Sullivan’s Travels
Written and directed by Preston Sturges
USA, 1941
At the start of Sullivan’s Travels, movie director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) has been screening his latest effort. The picture within the picture concludes with an intense rooftop fight aboard a train. It’s almost absurd in its inflated action and Sullivan is not at all pleased with his creation. This type of escapist entertainment may be all right for some, but it’s social commentary he now seeks. These are troubling times, he argues, with war in Europe and strikes on the home front, and the ambitious, idealistic filmmaker wants something beyond mere cinematic frivolity. Apparently, so did the director of Sullivan’s Travels, the great Preston Sturges. At least that’s what he ended up with anyway.
Sullivan’s Travels, “By” Preston Sturges, as the opening credit proclaims, lending the filmic fable something of a storybook...
Written and directed by Preston Sturges
USA, 1941
At the start of Sullivan’s Travels, movie director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) has been screening his latest effort. The picture within the picture concludes with an intense rooftop fight aboard a train. It’s almost absurd in its inflated action and Sullivan is not at all pleased with his creation. This type of escapist entertainment may be all right for some, but it’s social commentary he now seeks. These are troubling times, he argues, with war in Europe and strikes on the home front, and the ambitious, idealistic filmmaker wants something beyond mere cinematic frivolity. Apparently, so did the director of Sullivan’s Travels, the great Preston Sturges. At least that’s what he ended up with anyway.
Sullivan’s Travels, “By” Preston Sturges, as the opening credit proclaims, lending the filmic fable something of a storybook...
- 4/29/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
What amazed me most about Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941), watching it for the first time on this newly released Criterion Blu-ray, is just how utterly unpredictable it is. Sure, we know where it may end once we are introduced to John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), a big Hollywood director, who's decided to hit the road as a hobo to attain a greater understanding of human suffering before embarking on a serious adaptation of the fictional novel "O Brother, Where Art Thouc" (Yes, it is this fictional book Joel and Ethan Coen were name-checking with the title of their 2000 comedy.) But as much as we know what the end will offer, it's the path to that ending we don't see coming, even when it arrives. Set during the Great Depression, Sullivan, known for his comedies, isn't seeing anything funny in the world. When his producers suggest making a "nice musical...
- 4/20/2015
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
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