kane, Sturges cuts to a smoky screening room, where John L. Sullivan’s trying to persuade studio executives LeBrand and Hadrian to fund his adaptation of the novel O Brother, Where Art Thou? Sullivan wants to address social issues like poverty, but the executes want him to make a sequel to one of his comedy films, offering him an extravagant budget and every star on the Paramount lot. Their back-and-forth is informed, sharp, and just as relevant today as it was in the 1940s. The dialogue, alternately affectionate and cynical, distills Sturges's own beliefs into a persuasive stand for mainstream entertainment and against what he later refers to as "deep-dish" art.
Both Joel McCrea as John L. Sullivan (the fictional director; not the boxer) and Veronica Lake as "The Girl" showcase remarkable performances in the film and the share great chemistry when they're together.
McCrea in particular did one of his most memorable roles, being a perfect fit for Sullivan.
With this film, Sturges broadened his scope, exploring characters and settings new to his work: lunch wagons, shanty towns, corrupt cops, petty crooks. With his skills as a writer, his touch was so light and assured that some viewers never caught on to how he was spoon-feeding them the very material he mocked in his opening.
The most famous and even revered sequence of the film comes near the end, in a church that converts into a makeshift movie theater. A downtrodden prison chain gang, including Sullivan, marches inside as a black congregation sings “Way Down Moses,” led unforgettably by Jess Lee Brooks as the preacher. (He and the congregants are portrayed with so much warmth and respect that the NAACP sent a letter of appreciation to Sturges.) A white sheet is unfurled, the lights are dimmed, and a 16mm projector starts unspooling the Disney cartoon Playful Pluto, leading to laughter of pure joy from the demoralized men. (Sturges had originally wanted to use a Chaplin short, but Chaplin denied permission.) The scene works beautifully with the cartoon, prompting a tremendous emotional release as Sullivan, the audience, and perhaps Sturges himself all discover that there can never be enough laughter in the world, and that the ability to create it through art is one of the greatest gifts one can offer.
Bad Qualities
Most of the film’s slapstick falls flat, although a handful of miscalculated jokes don’t matter a lot for the overall picture.
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