Molecules to Movies: Sullivan's Travels (1941)
This post contains all the spoilers. I assume you've seen the film or don't care about having the plot given away. My thoughts on the film are after the plot summary. This is more like analysis than a review. You can watch the trailer at the bottom of this post.
The Credits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan%27s_Travels is a comedy directed by Preston Sturges and stars Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake.
The Plot
John Sullivan is a very successful director, but he is tired of making comedies and musicals. He wants to direct a serious drama about poverty in America based on a novel about living during the Great Depression called "O Brother Where Art Thou?" His producers tell him he has had too good a life to really understand trouble and hardship. (Yes, this is where the Coen Brothers got the title for their movie.) So he has the costuming department dress him as a tramp and goes on the road with only a dime to his name. The studio follows him to make sure he is safe, but he gets away by promising to meet them in Las Vegas. He finds work helping out a rich woman around the home. She comes onto him so he runs away. He hitches a ride and ends up back in Hollywood anyway. He meets "the girl" at a diner after she buys him breakfast. After they get arrested for stealing his own car, he reveals who he is and they set out train hopping together. They go to soup kitchens and stay in hobo camps and homeless shelters. Another hobo steals his shoes, which had his identity card sewed into the soles. They go to a diner and the man running it gives him and the girl a free meal. When he realizes he is in Vegas, he finds the studio bus and is rescued. The studio gives a reward to the man who ran the diner.
After his adventure he returns to Hollywood where the papers publish his story about living the life of a tramp. He decides to pay things forward by handing out money to homeless people. After giving money to the same man who stole his shoes, the man follows him, knocks him out, leaves him out cold on a train car and steals all his money. When the hobo spills the money on the train tracks, he is hit by a train while trying to pick up the money. Since he was wearing Sullivan's shoes with his ID card sewn in the soles, everyone believes it was Sullivan who was hit by the train.
Sullivan wakes up with amnesia on a train car in a railyard. Startled by the railyard bull (watchman), he hits him with a rock, landing him a 6-year jail sentence. He regains his memory but cannot convince anyone he is John Sullivan. In order to get his name in the papers, he confesses to being his own murderer (remember he is believed to be dead). This causes the studio to get him released. At one point, while in prison, the inmates went to an African-American church to watch a Disney cartoon. Seeing how happy even the most downtrodden troubled people could be while watching a comedy, he decides to direct another comedy, realizing he still would never know what it was really like to have a troubled life.
Thoughts on the Film
This film has a lot of meta self-references. It begins with a fight on a train that finishes with a title card stating "The End." It is revealed that this is just a film the director and his producers are watching. He states that he wants his next picture to be about capital and labor destroying each other. It should have social meaning and be a commentary on the modern condition, stark realism, the problems that confront the average man. The producers want sex and a musical. They think his ideas are communism. He is clearly talking about the movie we are about to watch as well as the movie he wants to make. At another point in the film, after he is freed from jail, he asks the cop to let the girl out. The cop asks "how's the girl fit in this picture?" Sullivan responds "There's always a girl in the picture. Haven't you ever been to the movies?"
Sullivan is faced with an impossible task. How can he direct a film about trouble and suffering when he has lived a life of privilege? His butler tells him that poor people already know what it's like to be poor. They don't need rich people to make a film showing them what it's like.
When he does finds work while traveling, the woman he works for comes onto him. Would this have happened to a truly impoverished hobo? Would this woman even let a hobo into her home to work? Sullivan tries to shake off the riches he was born into, but it is not just about clothes and money in your pocket. He is educated and in great health. Even when he begins to get sick, the studio has him rest until he is healthy. How can he know hardship and trouble with such a cushion to fall back on?
When he accidentally finds his way back to Hollywood, it's like a metaphor for his whole life. He was born into a wealthy family out of luck. Many try their hardest to get to the top, but a person born into wealth seems to just end up there. His second attempt at suffering leads him and the girl (dressed as a boy) to live as train hoppers. At the hobo camps, they see real poverty. Yet still, he is not suffering. He is merely a tourist, slumming it. He is just destined to get back to Hollywood. It is too easy for him to be scooped up and returned. How can he claim to know hardship, no matter how much of a close-up view he gets?
When he finds himself in jail, he seems to finally have hit bottom. Does he now know true hardship? This may have easily been the case if he didn't still have a way out of there. At the end, he realizes he didn't know trouble because he is free and still very rich. He may have witnessed trouble but there are others who are still in jail. At one point in jail, he told another prisoner that they don't put directors in jail for what he did. The prisoner asks whether he might then be mistaken in believing he is a famous director. But eventually that comes to be. As a director, he does go free where another man might remain in jail. He hasn't experienced trouble but rather just the privilege of being upper class. Just because someone rescued you from prison doesn't mean you know what it's like to be one of the people discarded by society.
It is natural to want to help those less fortunate, but this does not mean you can just try it out and think you understand. It can come off preachy when telling someone their own story of hard luck back to them, while having the luxury of living in a mansion. In this case it shows two extremes, from mansions to prison camps.
In a way, Sullivan died and went to Hell, which in this case was a Southern forced labor prison camp. He found salvation in church, where he learned to embrace what he had all along, laughter. He was then reborn and entered into the kingdom of Heaven, or rather his glorious mansion in Hollywood. He had an epiphany and vowed to use his talents once again to make people laugh.
Although Sullivan ultimately rejects doing a social message film and opting instead for a comedy, this film is very much both. There is plenty of social messaging as we see the downtrodden in America. We see that someone can't stop people from suffering. We see how only the complete renunciation of his material possessions can even bring him close to the realization that there are people with real troubles. It is only then that he realizes how lucky he is. We just get to laugh along the way.
This trailer is the property of Universal Pictures.
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