Joel McCrea plays John Sullivan, Hollywood’s top director of box-office hits such as “Ants in Your Pants”, in this classic Preston Sturges comedy. Sullivan’s producers want a money-making sequel but he wants to film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and make a serious social statement (the Coen Brothers named their film after this in appreciation). Sullivan decides to take to the road as a tramp with only ten cents in his pocket in order to learn about life outside of the success of Hollywood. A failed actress (played by Veronica Lake) helps him to achieve his purpose but, in the end, Sullivan learns that laughter is more important than social realism and that “the average Joes of the world” are better off with movies like “Ants in Your Pants”. Sullivan’s Travels is a satire of the type of movie Frank Capra was making at the time as well as other films such as John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Capra was a hugely successful director of comedies, such as It Happened One Night (1934), but when he began to focus on social issues the results were, in my opinion, sometimes rather uneven (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)). However, whilst Sullivan's Travels does have many entertaining moments, Sturges, in this film, also fails to maintain a level of consistent quality throughout its 90 minutes (as, I believe, he also fails to do in many of his other films, such as The Lady Eve (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942)).
The funniest and best moments in the film appear in the opening scenes. Sturges uses long-takes to simply and effectively record sophisticated, witty, fast-paced dialogue: Sullivan: “I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity ... a true canvas of the suffering of humanity.” Producer: “But with a little sex in it.” Sullivan: [reluctantly] “But with a little sex in it.” However, the madcap, zany elements of Sturges’ storylines often cause the overall flow of his films to be uneven in quality and pacing. Ultimately, there are large weaknesses in both the writing and the film-making (poor editing) of Sullivan’s Travels: the moment where a tramp runs out of the way of an oncoming train off the tracks to the right, then to the left, and then back in front of the train before he is run over will always severely irritate; the slapstick elements are not very funny at all; and I am far from convinced with the way the story concludes – both in its execution and its message.
