Sullivan’s Travels

There is something remarkably meta about Sullivan’s Travels. It is a Hollywood comedy about the making of Hollywood comedies that, narratively, is a justification for comedy as an art form. The story revolves around a famous comedy director that wants to stop making silly movies in order to make a movie with meaning, in a movie made by a famous comedy director that itself has more of a thesis and unifying theme than his usual madcap comedies. While it is perhaps easiest to see the movie as semi-autobiographical, this isn’t necessarily the case. Preston Sturges both wrote and directed the movie, giving him the level of creative control to make something deeply personal, but by his own admission this movie is more a response to the trend among his fellow comedy directors to give up their trade for more “serious” work. So Sullivan’s Travels exists to both be a comedy and argue the rhetorical point that comedies not only have great value, but are not a lesser art form. I think it does both quite well.

First and foremost, Sullivan’s Travels is very funny, irrespective of its thematic message or its meta narrative. The movie follows this strange arc where it spends most of the movie as a farce, takes a detour into being a tragedy, and then loops back around to being a heartwarming romance. This tonal shift can be a bit jarring, but there is something to be said for the contrast it provides. The beginning is very silly and very fun. Not only is the dialogue itself frequently a reliable source of laughs, but even the situations are often funny on their face. A famous director trying to research what it means to be poor in the great depression, concerned he can’t make a movie about something his ivory towers prevent him from understanding, can be seen as a sort of ill-conceived vacation through poverty, a la Marie Antoinette and her fake farming village. Not only is this issue directly addressed in narrative, but it is also a source of a lot of the situational humor. Try as he might, he keeps finding himself either spoiled by his own fame, as journalists will not stop following him around, or constantly dragged back to Hollywood as if the universe is blocking him from his journey.

This part of the movie also really works to endear us to the two main characters. The director is so earnest and sincere with his desire to understand the plight of the less fortunate, and ultimately driven to help where he can, that you can’t help but get to like him. His eventual companion has a certain moxie about her that is wildly entertaining. Her savvy provides a nice foil for the director’s lack of worldliness on their shared adventure and her apparent quick wit serves a multitude of purposes: an ego check on our lead, a source of witty repartee, and an endearing attribute both to us and to her companion. Despite the odd circumstances of their meeting and subsequent journey, I never felt like their relationship was anything but fun and believable, particularly by the standards of a typical romantic comedy.

Once the movie dips into its darker moments, it leaves most of its humor behind in order to get to its larger thematic point. There are elements to this that work very well and others that aren’t quite as good. Playing pretend poor finally catches up to our guy in a way that makes perfect sense. This piece of plot contrivance is rather clever as it both punishes the director’s naivete about his project, in a way that feels like a long time coming, while also setting up each necessary component of the third act ironic twist. It puts the director in a position where he can finally experience the true desperation of poverty rather than simply detachedly observing it like a researcher.

The last piece needed to set this third act in motion, however, is where I think the movie falters a bit. It requires the director to do something that costs some of the goodwill we, as the audience, have built up towards him throughout the movie. Not only is the thing he does pretty bad but his entitled belief that he shouldn’t face consequences for it is equally bad, and it makes rooting for him to get out of his final predicament more iffy. Perhaps I’m missing some of the early 1940s context that this moment would have had on release. Perhaps there was some larger political or social point being made about the way that the poor were treated, by those who were middle class and employed, reflected in the way the director is treated by the railyard foreman that me meets, but from the perspective of a modern observer this moment chipped away at my esteem for our hero.

As the movie resolves, it climbs its way out of this darker period and back into farce by having the director learn the value of a little light entertainment. It is an odd thing that people undervalue comedy and overvalue serious drama, and even if Sullivan’s Travels’ larger theme is a self serving one, Sturges isn’t necessarily wrong in his point. The reason films bloomed in the great depression is that they were an extremely cheap respite from the harsh realities of the world in which people were living.

If it wasn’t made just before World War II, I might be tempted to compare Sullivan’s Travels to the post modern meta narrative art that started in the more experimental 1960s, perhaps the greatest example being the semi-autobiographical 8 ½ by Fellini. However, it isn’t really that. It isn’t semi-autobiographical and its meta nature is more an unintended consequence of the story Sturges was trying to tell, rather than the reason the story is being told. A comedy about comedy, a film about filmmaking, more funny that it is poignant, and yet not lacking in heart. If even one part of that sounds like something you’re into, the overall quality of the movie is high enough you should give the rest of it a shot.

Would Recommend: If you are into comedies about making movies, such as The Player, Singing in the Rain, or State and Main.

Would Not Recommend: If the class component of this movie is likely to grate against your political sensitivities.