Sullivan’s Travels

Year: 1941

Grade: A

Country: USA

Director: Sturges

Review

classic film with a basic idea. for me it boils down to this: life sucks and we can’t even know how much it sucks for some people, but as long as we have comedy it’s probably worth living.

it’s about a film director who wants to get away from making crowd-pleasing comedies and musicals and make a picture that will change the world. he calls it “o brother, where art thou?” (yes, that’s where the coens got the title). his producers tell him he’s crazy and he’s had a silver spoon in his mouth since day one so what the hell would he know about hardship. so he resolves to live the hard life and travels with the tramps and eats out of trash cans and comes back a changed man. but things get real when he’s robbed and mistaken for dead and ends up in a chaingang and gets a real taste of the hard life. it’s a great and simple story with a simple yet profound message during a time when people could use such a story.

there’s even “a little sex in it” with veronica lake in the shower pressing her body up against a clear shower curtain while yelling to someone in another room.