NFR Project: 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941)

 

NFR Project: “Sullivan’s Travels”

Dir: Preston Sturges

Scr: Preston Sturges

Pho: John Seitz

Ed: Stuart Gilmore

Premiere: Dec. 29, 1941

90 min.

Preston Sturges’ greatest film lays out his theory of comedy. According to the writer/director Sturges, mankind is ridiculous, dangerous, and stupid. And the only worthwhile response is to laugh at it.

This he does in this marvelous fable of an idealistic young movie director, John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrae), who’s tired of making fluffy comedies. He wants to make a “serious” movie, highlighting the sufferings of the poor and the injustice of the system. Unfortunately, Sullivan knows nothing about poverty, having a privileged background.

He decides to learn about the life of the poor by disguising himself as a hobo and traveling across the country. His studio rails against his idea, and tries to follow him with a luxuriously appointed bus. Sullivan soon shakes off his handlers, promising to meet them further down the road. He has a run-in with a horny widow, escapes, and hitches a ride in a truck – which promptly returns him to Hollywood.

Stuck without any money at a diner, he is treated to a meal by an aspiring actress (Veronica Lake) who’s giving up on stardom. He reveals himself, and she asks to go with him when he resumes his disguised travels. He reluctantly agrees.

The two experience poverty, as we are shown through a pathetic montage of hoboes, bums, and people down on their luck. The two decide they’ve had enough and return to Hollywood. There, Sullivan plans to go out one more time in bum gear, passing out five-dollar bills to the unfortunate. However, one bum hits him over the head, and steals his money and his shoes. He tosses Sullivan into a freight car. The bum is then run over by a train – and everyone thinks Sullivan is dead.

Sullivan, dazed from the blow to the head, gets into a fight with a railroad-yard watchman and gets sentenced to six years on the chain gang. He protests his innocence, but no one believes him. Really suffering now, he experiences the full weight of being on society’s bottom. His only relief is a movie night he and his fellow prisoners share with the congregation of a poor Black church. There he finds solace in laughing at a Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Finally, Sullivan hits upon an answer to his troubles – he confesses to his own murder! This gets his picture in the paper and he is soon released. When asked if he still wants to make his serious epic, he refuses. He chooses to go back to making comedies. "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh,” he says. “Did you know that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."

Throughout, Sturges deflates the pretensions of the well-meaning, those who want to make an epic statement about suffering. All around him, characters again and again remind him that he knows nothing of what he is talking about. It takes real hardship for Sullivan to see that the best he can do for others is to help them forget their troubles for a time.

Sturges’ credo is clear. He mixes moments of slapstick with passages of actual, brutal life – showing us how the less fortunate are ground down. Sturges gets to display his awareness of the ugly facts of life while simultaneously mocking the fawning condescension of the privileged.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Pride of the Yankees.