Thursday, January 28, 2010

Sullivan's Travels (Sturges #4 of 5)

Genre: Screwball / Satirical Farce / Films about Filmmaking (8 1/2, Adaptation, Barton Fink)
Premise: Sullivan, a young hotshot Hollywood direct, decides to stop making screwball comedies and start doing seriouspicture pieces. Disguised as a vagrant, Sullivan heads out on the open road in search of the working man's America.Along the way, he meets the girl and ends up back in Hollywood. Deciding to share his wealth, he gives homeless menfive dollars a piece until he is knocked out by one of them and falls into a boxcar. Soon after, the vagrant is struckand killed by an oncoming train and because he has some of Sullivan's ID is believed to be Sullivan himself. Waking up in an unknown town with amnesia, Sullivan's memory is jogged back to lifeby laughter induced from a Disney cartoon. Deciding the escapism of comedy is worth more than the loftiness of drama,Sullivan needs to find a way back home. So what Sullivan does is confesses himself as his own killer, The Girl rescueshim, and she ends up with Sullivan.
About: Paramount bought the script for $6,000. Possibly insipred by the tales of John Garfield, Sturges wrote a storythat in some ways would eventually mimic his own career in Hollywood. This film has been the inspiration for many subsequentpieces of work including Simpsons episodes and Coen Brother movies.
Writer: Preston Sturges

Sullivan's Travels is the high water mark of the Sturges canon. It has got the snappiest dialogue, the most inspiredzaniness and the most biting satire. Only this time, rather than direct his lens at the coruptness of local politiciansor the foolishness of a young man's dreams, Sturges attacks the very system that nourished him. And talk about greatcharacters. Here's what I love most about Sullivan, he blurs the line between insanity and artistic brilliance. I'vealways found that a great combination for a film character mainly because it allows the writer to craft such originalgoals. But, let's be truthful, Sullivan's Travels still has its shortcomings.
There's a couple places where the film reads as unnecessarily twisting, namely the parts where Sullivan heads out onthe open road. It feels very directionless, and like alot of the things he encounters in this point of the story arevery loosely joined together. Admittedly, this haphazard structure has always been the downfall of road movies (andback in the day of the Bob Hope Road Movies, it was even worse). Also, Sturges has this weird thing of only callingthe Veronica Lake figure "The Girl" which is something he did in Christmas in July as well. (And I guess there's alogic to it, but to anybody who will argue for fully developing characters here's a counter example). Neither of thesereasons, though, is enough to understand why Sturges got lost during the last half of the 20th century, so I did somereading and happened to discover in a Ron Shelton ("Bull Durham") interview that the Sturges canon got lost due to legalrights and not based on of his artistic merits.
This film is one of the best screwball comedies ever made. And I love most of all due to its inspired zaniness, whichreally wasn't seen in a film up until this time. (Or it's mixture of Pathos and Comedy in a way I'm not sure has beendone since, the Coen Brothers are either mostly funny like Raising Arizona or most like Pathos like Barton Fink).

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
[X] Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Isla Roles: It's really hard to recast Sturges films because all of his female roles were depicted so memorably by some of the finest comedic actresses of the 1940's. I'd resist placing Isla in the Veronica Lake/Kim Bassinger rolebecause Isla seems to be lacking in some of the black and white high class charm.

Tip: It's so hard to point out just one thing here. But what I'd say is a character can have as ridiculous a goal as you please,as long as there is good reason and it's a driving motivator. Sullivan's decision to dress as a vagrant is completely ridiculousbut because it fits into Sullivan's motivation, the audience is willing to accept this type of character progression.

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