Check Out the Trailer

SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS (1941) (***)
(First Reviewed 9/18/01)
Considered by many as a comedy classic, I found it a bit dated. Film buffs might just want to check it out because of its place in history and others might just want to watch it for Veronica Lake. This slapstick film follows a movie director who is tired of making comedies and wants to make a social message film (which were very popular in the 1930s when this film was made). Due to his privileged life, he decides to head out into the world with 10 cents in his pocket to find trouble. However, the studio determines he’s too valuable and sends a busload of people out after him to make sure that he doesn’t get himself killed. His adventures often lead back to Hollywood and at the moment when he decides to give up is when he really learns about hardship. It is considered the film that justifies the existence of slapstick in general; making the point that laughter is all that some people have. If you like films with witty banter and people falling down a lot then this is a film for you.

* Upon Further Review: (****)
SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS was one of the first films that I reviewed back when Rick’s Flicks Picks was only an e-mail newsletter. Above is the complete review as I originally wrote it. As I’ve gone back and posted many of my old reviews, I’ve expanded on them and refined them when my opinion hasn’t changed. However, I decided to post my original review of this film as is because it shows two things 1) my evolution as review writer and 2) my evolution as movie lover.

My under-whelmed first impression of SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS tainted my view of Preston Sturges work moving forward. But something happened my second time around with this film; it opened up. I was captured by Sturges deft sense of irony. The haphazard plot is innovative and adds to the overall tone of the film in ways that eluded me upon first watching it. Many times I go back and give films that didn’t strike me the first time a second chance and they just reconfirm all the things I didn’t like about them in the first place. But on a rare and wonderful occasion a film bursts off the screen like I am watching a completely different production.

Joel McCrea as John Sullivan, the director working for meaning in his work, and Veronica Lake as known as The Girl, who wants to get into the movie business, have a nice report that makes us want them to live happily ever after. Lake’s nameless character is a bit demeaning, but it’s an obvious stab at the execs need for a little bit of sex in the picture. As the privileged Sullivan tries to discover what it is like to be poor, his continued failed attempts always led back to the lap of luxury. The joyous satirical irony of this idea that a rich man pretending to be poor will never really know what it is like because he always has a golden net waiting to catch him is ingenious. Plus, the way Sullivan really discovers hardship is brilliant in its layered implications. Again, that wonderful irony. Looking back at my original review, it seems that I looked at the film’s surface and wasn’t able to penetrate to the nuance.

I think what struck me as dated was the editing style, which wasn’t as quick to the punch as we are use to today. This makes some of the pratfalls seem stilted. But this time I didn’t see them as pointless. While maybe not as sly as the ones in THE LADY EVE, the slapstick is always directed toward the rich, often throwing their privileges back in their faces. I said, “It is considered the film that justifies the existence of slapstick in general; making the point that laughter is all that some people have,” in my original review. This time around I felt it. I felt the sympathy of the characters toward the less fortunate, which bleed through from its creator Sturges, the first screenwriter to make it as a director in Hollywood. It’s like I’ve seen the light and have been converted from a Sturges denier to a convert.

Buy It Now!

Buy Sullivan’s Travels Now!