Sullivan's Travels

Successful comedy director is troubled by his conscience and decides to experience poverty and destitution first hand before making his next 'serious' movie. Initially frustrated by the overprotectiveness of his studio, he ends up being presumed dead and sentenced to a chain gang. Sacrilege to say it, but Preston Sturges' much loved classic is ... patchy. There are some great lines, some wonderful slapstick and Veronica Lake is surprisingly good, but nice guy McCrea can't make the film's darker side work. With Fonda or Stewart, this could have been so much better.

Presented as a light comedy this film highlights the issue of poverty in depressed America unpretentiously yet with oblique poignance. The two lead actors are very well matched and work together quite delightfully.

Perhaps there could have been more depth and contrast with the chain-gang episode to balance the more happy-go-lucky experience Sullivan has had before it all went a bit wrong.

Finally, there is a somewhat deus-ex-machina-like solution to the plot with the suggestion that the privilege of fame and position does carry righteousness after all, and the rather empty moral that humour is an answer to a poor man's plight makes a slightly disappointing and contrived ending.

What role do comedy films have during a war? Shouldn’t all efforts be made into making propaganda to help the war effort at home and at the front? This is the interesting proposition that underpins the 1941 screwball comedy by Preston Sturges, a director known for his light touch. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is a film director who is fed up with creating comedies during the Great Depression and instead wants to reflect the misery that the average person is suffering. To do this he tries to go undercover as a homeless man and mingle. He meets the aspiring actress (Veronica Lake) in his travels and the duo set out to uncover what the real world, away from the Hollywood Hills, is actually like.

As a knockabout comedy ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ is reasonable, but not up with the best in the genre. McCrea as Sullivan is a little bland, and although Lake is nice to look at, she lacks the personality to really sell humour. The film resonated with me towards the end when I realised that Sturges was trying to justify the use of comedy during bleak times in history. The character of Sullivan learns that people want to laugh and enjoy themselves, rather than be reminded of the dangers in their own life. With this film Sturges created a good argument for lighter films being made during the Second World War. They may not be propaganda, but they do their bit to keep morale up. A flawed comedy, but still an interesting film from the era.

Superior seriocomic look at the dire poverty resulting from generalized economic recession. This is a self-reflexive work from a director (Preston STURGES) eager to do what his alter ego here also wants to do: Something serious about a social condition he has little personal l experience of.

The guilt and shame of the rich when confronted with abject poverty is well-presented in their inauthentic desire to wear tramp's clothes to find out what it is like to be one. As well as their belief that giving money to the poor could ever make them rich.

The hero does find out all about the bitterness and resentment of the poor as well as the restorative value of laughter and that he is finally a comedy director - not a tragedian. Along the way there is a fine sense of silent comedy - as befits a tribute to the great comics - and of the almost spiritually-uplifting quality of good humor, shared with others.

Veronica LAKE is excellent and handles comedy well, as well as her innately pouting sexuality. She helps make up for the general lack of in-depth characterization of the other performers.

Although the film starts slowly with a skit of the kind of movie the eponymous director does not want to make, then becomes the kind he does (O, Brother, Where Art Thou) before returning -triumphantly - to the sort of movie both he and Sturges are best at. Better than Trading Places because more insightful.

I couldn't watch it to the end I'm afraid. Lots of expostion,maybe I should have stayed with it, but life's too short.