Sullivan's Travels
Sullivan's Travels is a 1941 satirical American film directed by Preston Sturges about a director, John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), who wants to direct a film entitled O Brother, Where Art Thou? which will depict the plight of the those in modern society's lower depths. However, he is being forced by his producers to direct another less topical film instead. To avoid the trouble, Sullivan attempts to run away, live on the streets, and learn how the destitute really live. He repeatedly says he wants to "know trouble" so that he can return and make a film that will truly demonstrate the sorrow of humanity. His flight isn't very successful, as through various hijinks he keeps ending up back in Hollywood. Along his journeys, he meets and falls in love with a failed young actress (Veronica Lake)) who decides she has nothing to lose and becomes his travelling companion.
The film is a great satire of the conflict between art and commerce as well as the gap between the priveleged and the impoverished. It is also a very compassionate comedy; at the same time that Sturges skewers the naiveté of wealthy entertainers trying to app ease their class guilt by making "socially relevant drama", he shows the real good that can come from anyone willing to take a road less travelled. By the end of the film, as Sullivan realizes he would rather make a comedy than his heavy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, it is clear that Sturges meant his film to also be a justification for the value of comedy.
Notes
- Sullivan's Travels has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
- The title of the film is a reference to Gulliver's Travels, the novel by perhaps the greatest of all English-language satirists, Jonathan Swift.
- Veronica Lake was six months pregnant at the beginning of shooting and by the end of shooting, Hollywood's most renowned costume designer Edith Head was working creatively to conceal Ms. Lake's condition.
- In 2000, Joel and Ethan Coen directed a film called O Brother, Where Art Thou?; the film is loosely based on Homer's Odyssey and inverts the plot of Sullivan's Travels.