sullivan's travels film analysis

To get to that point where Sullivan can encapsulate the fundamental truth of his recent travels, he first had to undergo a sort of hero’s journey in which he temporarily broke free—or free enough, at any rate—from his ivory tower shelter from the real world inside his Hollywood mansion. Deserving of eternal veneration as the first screenwriter to decisively break through as a director, Sturges paved the way for the likes of John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Sturges may be presenting a case for comedy that respects the intelligence and experience of its audience. The film's plot was loosely based on The Odyssey (by the non-Simpson Homer) but borrowed several elements from Sullivan's Travels. Joel McCrea is very funny in the role of a naive director trying to find how the poor people live. Sullivan's Travels is an old film, but the themes still feel current; Sullivan, an ambitious big-shot director known for his successful feel-good comedies, insists he must make a more Important Film exploring Real Issues, namely the grinding poverty that many Americans still face even though the Great Depression is supposedly over. A problem: the director is still married to a money-grubbing wife in no mood to divorce him and lose all the pleasures that come with a Hollywood lifestyle. That’s all some people have. An editor The Question and Answer section for Sullivan’s Travels is a great Sullivan’s Travels is about a famous Hollywood director of comedies who chooses to live for weeks as a vagrant to gain socially relevant experience for a hard-hitting film. The title is a … The world might as well have been two different places when Sturges was conceiving his film and when he got to see how audiences responded. His books include the biography Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, and he is an award-winning writer and director of documentaries, including Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography and Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient. In one scene in Sullivan’s Travels, actor Joel McCrea parodies Chaplin’s signature “Little Tramp” character. He won an Emmy Award for writing the documentary Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer. Sullivan's Travels (1941) is generally considered one of celebrated writer/director Preston Sturges' greatest dramatic comedies - and a satirical statement of his own director's creed. In fact, the making and the release of Sullivan’s Travels spans two eras. Not affiliated with Harvard College. Especially since the marriage was a tax shelter in the first place. In between the making and the release of the film, Pearl Harbor was bombed. DeSylva and Sturges’ very first argument was over the casting of the female lead: Sturges insisted upon Veronica Lake, while the boss proposed Ida Lupino, Frances Farmer, Claire Trevor, Lucille Ball, Betty Field, or Ruby Keeler. On the other hand, Sullivan's Travels is often funny, complete with a happy ending. From the hilarious, seven-minute opening scene—in which successful comedy director John L. Sullivan persuasively argues with his resistant studio bosses that the time has come for him to make a serious, socially significant drama “like Capra” and gets the okay to set out on a hobo’s journey to discover poverty and suffering first-hand—the question can plausibly be asked: Is Sully Preston Sturges? Even more to the point, by the time Sullivan has come to fully appreciate the value of his sense of humor, he has also come to understand that the conventionally accepted truths about democratic ideals and free enterprise economics are exactly the things brought on the Great Depression in the first place and that any serious suggestion that they are the only possibly tools available for fixing such a mess is exactly the point at which laughter becomes an inappropriate response when clearly bitter anger is the proper reaction. It is a satire about a movie director, played by Joel McCrea, who longs to make a socially relevant drama, but eventually learns that comedies are his more valuable contribution to society. And yet Sullivan’s Travels is one of the few Hollywood films that summons emotions similar to those elicited by the work of Charlie Chaplin (who knew what the lower depths were all about, and made poverty the subject of much of his most endearing and enduring work). English writer Kevin Jackson then talks about Sullivan’s Travels, and like Jones in his commentary talks about the structure of the film and its gags, the variety of characters—calling it the “most Dickensian” story not by Charles Dickens—and elements that were ahead of its time, like the film within a film element and its subtle ways of breaking the “fourth wall.” It’s an excellent analysis of the film … There’s a lot to talk about in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS, from the different actors, all at somewhere near their best, to the kinds of joke Preston Sturges feels he can get away with (i.e. Conceived as a self-justification for the creative path he had chosen, this film evolved into one from the heart, the single picture that moves through all the pratfalls and pranks and witticisms and barbs and in-jokes to achieve a synthesis that is both terribly funny and deeply moving. The film was released to positive reviews but a luke-warm reception in theaters. Sullivan's Travels is a gem, an almost serious comedy not taken entirely seriously, with wonderful dialogue, eccentric characterisations, and superlative performances throughout. Sullivan’s Travels, therefore, was the first script Sturges wrote in full knowledge that he would direct it himself. It reveals how all of a … Copyright © 1999 - 2021 GradeSaver LLC. The film features one of Veronica Lake's first leading roles. Sullivan's Travels is still as brilliant and funny today as it was back in the early '40s, when Sturges was the toast of Tinseltown, praised as its premier satirist and crafter of social comedies. I really object to this analysis that calls Sullivan’s Travels “reactionary” toward the poor and poverty. Primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Sullivan ’ s a lot be. 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