by R. D. Finch
When making out my ballot for the Comedy Countdown here at Wonders in the Dark, the biggest dilemma I faced was deciding just what was a comedy and what wasn’t. As I worked on the list, several films whose overall tone I was uncertain of fell off the list. A few of these eventually found their way back on. One of the films I went back and forth on was Sullivan’s Travels, which I eventually placed at #5, right after my two favorite silent comedies—one by Chaplin and one by Keaton—and my two favorite screwball comedies. The dilemma I faced in classifying Sullivan’s Travels is that it doesn’t fit comfortably into either the “comedy/ha-ha” or the “comedy/not tragedy” modes of humor. Tonally, the film is a real paradox, a movie where gravity and humor exist side-by-side, a tragicomic picture whose subject is comedy and whose premise is a serious one—that a movie which aims to do no more than make people laugh is as important as one that makes them think.
Joel McCrea plays film director John L. Sullivan, Hollywood’s Caliph of Comedy, who decides that he’s tired of making frivolous movies, no matter how popular they are, and wants to direct a film that makes a serious statement about contemporary socioeconomic conditions. Because Sullivan has no first-hand experience of the grinding poverty he wants to depict onscreen, he decides to research the subject by disguising himself as a tramp and going out on the road. No matter where he heads, though, circumstances invariably take him right back to Hollywood. During one of these false starts he acquires a traveling companion, an aspiring actress who has given up on Hollywood and is on her way back to Kansas when she meets Sullivan at a Hollywood diner. (Called simply The Girl, she is played by Veronica Lake in her first starring role. She was never again this natural or this good.) It’s fully two-thirds of the way through the film before the pair finally manage to get on the road and gather the knowledge Sullivan needs to give his new picture authenticity. When he decides to go back on the road one last time alone, the film’s comic tone, already sobered by what he and The Girl have experienced of life on the skids, turns tragic.
Preston Sturges’s film career was one of the most curious of all the major American directors of the studio era. A slow decade-long rise during the 1930s as a sceenwriter led to overnight success and a screenwriting Oscar in 1940 for his first film as director, the political satire The Great McGinty. (Could that be Sturges’s own Oscar for McGinty in one of the montage scenes near the end of Sullivan’s Travels?) Several years at Paramount as one of the most highly regarded directors in Hollywood followed, then a sudden and precipitous decline in the mid-1940s and years of obscurity before being rediscovered by auteurist critics like Andrew Sarris, who called him “the complete writer-director . . . the brightest comedy director of the forties.”
Sullivan’s Travels is Preston Sturges’s masterpiece, yet in many ways it is his least typical film (if you discount The Great Moment, his one failure during his heyday, a film he disowned after Paramount re-edited it). Sturges abhorred homiletic message-mongering and pomposity of any kind, skewering them in his films as often and as acerbically as possible. The French critic André Bazin went so far as to call him the “anti-Capra” for his penchant for turning humor into irony, yet Sullivan’s Travels is the closest he ever came to a Capraesque irony-free message movie. In seeking to answer the question What is the true value of comedy in film? Sturges cannily devises a plot in which he can have his cake and eat it too, in which he can present the message that in movies, messages are less important than humor—an anti-message-movie message movie.
To counterbalance the seriousness of the film, Sturges includes a fair amount of the broad physical comedy he delighted in—a fast-motion car chase, a sequence shot like a silent comedy of Sullivan escaping from a predatory farm widow by climbing out of his second-floor bedroom window, another speeded-up scene with The Girl racing across the studio lot in period costume bumping into everyone in sight, and even Sturges’s beloved pratfalls with McCrea and Lake falling into Sullivan’s swimming pool not once but twice in less than five minutes. “Like most effective comedy directors, he depended more on the pacing of action and dialogue than on visual texture and composition,” Andrew Sarris writes of Sturges, and it’s true that Sullivan’s Travels is filled with the long takes Sturges favored so as not to distract from his brilliantly crafted dialogue. There’s no camera or editing virtuosity here. As usual, Sturges prefers to plant his camera in front of the actors or have it follow them as they walk, and simply observe as that witty, articulate dialogue pours forth.
Still, as amusing and seductively clever as these comic sections are, it’s the quietly haunting serious passages in the last half hour of Sullivan’s Travels—scenes that for once do rely on visual texture and composition, on artful camerawork and editing—that are more likely to stay with you. After Sullivan and The Girl finally manage to escape Hollywood on a freight train, their experience living homeless and penniless is shown in a tour de force nine-minute long wordless “Poverty Montage” that is remarkable for both its grimness and its visual fluidity. Here Sturges goes beyond anything in a Capra movie, taking us along with Sullivan and The Girl as they immerse themselves in the bleak existence of the dysfunctional and dispossessed. Sullivan’s last road trip contains another bravura wordless sequence, a nocturnal montage that concludes in a deserted rail yard, a sequence that wouldn’t look out of place in a film noir from later in the decade (The cinematographer is the great John F. Seitz, who shot several of Billy Wilder’s most noirish films including Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd.) And the entire last section of the film, when the amnesiac Sullivan is jailed in a Southern chain-gang camp that might have served as a model for the one in Cool Hand Luke, is steeped in a visual atmosphere of swamp water, Spanish moss, degrading physical brutality, and almost nightmarish disconnection from the rest of the world. Nothing like these passages is found anywhere else in the films of Sturges.
In John L. Sullivan, Sturges hands Joel McCrea the role of his career. A naturalistic actor in the vein of James Stewart and Henry Fonda, McCrea is today probably best remembered for the many Westerns he made. His stoic, humorless, at times even priggish screen persona made him a natural for Westerns, but he seldom appeared in comedy films. Sturges, however, saw that in the right context McCrea’s humorlessness was its own kind of funny and was able to tap into McCrea’s deadpan style in the two comedies they made together (the other is The Palm Beach Story) to bring the film back down to Earth when the outlandish situations Sturges concocted and the surrounding gallery of oddball characters threatened to unmoor it. McCrea’s seriousness might make him seem a quirky choice to play a successful director of comedy films. But this is a deliberate and brilliant piece of casting, and McCrea is utterly believable as the frustrated, serious-minded director of assembly-line studio movies who chafes at giving the public what they want rather than what is good for them, and longs to direct something of greater importance than the fluff that has made him rich and famous.
The catch in Sullivan’s “deep dish” aspirations is that, insulated from the real world by his wealth and his job in a movie fantasy factory, he has little grasp of the lives or problems of ordinary people. When he attends a movie with that sexually aggressive farm widow, he seems bewildered, as if he has never before seen a movie in a real theater with a real audience and has no idea what these people hope to gain from the experience. This is repeated later in the film when Sullivan, now an amnesiac inmate, attends a movie with his fellow prisoners in a black church. The movie is the Disney cartoon “Playful Pluto” (the one where flypaper gets stuck on Pluto and he can’t get it off), and the reaction of the prisoners and the impoverished black congregation to the humor in the cartoon transforms Sullivan. When he finds himself responding to Pluto’s antics with laughter, he’s caught off-guard. His face suddenly freezes in disbelief, he looks around him at all the other people laughing uproariously (you can see one of the laughing convicts in the banner for the Comedy Countdown), then turns to the convict next to him and asks, “Hey. Am I laughing?”
This is the key scene in the picture, the one and only time in the film we see Sullivan laugh. It’s an epiphanic moment that, when he is finally restored to his rightful place in Hollywood, causes him to abandon plans for a serious motion picture and make the film’s famous declaration of principles in favor of comedy: “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing.”
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What a great entry into the top ten, with a superb essay to boot. Thank you, Finch, and thanks you, Mr. Sturges.
Thank you so much for the encouraging words, Dean. The top ten are the creme de la creme of the countdown, and with so many people voting this time around, it’s clear looking at the placement of “Sullivan’s Travels” on individual ballots that these ten will be real consensus choices.
R.D. – Great, great, great article! I agree this is Sturges masterpiece. Though Sam has me listing it at #18 I actually had it at #8 (I just checked my email with my list attached). A minor thing of course but I just bring it up to show my love for this work. Your point about the mix and comedy and tragedy is brilliantly thought out and life itself is sometimes just like that. An excellent start as we start the top ten films!
The list I have you placed His Girl Friday at #8. Sullivan’s Travels is at #18. It does say revised list so perhaps a change occurred with Sullivan’s Travels specifically at some point.
Maurizio – You are correct! My error. I did revise the list moves Sturges film downward to 18.
John, I think that mix of comedy and tragedy–almost unheard of in American movies at the time, with their reluctance to grant the audience the sophistication to accept the unexpected–is what keeps this film fresh. It seems to anticipate the blurring of genres that we take for granted nowadays.
Ahhhh, and so the first of the top 10 is revealed…
Great piece on a film that gets better and better with age and every viewing. Funny though, with all the admiration many of the people here at WITD have for this particular film, it’s curious to me that NOT ONE SINGLE person picked it as their No. 1 choice on their ballots. Nobody took the plunge for SULLIVANS TRAVELS….
That’s telling…
Hmmmmm…..
Dennis, what is more telling though is that it did get a #2 placement (from Allan) and several others near the top.
Thank you, Dennis. I hinted at the reasoning behind the ranking of the films on my own list. I knew the #1 and #2 spots had to go to Chaplin and Keaton. Next came the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s I like so much (my ballot was quite top-heavy with these!), and since there are two that I place above all others, these got the #3 and #4 spots. But I knew the next had to come from Sturges, and I picked “Sullivan’s Travels” because I felt it was so strong in the thematic area (although, to be honest, I like “The Palm Beach Story” just as much, and what that film lacks in heft compared to “Sullivan’s Travels” it makes up for in laughs). But considering the films on the list, landing anywhere in the top ten is an incredible endorsement by those who voted.
The catch in Sullivan’s “deep dish” aspirations is that, insulated from the real world by his wealth and his job in a movie fantasy factory, he has little grasp of the lives or problems of ordinary people.
Indeed, R.D. This film has the personal distinction of representing Allan Fish’s sole appearance at NYC’s Film Forum a few years ago during one of his two stays here stateside. The film was running as part of a Sturges Festival, and Allan as can be seen here by his #2 vote, has always regarding this with supreme affection. As far as R.D.’s extraordinary piece, it rightfully takes it’s place among the best of the countdown, though no surprise when one considers this passionate Northern California blogger is one of the film blogosphere’s finest writers. Sturges in an original, and a master of American cinema, and I do consider this film to be his masterpiece, even with others covered during this countdown nipping at its heals. The staccato slapstick, the satirical barbs against Hollywood, the any scenes that include people getting food dumped on them, or lamps broken over their heads and numerous other physical indignities. Lake and McCrea are the most versatile of performers. The film has a rhythm that isn’t quite matched by any other Sturges comedy. The scene where Sullivan and the other prisoners watch a Mickey mouse cartoon in a black church is a hoot, but there is also the awareness of the poor’s suffering and deperation in this undeniably pointed social comedy.
A keeper of a review, and the ideal reference of this treasure of American cinema.
Sam, I’m glad you brought up the point about the way Sturges treats Hollywood in the film. In other pictures, he sent up, among other things, big city politics and small town insularity. Here he gives us his satirical view of the movie industry and its hometown, and although it’s not as biting as it might have been, it’s still hardly flattering. Of course, Sturges, who started out as the golden boy at Paramount, eventually had major disagreements with the studio and its demands and left, never to to become well-established anywhere else. You also made a great point about how this film’s rhythms are unlike those in his other comedies, which tend to snowball until they threaten to explode from Sturges’s own invention. “Sullivan’s Travels” seems more deliberately paced and constructed, but still without losing the feeling of spontaneity that Sturges was so good at simulating.
‘Sullivan’s Travels’ features some of the wittiest dialogue ever written served up by some of the best character actors every assembled. The chemistry between Lake and McCrea is most believable, with Lake proving that she was a most gifted comic actress with impeccable timing. McCrea more than holds his own as the steadfast Sullivan. A wonderful slice of Americana and the fickleness of Hollywood, which hasn’t changed much in the third millennium. One of the most enjoyable and astute reviews of the countdown for one of my favorite comedies!
Peter, witty dialogue and that gallery of character actors are hallmarks of the Sturges film, and here they serve his more serious than usual purpose well. McCrea must have hated working with Lake, since he refused to work with her again the next year in “I Married a Witch” (the part went to Fredric March), which Sturges produced and Rene Clair directed. But you sure can’t tell it from the rapport they appear to have in this film.
Great job R.D. and I liked comprehending your unease with this as a comedy, but I don’t think this one for me is as questionable as some others on the countdown were. It came from a director whose entire career revolved around comedies, so it’s pretty clear there is a definite strain of comedy here, even thought it’s one of his least funniest films IMO. This is one of those for me that places into the Great Films that happen to be comedies category. If we were basing it on laughs alone, I would have The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, and Miracle of Morgan’s Creek higher than this one. But as a film, it’s his best one and deserves the high ranking nonetheless. Wonderful essay.
Jon, “Sullivan’s Travels” and the three you name are my absolute favorite Preston Sturges movies. I wonder if he kept the comedy in “Sullivan’s Travels” in a deliberately lower key, not so crazy as in those other films, so the shift in tone toward the end would be less jarring. I know it was left up to each voter to decide which films fit the definition of “comedy,” but still there have been several in the countdown that never would have occurred to me as being comedic except maybe in spots.
Fine essay, and it’s probably harder to make people laugh than it is to make them cry. Loved it.
Thank you, Mark. Likewise, it sure is a lot harder to write about comedy than it is about other types of movies!
Excellent job R.D. Your words not only capture the film’s brilliance but also perfectly summarize why this film isn’t that easy to pin down as a comedy. There are some pure comedic sequences (as you outline) but many other moments which are not flat out funny. However, it is those ironic and serious scenes which make this film so great. As they say, great music is defined by the silence between notes, this film shows that a great comedy is defined by the quieter and serious moments in between scenes of outright laughter.
This film and The Lady Eve are not pure comedies like Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story which is more slapstick but I prefer Sullivan’s Travels & The Lady Eve over Palm Beach…. A big reason why I like both films is due to the brilliant acting of Joel McCrea in Sullivan’s Travels & Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve. Both McCrea and Stanwyck are perfect in delivering rapid-free witty dialogues which one can enjoy for hours.
I am glad to see this film at #10 as I really wanted to put this in my own top ten. However, for one reason or other, it got pushed down to #13, which interestingly is where James & Pedro put it as well. And there is an overlap at the #18 spot too with John & Jason, although as noted above if John put it at #8, then it would have overlapped with Bobby. I have seen some overlapping with different positions in another Comedy film post or two and find them fascinating. It is pure chance that different people would end up putting the same film at a similar position (such as #23) but still interesting to see that.
Sachin, the people I know of who don’t place this film so high in Sturges’s filmography as I do tend to object to the serious turn it takes in its last half hour. I think to reject that part of the film, though, is to reject the underlying concept of the movie. Sturges had a bold idea with this movie (not completely unlike the situation with Sullivan’s “serious movie”–the self-referential aspect of the film is something I didn’t have space to address) but I think he managed to pull it off. In a way I’m glad he backed off this approach in later films because it makes “Sullivan’s Travels” stand out more in his filmography. Maybe he got it out of his system here and went on to make the kind of movie this one argues in favor of, although even his straight comedies seem to some element of satire in them.
R.D., I’m fascinated to hear in your reply to Sachin that some people object to the serious turn in the film’s last hour, because for me that part absolutely makes the movie – with Sullivan’s real journey into the unknown coming just when it seems as if everything has been safely accomplished. I think the blend of comedy and tragedy works brilliantly in this film. Your review has given me a lot to think about – I like the way you contrast his different trips to the cinema and how he is really part of the audience on the second occasion, rather than being puzzled by the reactions around him.
There’s also quite a contrast between the way everyone fusses around him when the great director has a cold and fever after returning from one of his earlier trips, and the way nobody gives a damn when he has a head injury and is really ill in prison. This is definitely a film which will repay repeated viewings, with so many layers to it – I also like ‘The Palm Beach Story’ a lot, but for me this is greater because of its serious edge, even if Sullivan himself would disagree with that by the end of the movie.
Judy, I think it’s an example of the Woody Allen syndrome, the feeling that directors who are so good at making comedy films should stick to that. In my view, though, Sturges didn’t abandon comedy in this film; he only tried to take it further. I’m glad he didn’t continue in this manner because that might have deprived us of those great zany films of his. But if this is his version of a message movie, then it’s certainly one of the easiest to accept that I’ve encountered. I also think that some people have trouble with the idea of a movie that has as such an obvious message the denunciation of messages in movies. At one point the studio executives describe his proposed serious movie as “like Capra.” “What’s wrong with Capra?” Sullivan shoots back. But if he hadn’t had this wrong-headed attitude, he would never have had the experiences that make him change his mind and see the value of escapism. I guess what to one person is an intriguing paradox is to another evidence of ambivalence or inconsistency.
Whenever I think of this film the church scene appears in my mind. I accidentally left this off my ballot, and have always considered this to be the pinnacle of Sturges’ achievement. I can see why so many are praising this essay. Its one of the best in the countdown
Frank, thank you. That whole church sequence is wonderfully conceived and visualized. When the parson leads the congregation in “Go Down, Moses” with its refrain of “Let my people go,” it’s hard not to be moved or see how it applies to the chain gang. I love the way Sturges shows the convicts arriving in the church, with the camera at the eye level of someone sitting down, so that when the convicts march up the aisle, all you see is their legs and the chains around their ankles as they shuffle toward the camera like the broken-spirited men they are.
Excellent piece, R.D., though I find myself increasingly ambivalent about this film. I love Lake and enjoy its random storytelling (something Sturges, like Powell & Pressburger, was an eccentric master of) but its rather hypocritical “message” has begun to strike me as rather glibly convenient apologia for Hollywood’s narcissistic refusal to engage with social reality (a fact WAY more in evidence today than it was in the supposedly escapist heyday of Sullivan’s Travels).
Here’s an interesting review, which actually goes much further than my own doubts, as an interesting contrast to the praise being heaped on the film by the Wonders readership:
http://www.filmsquish.com/guts/?q=node/5825
I found it a very good read, and commented below with my own thoughts. You & the other readers might find it interesting too, even while not agreeing.