The recent commercial failure of ‘Babylon’ has become new ammunition for those who argue that nobody is interested in those navel looks that are made in Hollywood. It may be true, but only half. We have plenty of films offering a look behind the scenes of the film industry that, even without becoming hits, have remained as essential classics of this art form.
Curiously, several of these are produced from the field of comedy, because It’s easier to uncover shame if you can get a laugh from time to time. It is also a way of refuting comedy as a minor art with respect to very serious and very serious dramas, reflecting existential and intelligent questions from the hilarious. There are few better examples of this than ‘Sullivan’s Travels‘.
Journey to the heart of cinema
Preston Sturges, one of the best comedy directors of all time and the godfather of the screwball applied to romantic comedy, was crowned with this film about cinema and making movies that can already be seen through Filmin. A paradoxical reflection on the role of filmmakers in the industry and on the art they are destined to create in moments of social emergency.
John L. Sullivan is a Hollywood film director who wants to make a great sad movie, a profound work about the misery and suffering that the country is suffering during the Great Depression. Your crusade is important, away from the frivolity of what movie studios are putting out on a regular basis. In order to soak up the common man’s experience, she takes a cross-country journey that is actually taking him through different film genres to completely upend his perspective.
That way of cleverly using genres to laugh at their conventions, but also to value them artistically, is one of the multiple layers that make ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ an extraordinary work. Employing his trademark screwball comedy and romance as a central pillar, Sturges creates a complex yet accessible piece of entertainment that tries to unravel his inner contradictions.
‘Sullivan’s Travels’: the odyssey of art
Is it possible to do something committed in an industry so determined to make money? Is the individual condemned to be cornered in the confines of the capitalist system? Is the path of creation all torture in order to achieve something great? The difficulties of this artist in his little epic odyssey they are arranged in a very well-spun satire, with the director unraveling his personal experiences in Hollywood.
It is not surprising, on the other hand, that the Coens admire Sturges’ cinema so much and this work in particular, from which they derive the title of ‘O Brother!‘ and mount their own Homeric odyssey in the midst of the Great Depression. The biting and insightful humorous tone of ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ is a fundamental influence on the brothers’ stylewho at the same time also make works about artists having difficulties to create within the establishment.
In this film there is already everything fundamental that the Coens would develop throughout dozens of works, but that is only one of the many reasons for putting on this excellent and essential film. His bold analysis of the pleasure of sharing a laugh is absolutely superbly told, and makes the best case for the art of comedy ever made.
In Espinof | The best comedies in history