Sullivan's Travels Literary Elements

Preston Sturges

Joel McCrea/Veronica Lake

William Demarest/Robert Greig

Road Comedy

English

National Board of Review: One of the Top Ten Movies of 1942/Added to National Film Registry in 1990

February 6, 1942

Paul Jones/Buddy DeSylva/Preston Sturges

America during the Great Depression in a journey that takes viewers from Hollywood mansions to soup kitchens to prison cells

Most of the narrative is seen through the perspective of a successful but socially sheltered Hollywood filmmaker with occasionally ironic or commentary by those closer to the common man the filmmaker is trying to simulate while incognito for the purpose of understanding them better. While the main character seem to bear a more than passing similarity to Preston Sturges, the film's writer/director, Sullivan is actually far more naive and infinitely less cynical and caustic, even extending to the type of comedies he makes.

The overriding mood that propels the narrative from slapstick comedy one minute to emotionally wrenching portrayals of the actual truth of living conditions during the Great Depression to a sudden unexpected dark turn into a prison movie where hope lives, but is very hard to spot is sincerity. It would be going too far to suggest that the film is as optimistic as its lead character about the power of humor, but it never lapses into irony as a way of avoiding the sentimentality of the robust source of optimism that is to be found in its tale.

Protagonist: John L. Sullivan, maker of comedies. Antagonist: The Great Depression, potential killer of comedy.

The major conflict in the film is actually that of Sullivan in conflict with himself. Or, more apt, Sullivan the successful maker of comedies who was very happy making that kind of movie until recently comes into conflict less with his own actual opinions on the subject than with his weak defense against buying into the argument that somehow drama is more important or connects with audiences on a deeper and more emotionally truthful level

The climax of the film occurs within the prison in which Sullivan's travels have somehow managed to land him through a series of unfortunate events. The climax comes not in the form of a prison riot or a daring escape or even Sullivan's revelation of who he actually is, but rather in the unexpected form of a Disney cartoon short starring Pluto. As Sullivan sees the sheer joy that such a silly and mindless bit of entertainment can bring to the people who really need it the most because those are closest to the edge of hopelessness, he himself finally realizes the inadequacy of his desire to make a dramatic movie in order to be taken seriously.

The title itself offers a bit of foreshadowing of how things ultimately will turn out as it it alludes to Gulliver's Travels and the constant repeating motif that the shipwrecked sailor has to go to faraway foreign lands in order to learn some self-evident truths about his own neighbors back home.

Every moment of the narrative of the film leads to that observation by Sullivan about how the ability to laugh at the harshness of life may not be much, but it's better than nothing. He also notes that for a very fortunately small minority, that ability to laugh is all they've got. They literally have no other weapons at their disposal to beat back the craziness that life has to toss at them. When you stop to think about it, that's a heavy burden to put on humor and the ability to find humor at the worst of times. That is a philosophical statement that almost cries out for overstatement, especially when you are actor Joel McCrea whose entire career has been built on maintaining a solid grounding of understated delivery. And yet McCrea comes through as always, resisting the urge to overwhelm this profound message with either overstated sentiment or unnecessary implication of the obvious. The most famous line of the movie--perhaps the most famous line Sturges ever wrote--becomes a masterpiece of understatement.

Not applicable in the sense that as a director Sturges preferred to use the camera primarily as an unobtrusive instrument for delivering his message through the words of his screenplay.

The title alludes directly to Gulliver's Travels, but rather than preparing the viewer for a journey into lands they barely recognize as equivalent to their own, Sturges draws the analogy that Sullivan has become so blind to what's around him that he needs to get away to learn valuable lessons that could have been learned just as easily without ever leaving the comfort and security of Hollywood.

Sturges ha written a movie that is a celebration of comedy without message by writing a comedy with a message. A common critique of Sullivan's Travels is that--like criticism often addressed to Woody Allen's later movies--it just isn't as funny as his earlier stuff. The paradox at at the heart of the film may go a long way toward explaining this perspective.

"Neither by word, nor by action, nor by look...make our guests feel uncomfortable." Perhaps it is only fitting that the most clear-cut example of literary parallelism in the film is held back until it is nearly over and when it does come, it issues forth from a preacher. It is not a sermon in the sense of the movie, but it is most assuredly a sermon in the sense of a subtle message sent to viewers that they may want to take extra care to relax judgment during periods like the Great Depression which was on more than a few occasions the great equalizer within the social strata of American society.