“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 in this cockeyed caravan.”
I disagree with the opinion that movies are escapism. I think I’ve made that clear in the past. Movies are an art form, which sometimes takes on the function of escapism, but it isn’t its’ primary goal. Obviously though there’s a lot of power in escapism, a lot of comfort. And movies that facilitate that need well ought to be applauded for it. Movies that explore the greater truths of the world and human nature, that comment on life, society, and culture are incredibly important; but so too are those that simply tell a story for its own sake within a decidedly fictional context meant to reprieve audiences from those very things that can weigh heavily on the mind and soul every day. As we’re living through a pandemic this has certainly been made clear. As far as media goes, people have turned to the whimsical levity of Disney movies or the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the impossible grandiosity of the problems therein. Sitcoms and their relative trivialities have seen a resurgence, with the immense popularity of Schitt’s Creek and The Office on streaming -I’ve been delighted to see renewed interest and praise towards Community during this time as well, which I of course have been re-watching too. Especially in times of strife, or for people going through difficulties, good escapism is extremely valuable.
Preston Sturges clearly believed in this intrinsic value in escapism when he wrote what was essentially a satire of then modern Hollywood conventions of storytelling in 1941. Annoyed by how so many comedies of his era were perceptively focusing more on “messages” than “fun”, he made Sullivans’ Travels as a response and critique of that very trend -arguably and ironically making perhaps the best ‘message comedy’ of the 1940s in the process. Sullivan’s Travels is a terrific film, one of the most interesting to come out of that era. Famously, it’s been a big influence on the Coen Brothers: Barton Fink shares its’ privileged, educated protagonist determined to create important art about the struggles of everyday people, and O Brother Where Art Thou, in addition to having a similar structure and plot beats, takes its’ name from the fictional novel the titular Sullivan is looking to adapt. And I can see why it sticks in their minds -there is a kind of Coen-like wit to the title and the dialogue not common in other movies of the era, Sturges was of course noted for his clever scripts. But I think the fact the movie is so fundamentally uplifting ultimately is another reason it endures.
From the start though, Sullivans’ Travels is just really funny. After the fake movie ending that opens the piece, the commentary between director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) and his two producers has all the precision of a Marx Brothers routine (but without the winking), and the pacing of a screwball comedy -some actually identify Sullivans’ Travels as a screwball comedy itself, one of the last. Early on, it demonstrates a really keen self awareness and a relatively sharp satirical bent on Hollywood that doesn’t come across as disingenuous, in part due to leads McCrea and Veronica Lake not being major industry stars. It has the feel of a film approaching the subject of Hollywood from the outside, which wasn’t the case for, as much as I liked it, In a Lonely Place.
Sullivan is a contract director tired of making feel-good comedies for his studio. He wants to adapt a serious novel about the realities of poverty in America, O Brother Where Art Thou, and when forced to realize he doesn’t have any firsthand knowledge of such things, decides to go on the road, become a tramp and experience life as these most forgotten by society do. It’s a wonderful comic premise, made all the better by the fact that throughout the first portion of his journey he simply can’t escape the life of wealth and glamour, followed along by reporters and a staff on a bus. Yet Sturges makes clear right off the bat that Sullivans’ nobility (and that of filmmakers like him) is more self-serving than he thinks and that he is ignorant of the fact the poor are not so keen on their struggles being exploited for the sake of art. “The poor know all about poverty and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamourous” says Sullivans’ butler Burrows (Robert Greig) before the start of his adventure. “Rich people and theorists, who are usually rich people, think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches… But it isn’t, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms.” It is a remarkably truthful statement, one people and artists still can’t seem to grasp, and one that the movie stands by in its’ depiction of the poor whom Sullivan soon finds himself among. These peoples’ lives are rough, none but Sullivan are there by choice. What’s also nicely surprising is how many of the poor we see are black –the film doesn’t accurately represent how disproportionately poverty affects black communities, but their inclusion is notable for the time, and especially in a context where among the ranks of the penniless, there is no racism.
Nowhere in the film is poverty ‘glamourized’, though it does provide opportunity for plenty of good jokes at Sullivans’ expense –as well as that of his eventual companion, an aspiring actress without a name given, known simply as “the Girl” played by a scene-stealing Veronica Lake. There’s a great long sequence where they meet and banter in a diner, he gives her a lift home for paying for his meal in his own car that he pretends to steal, only for the two to actually be arrested when his housekeepers report the car stolen. His cover is blown, but she decides to accompany him when he tries again. There’s a real fun flirtatiousness to the Girl and to the rapport she very quickly develops with Sullivan. She too seems misguided in joining his crusade, in it for the curiosity it seems, and to spend more time with him. But they make for a good team as they travel by cattle car, stay in shelters and soup kitchens, and in the process the film gets away with a few things the film censors tended not to like. For one thing, Lake spends much of the movie in boyish clothes, wearing a shabby coat, pants, and hat. The Girl and Sullivan also sleep together at a couple points (which was permitted on account there be no hint of sexuality, but there is totally sexual chemistry between them), Sullivan appears shirtless in a few scenes, and the Girl is seen tastefully showering on a couple occasions –one of which makes clear her silhouetted figure behind the curtain.
The experience of being poor for Sullivan and the Girl is played with levity: their humourous attempts to jump on a train cart, the point where Sullivan catches a bad cold, the terrific shot when he realizes his shoes have been stolen, there’s even something inherently funny in the tramp clothes he and the Girl wear juxtaposed against their notable height disparity. And it’s all good. But the last act is where the movie really comes together, when Sullivan at the end of his poverty tour is knocked out and robbed by a vagrant while he was giving money away to random homeless people. Sullivan is sent off on a boxcar and the thief is run over by a train while wearing Sullivans’ shoes, identifying him as the director. While the public mourns his death, the real Sullivan suffering amnesia is arrested after concussing a railyard worker and is sentenced to six years on a chain gang. It’s a jarring and somewhat sudden shift in circumstances, and the film takes on a very different tone. Sullivan no longer has the luxuries he had before, and Sturges is delivering payment on his ignorance and arrogance. There is no fun to be had in the harsh labour camp under the supervision of a sadistic prison guard, this is the real misery he had been looking for and it defies exploitation. These sequences in particular made the film ineligible for overseas distribution because they made America look bad and could be used for Nazi propaganda –and Sturges refused to cut them. It seems in spite of his reasons for making the film, he knew the importance of social realism after all.
Of course, there’s no open commentary on the inhumanity of the American prison system; it remains beneath the textual irony and the more important idea Sturges is aiming to convey. That comes in the climax, where Sullivan and the other prisoners are escorted into a church to join a kindly black congregation for a movie showing. The preacher makes a point of emphasizing how downtrodden their guests are before they shuffle in in abject humility to the stirring sound of the choir singing “Go Down Moses”. They sit in the pews and the movie starts up: Playful Pluto, the Disney cartoon. Within seconds, the audience is laughing uproariously, both the prisoners and congregants. Sturges cuts between the cartoon, such things as the flypaper gag, and the howling viewers, their sad faces twisted into bright smiles now as they point and guffaw; and it moves you to tears, especially when Sullivan starts laughing too, before deadpan asking his neighbour for confirmation. He’d slowly been regaining his memory, and this was the final jolt. The moral of the story spelled out clear for him.
Ultimately, it’s a very potent and heartwarming message about the power of art and the importance of escapism. And when Sullivan decides against his coveted O Brother Where Art Thou movie, after escaping the camp by pleading guilty to his own murder and reuniting with the Girl (who has a really cute and funny scene when she discovers he’s alive that involves running across a studio lot in a Gone With the Wind costume) in light of his dissolving marriage –a rather weak subplot that doesn’t warrant mentioning– it is clear that this is the right thing to do. Sullivan’s Travels is essentially a movie about staying in one’s own lane, not expanding ones’ craft or diversifying; and weirdly, it actually works!
Personally though, I think Sturges’ point is more to the value of fluff. Comedies and cartoons still struggle to be taken seriously as high art, genre films have only just begun to burst through that barrier as well –and only because so much of the cinema landscape is genre now. It gets to some of the points I made just the other day. But regardless, it is important to have these films that can distract from the weight of the world or personal circumstances, that can, even if just momentarily, bring some happiness into a sad life. There is finally something genuinely noble in what Sullivan is doing, even if it’s not the most he could do by a long shot. But I think, watching that movie screening, if I could react to a film with half as much unbridled joy as those convicts, I would concede the director is really doing some good for the world.
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