Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Directed by Preston Sturges; produced by Paul Jones (associate producer)

The king of Hollywood comedies, John Lloyd Sullivan (Joel McCrea) wants to make a movie more meaningful than his usual work. He has, in fact, partially filmed the depressingly meaningful O Brother, Where Art Thou, complete with its discouraging ending, in which Capital and Labour destroy each other. His producers (Robert Warwick, Porter Hall) are aghast. They try to dissuade him; instead, they inadvertently show him that he knows nothing of human misery. As a result, Sullivan decides to impersonate a moneyless tramp and wander the back-roads, in search of truth. His journeys from homeless shelter to chain gang, from strangers to a beautiful girl (Veronica Lake) who won’t go away, bring him more truth than he can manage.

Sullivan’s Travels is probably the best of Preston Sturges’s varied accomplishments. A comedy, it also has a message, expressed not just in the laughs but in the unexpected drama. It cannot be called typical Sturges fare - being his best - nor typical 1940s American film-making, yet it embodies much of what would be found in those categories.

The script, by Sturges, is top-notch. The dialogue moves between fast and furious and slow and muttered, whatever works for a situation. The mood of the story varies just as much: we are treated to screwball-comedy-type word-play and even slapstick - the ‘land-yacht’ chase is hilarious - and to melancholy pathos.

The genius of the writing is that neither extreme is left unflavoured by the other. When Sullivan first tries on his hobo’s clothes, it is played for humour, but not so his butler’s admonition on the evils not only of poverty, but of slumming. There is poignancy in a southern U.S. black congregation offering accommodation to a party of convicts, when the church-goers themselves might have been wearing chains a generation or two previously. Yet even this is leavened by laughter.

Casting could not have been better, with Sturges’s frequent collaborator McCrea as the protagonist. He is one of the 1940s most naturally-acting performers, and the lines he speaks sound as if he is simply contributing to a conversation. But McCrea has the ability to play both funny and serious, which is priceless in a movie such as Sullivan’s Travels.

Veronica Lake, in her first credited part under that name - ironically, her character’s name is never revealed - was but nineteen in 1941, but fulfills the female lead role well. She manages the difficult feat of standing out in a movie that could have been dominated by director, script and star. She provides the foil, in some ways, and not just the love-interest for Sullivan.

A host of familiar faces, a number of them Sturges ‘regulars’ appear, and all provide distinct personalities to their characters, even if they aren’t fully developed. Among those of note are the aforementioned Warwick and Hall, who play Sullivan’s Hollywood colleagues; they are quite sympathetic to our hero, even being rather wiser than he. They are interesting contrasts to the usual treacherous people viewed in movies about movies. One wonders if Sturges’s experiences were different than others in the business.

Sturges has an eye for unusual or particularly expressive faces, especially on the homeless men we see. Some seem to belong to long-time tramps, while others may be the visages of stock-brokers and salesmen who lost their luck. This would be in keeping with an aspect of the film that suggests anyone could fall on hard times, even film-producers.

(And you can see Sturges’s own face, as he puts himself in the background of a scene with Lake.

The direction runs along with the script, sometimes frantic, other times slow and studied. Sturges, as both writer and director, is in a happy position to accommodate himself. But at no time does he limit himself as to the type of movie he is making.

One of the most interesting things about Sullivan’s Travels is that Sturges, who usually has something subtle but acidic to say about aspects of the human existence that reflect poorly on our race - corrupt politics, hero-worship, selfish relationships - says something quite hopeful, in the end. Like the clouds that can’t quite cover the sky even during a storm, the film provides sunshine amid the darkness, and heart among the bile. That is likely its greatest achievement.

(The title of the fictional novel that Sullivan was hoping to adapt was later used for a real movie, which also featured convicts and chain-gangs. It was also the title of a fictional play, described as the ‘worst ever written’, in the tv series Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.)