Sullivan's Travels: Personal reflections on screenwriters, screwball comedies, Sturges' characters, and shaky critiques from Hollywood
Sullivan's Travels: Personal reflections on screenwriters, screwball comedies, Sturges' characters, and shaky critiques from Hollywood
Sullivan trying out tramp clothing before setting out on his adventure.
In my ongoing journey through the annals of cinema, where I'm gradually learning to develop my tastes, I noticed that my younger and more impressionable past self was partial to screenwriters/directors like Aaron Sorkin, Noah Baumbach, Richard Linklater, and Ingmar Bergman. And what drew me to these writers was their proclivity to populate their films entirely with dialogue, sometimes almost reducing their films to Waiting for Godot-levels of min-maxing where dialogue holds supremacy over set design and flashy visuals. Apart from Linklater and Bergman (both of whom I admire for their free-flowing style and formal austerity, respectively), Sorkin and Baumbach especially wowed younger me with their quick-witted relatability and ping-ponging line deliveries. Their dialogues were almost a yin and yang between searingly calculated and spontaneously frank. And just like Sorkin, I too loved the sound of dialogue and its music-like cadences.
As I've grown and began to appreciate early cinema's embrace of sound spilling over to their theatrical adaptations, I've also taken note of the influential filmmakers who've pioneered this talky style that I so deeply enjoyed. It turns out they have a name: screwball comedies. From Frank Capra to Howard Hawks to Gregory La Cava, there was but one that stood out who tickled my eardrums more than others: Preston Sturges. When the Coen brothers point to you as one of their favourite and most influential directors, it now becomes your cinephile's standard "connect the dots" puzzle, where the line of Sturges zigs and zags through the many points of references the Coen's mark on their filmic canvas that forms their holistic style. Case in point: O Brother, Where Art Thou? It's also no coincidence that the title references Sturges' most acclaimed film: Sullivan's Travels.
Sullivan's Travels follows prolific movie director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), who, after building his career off of many successful comedies, decides to make a more earnest picture, a picture he titles O Brother, Where Art Thou? In it, Sullivan heralds its subject matter as a "commentary on modern conditions, (with) stark realism, (and) problems that confront the average man." But as Hollywood executives buffer his lofty ambitions, Sullivan rationalises that he too must suffer alongside the underprivileged if he were to gain some understanding of their plight. Donning tattered clothes to blend in with the poor, we follow his vain attempts to go eastward, only for fate to shove him back to his Hollywood starting point.
He meets his eventual love interest along the way: a struggling actress (Veronica Lake) who tags along with him as they go deeper and deeper into the guise. After spending enough time alongside the poverty-stricken, Sullivan decides to return to Hollywood, now prepared to tackle his new film. And to show his gratitude to them, He takes to the street and hands out five-dollar bills to the homeless people idling on the pavement. However, he becomes victim to a botched attempt on his life by one of the homeless tramps, leaving him unconscious and awakened in prison with another identity. His supposed death rocks his upper-class contemporaries and his love interest, whilst the now despondent Sullivan endures the harsh conditions of the prison work camp. Yet incredulously, in a sort of divine intervention, Sullivan reaches the brilliant epiphany of admitting to the "murder" of himself in the media so that his Hollywood companions can bust him out of prison and return to the safe arms of his affluent reputation. He does so and finally reunites with Lake's character, but with a newly added attitude towards his film: It should be a comedy instead, realising the power of laughter and its contribution to society and the downtrodden.
Veronica Lake and Sullivan together in the backseat of his car.
Sullivan's Travels was my first exposure to Preston Sturges (though I have a good chunk of his filmography under my belt now), and watching his unique blend of juggling bitter social commentary with some capital "Q" quips was quite the experience for me. And although Sturges has many poignant self-reflexive digs on Hollywood and their naivete on social issues, his proposed alternative and messaging can feel too defeatist and wishy-washy. Sullivan's Travels is a film that swings violently between disparate tones of screwball rom-com in the first half to depressingly scathing magnifications of the conditions of the impoverished in the latter. Notwithstanding, I found the film to be a hilarious watch whilst also scratching the 'well-made-movie-but-with-an-unintentionally-off-putting-and-simplistic-moral' itch I've been craving for a while.
If I were to make a brash, certifiably uninformed "film bro" take, Sullivan's Travels ain't no Howard Hawks visually (NB: the validity of this take at the moment is directly proportional to the number of screwball comedies I've seen—which is a probably under 50—so take the entire salt shaker with you if you wish.) Yet, Sturges' non-stop jokes and the dextrous playfulness of his dialogue work stupendously to conceal the sprawling, complex, and the surprisingly nuanced narrative he's embedded under the word salads. A double feature of this alongside His Girl Friday would probably overload my senses with their relentless 240 words per minute barrages of back-and-forths that populate their runtimes. Watching Sturges with veteran eyes makes Sorkin's words sound hackneyed, whilst Baumbach leans too much on naturalism. His erudite and poetic soliloquies wrapped around the goofiest of alliterations and American slang could almost convince boomer-minded "born in the wrong generation”–types of the deteriorating quality of comedies and their generation's sense of humour.
Although one aspect that I find reminiscent of Hawks screwball films, and most definitely applies to every classical screwball film in this vein, is the characters. Sturges' female leads girlboss through life's bullshit while their male counterparts are bumbling idiots who leave skid marks of masculine immaturity front and centre on-screen, dragging their asses through meet-cutes and romantic quibbles. This battle of the sexes forms a perfect dichotomy to mine earnestness and sarcasm seamlessly (re: Veronica Lake's slow head turn of disappointment to Sullivan after realising his homeless act during the car ride back to his mansion.)
Joel McCrea's Sullivan is running to be Sturges' most socially incompetent and pretentious screwball protagonist I've ever seen to stumble on the big screen. Although personally, that title belongs to Rex Harrison's character in Sturges' other film, Unfaithfully Yours. Weirdly enough, Sullivan reminds me of Honor Swinton Byrne's character, Julie, in Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir, though not to the deriding extent Sullivan is compared to Julie's more relatable and sympathetic nature. Where both seek to make a film centred around the impoverished, Julie's flaw is her youthful inexperience wrapped in privilege, while Sullivan's is his unbridled privilege wrapped in inexperience. Julie is indecisive, while Sullivan is deceitful.
Veronica Lake and Sullivan disguised in tramp clothing.
However, in comparison, Veronica Lake's character feels somewhat underutilised past the homeless tramp's murder attempt towards Sullivan, occurring in about the final third of the film. She's only conveniently brought back near the ending once it concerned Sullivan's eureka moment to confess his own "murder". We never focus on her perspective outside of their on-screen romance, lest you exclude the mini montage of flying newspapers reporting Sullivan's death and the subsequent mourning of Veronica and his Hollywood contemporaries. We only get to see Veronica's initial guilt-ridden reaction, but not her long, arduous grieving process. Although I'm not sure including the grieving process would've been appropriate tonally, it ultimately sacrifices her depth to favour Sturges' more comically fruitful protagonist.
Another fascinating observation about Lake, especially during scenes of her and Sullivan trawling through soup kitchens, cattle cars and homeless shelters, is her androgynous appearance. Sporting a wardrobe almost evocative of Dickens' titular Oliver Twist—down to the flat cap and corduroy sweater—Sullivan sarcastically remarks to Lake as they wait to catch the train, "You look about as much as a boy as Mae West." Her boyishly poor attempt to pass off as a man can at glance come off infantilising but, at closer inspection, becomes inherently liberating instead. The quasi-masculine disguise (which personally kinda comes off as some rugged, dingy version of Katharine Hepburn's typical closet) almost represents some form of newfound agency and freedom for Lake, albeit undercut by Sullivan's snarky comment. Despite her accompaniment with Sullivan, patriarchal expectations of the feminine experience don't seem to apply to her nor draw suspicions towards their disguises. Lake gives off an understated aura of masculinity that doesn't try to make itself known or tries to impose on others.
Although this swapping of gender dynamics for Lake is par for the course for screwball comedies in general, it almost transforms into an unintentional subversion of the genre tropes for female characters in screwball comedies. Where traits of overconfidence, opportunism and steadfast pragmatism are splashed all over the genre's feminine characters (Hepburn in Adam's Rib, Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, and especially Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday), it's worth dissecting its wildly different approach to agency these women demonstrate in contrast to Lake's "invisible masculinity". Hepburn, Stanwyck and Russel's characters' projected masculinity are defined by their active integration of male-dominated practices and attitudes, which, although can be met with misogynist pushback, ultimately leaves them just as successful or unfulfilled as their male counterparts. Lake's character, on the other hand, takes an alternate route. It's almost as if the tramp disguise carries an inherent "shield" against any concrete categorisation.
The androgyny neither sacrifices nor enhances perceived "feminine qualities" of meekness or chastity. Even wildly, it almost goes unnoticed by any working-class individuals they meet. There are no seemingly discriminatory sentiments displayed by Sullivan and Lake's environment, which I presume is more of Sturges' much larger preoccupations with class divisions and inequality, trumping the genre's proclivity of poking holes in societal gender expectations. Even so, it's a dynamic I can only wish screwball comedies of the time took advantage of in my imagined, more progressive alternate reality of cinematic history.
Sullivan and prisoners laughing at a film screening inside a black church.
Coming back to Sullivan, one thing I find interesting about this character's journey is how the universe, or more specifically Sturges being the storytelling arbiter, seems to deny his attempts to mingle and aid the poor in the beginning, seeing as his endeavors to go east invariably lead him back to Hollywood. Only when he's walking around full of cash in his pockets, ready to give to the poor, is when the domino effect of misfortune occurs: Sullivan is knocked unconscious, he assaults a yard bully, he's tried in court and imprisoned, and finally enslaved in a chain gang. It also leads to the perpetrator's death, who attempted to murder him in the first place. The tramp bonks Sullivan in the head and steals his cash, only for it to fly away on the railroad tracks by an oncoming train, running him over as he desperately fails to pick up the loose bills on the ground. This implication of philanthropy being this useless band-aid to alleviate the enormous gash of structural inequalities comes off as Sturges pointing fingers at himself, Hollywood and the systems that sustain him. Even desperate attempts to mar one rich apple won't spoil the billionaire barrel.
And all these aspects point to a weirdly uplifting and supposedly "satisfying" ending, which I think presents instead a sad realisation of the state of Hollywood and its classist limitations: Sullivan confesses his non-existent murder to the public so that his Hollywood executives can break him out of imprisonment. I read a review once claiming that if the film were to end at the church scene, where the newly imprisoned Sullivan, his prison mates, and the black folk from the church are all laughing at the slapstick Disney animation Playful Pluto (1934), it would've been a much more fitting and thematically consistent closer whilst still ending on a high note. Here, we get to see the reasoning as to why Sullivan changed his mind about turning his film into a comedy instead of a serious drama. It pretty much harkens back to the film's beginning prologue:
"To the memory of those who made us laugh, the motley mountebanks, the clown, the buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little, this picture is affectionately dedicated."
Laughter is Hollywood's only viable contribution, while hubris and greed will be the bourgeoisie's demise. But is that really it?
As much as I would prefer the hypothetically appropriate finish, its actual ending tells of Hollywood's self-sustaining hegemonic structures that have the power and resources to even figuratively "resurrect" its kind from depths of circumstance. No matter how far you stray from Hollywood, it draws you back physically, economically, and spiritually. If anything, Sullivan's realisation to confess to his murder (which I find to be a symbolic death of his more pretentious, societally oblivious older self) is simultaneously him realising his inherently powerful economic and social position over his poorer contemporaries in the chain gang. Where the initial humanist assumption that he's of equal footing to the less fortunate drives the need to make a film about them, his confession proves how distant he is in the first place.
He doesn't belong and shouldn't belong in the lower rung of society. It is impossible to find common ground that sees any fair and accurate representation within elitist mores. His "happy ending" solidifies Hollywood as incapable of forgoing its cultural colonisation, where intersectionality is damn near impossible and most likely downright offensive. It's as if Sturges is unintentionally admitting defeat; Hollywood pictures can't inspire the impoverished. The comedies that distract us from our crumbling infrastructures stem from the same comedians who are wielding the destructive sledgehammers in the first place.
Sullivan sitting outside in prison.
Of course, a litany of Hollywood films over the past century seem to be more inclusive of minorities and the impoverished, but you can often smell bullshit and catch Hollywood truncation and oversimplification from a mile away (Green Book, Crash, Rain Man). It seems as if films like The Player and Barton Fink are merely flukes in the industry's history of self-interrogation since Sunset Boulevard, The Bad and the Beautiful and the radical New Hollywood that eschewed the normative producer-driven system.
Contemporary Hollywood's output, too, seems to be bereft of the same piercing satire and fierce comedic spirit that dominated 80 years ago. In its place lies a newfound obsession with postmodernist pastiche. The likes of superhero "multiverse" films and Quentin Tarantino (especially his latest Tinseltown film Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood)—with their penchant for alluding to as many movies and comic book IPs as possible—spell a preoccupation for style over substance. In Once Upon a Time, its assemblage of Hollywood pop paraphernalia transformed into half-hearted dogpiling of the star-powered industry and its figureheads falls short on the self-reflexive critiques—or visual flair—Altman demonstrated in his own film. The film's ending of mindlessly pandering violence ruins any presuppositions of Tarantino subverting his tendencies for Hollywood spectacle.
Revisiting Aaron Sorkin now doesn't bode well for the high regard my nostalgia has built up for him over the years. It pains me to see him shove his questionable centrism and anti-commie sentiments in his latest films, most egregiously in his latest 2021 effort Being the Ricardos, where his uninspired and overtly textual dialogue weighing down its emotional resonance with its heavy-handedness overshadows Nicole Kidman's strong yet charmingly graceful performance. As I'm focusing on these aspects, it seems as if Hollywood is having the last laugh on us; they continue to fall deeper into their self-sustaining delirium and lack of self-awareness while we, the audience, continue eating up their overly-politicised, artistically bankrupt excuses of 'Oscar-worthy' output passing off as prestige cinema.
So that really is it, after all. Maybe Hollywood will never reach that same level of humorous provocation and insight. Like Sullivan, maybe we’ll always be drawn back to the allure of Hollywood only to be disappointed. But, the present isn't as bleak as my certain reservations want me to believe.
The screwball comedy era may be long behind us, but the sharp witticism of its writing is still ever-present. Having risen to Hollywood-levels of creative freedom, Mumblecore darlings Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig have injected their golden era predecessors' poignancy and emotional genuineness with newfound everyday speak and millennial slang. They also forgo the general theatricality and staginess of the screwball comedy and favour more realistic and grounded settings familiar to a generation's struggle navigating their aimless 20s piled with bills, competitive job markets, a rapidly urbanising landscape, and general existential malaise exacerbated by the rapid increase and prevalence of social anxiety and depression. (These above characteristics are not a dig at Millennials and Gen Z's, I swear—well, partially they are, and I'm just stroking the sardonic, overly sarcastic postmodern veneer my generation has made for ourselves to shield from the ever-looming dark void, while simultaneously starving ourselves of any sincerity between social interactions.)
Sullivan reunited with his Hollywood acquaintances and Lake on the plane back home.
As more films are desperately trying to remind us of our moral decay as the powers that be exert their systemic tyranny under our nose, I think Sturges was on to something in his juggling act of comedy and abrupt reality-checking. Though the dour dialogues of Bergman and the dreamy discussions of Linklater help to indulge and distract us respectively from the doom and gloom of existing, I think the appeal of screwball comedies couldn't be more urgent and fitting. Is laughter our best medicine? Maybe. Yet Sullivan's Travels' simplistic final grace note only reminds us of how we've long since strayed from the path of comedy as a means of pathos.
And if laughter won't wholly provide us with amnesia from our grim realities, it’ll at least make this exhausting thing we call "life" less strenuous for about 90+ minutes. In Sullivan's own words:
"There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Manila and raised in Antipolo up until his middling teens, Trevor moved to New Zealand in late 2016 where he resides today. He is currently studying an undergraduate degree majoring in film at the University of Auckland. He's also attended a few workshops on TV and film production out and about Auckland, but he enjoys the writing aspect of cinema too. He has already written a legitimate piece for a film publication (like this one!) while constantly trying to fight the urge to make post-ironic joke reviews on Letterboxd.
