1942: Sullivan's Travels

Sullivan's Travels (1942, Sturges) 7/10


John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is your classic versatile Hollywood director: reliable, profitable and respectful. After shooting such "classics" as Ants in Your Plants of 1939 and Hey, Hey in the Hayloft, Sullivan has decided to move into the cinematic domain of Capra: creating social justice pictures to aid those in troubled times. Sullivan is the type of artist, which Andrew Sarris would expect and which Leni Riefenstahl would be bemused over: a Sarrisian auteur figure willing to imbue his own personal stamp on his projects and utilize his stature to raise political and social questions; unlike the self-proclaimed apolitical Riefenstahl who claims that art and politics act within their own separate spheres.

Preston Sturges' 1941 film Sullivan's Travels begins with a rip-roaring fight atop a train on a stormy night, which would not be unfamiliar in the work of Lang or Hitchcock. The two men continue to battle before falling off the train and into the river below as "The End" surfaces from the icy water. It's all metaphorically political in Sullivan's mind. It's capitalism versus communism in a futile brawl atop one of the Industrial Revolution's signature pieces. Yet, to the studio it is trouble. Serious pictures do not sell in mainstream America and could later cause trouble: a fact in retrospect to which Sturges was extremely perceptive given the trouble social justice pictures brought about for figures such as Dmytryk and Trumbo a decade later. But Sullivan is their star director and thus he decides to utilize his clout within the studio system to make the great American social picture to be entitled Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? Naturally, the studio are unamused and would prefer Sullivan to create a less-personal project in the form of Ants in Your Plants of 1941 instead.

Sullivan is convinced that through the power of images, he can change modern society for the better. He is a true idealist, the type who later on would have been called in front of HUAC and probably blacklisted. He undertakes a research project designed to find out the type of material he should utilize in Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? Thus, against the warnings of the studio and his assistants, he disguises himself as a tramp (a socially inclined reference to Chaplin's oeuvre) and traverses the American landscape in search of the hapless and the hopeless impoverished wastrels who have been abandoned by their nation. Yet, there is something oddly ironic about his journey. No matter how hard he tries to leave the confines of Hollywood, it never leaves him.

He is followed by an RV of press agents, chefs and reporters attempting to utilize his story as the greatest PR coup in history. When he does attempt to escape via hitchhiking, he always ends up back in LA. He meets an unnamed female simply known as "The Girl"- played brilliantly by the astoundingly gorgeous Veronica Lake:a poor studio's version of Lauren Bacall. She offers to aid Sullivan in his travels; yet she, like Sullivan, is bothered by their meager conditions and their inability to find viable source material. When they do encounter their future subjects and material they are aghast at the plight and conditions, which will later create Sullivan's sympathetic masterpiece. Trouble arises and Sullivan himself ends in the position of those whom he wishes to create a film about. Without his assistants and his money, Sullivan is just another man resigned to an inescapable fate.

Sturges' film is a sophisticated masterwork of satire: a superly directed and touching road film with a splendid cast and a personalized message on the state of American cinema. He follows the credits with a personal homage to clowns and to comedy and ends the film with a group of prisoners forgetting their troubles through laughter. Throughout the film, Sturges parodies the type of films Sullivan wants to emulate: films by Capra and Chaplin and works such as I Am A Fugitive on a Chain Gang, Grapes of Wrath and The Prisoner of Shark Island. There is even a scene in which Sullivan is watching a serious film in a rural theatre were very few members of the audience are actually concentrating on the film at hand. His message is clear. Although social justice films have their place, it is the belief of Sturges that comedy has a greater importance in the lives of individuals: that through comedy they can escape their internal and external problems and enjoy the silliness of life.

In order to demonstrate his thesis, Sturges utilizes almost every brand of comedy during the period including a sped-up slapstick car chase; sight-gags in paintings, Hollywood in-jokes and witty social critiques. His casting of honest everyman Joel McCrea perfectly extenuates Sullivan's desire to disappear into the masses and become the credulous face in the crowd. Yet, his approach belies that fact: pulling up in an expensive car to hitch a ride on a freight train; or using clothes and props from the studio to make himself appear more authentically downtrodden. The result is Hollywood's version of a bum. When Sullivan and "The Girl" encounter reality they are stunned by the horror of it, yet are pleased by the kindness of strangers such as the poor and isolated coffee shop owner who gives them food for nothing.


Thus, these stripped down, almost neorealist segments in the film are Sturges' own nod to the futility of Hollywood attempting to create a document of poverty through their expensive wardrobes, sets and art direction. Sullivan's own ability to escape Hollywood figuratively and mentally is a further example of this element. These assured and sensitive attempts at replicating such conditions onscreen throughout Sullivan's Travels provides further credence to Sturges' promotion of a supplementary relationship between comedy and social drama in Hollywood: which does not necessarily require that seriousness on screen be given more responsibility and acclaim than comedy, but rather that each form is recognized for its beneficial effects on the populace.

* Sullivan's Travels is released separately in a deluxe edition by Criterion and is included in a basic edition in Universal's Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.