Sullivan’s Travels

Opening with a film within a film’s ending, director and million dollar talent John L. Sullivan (John McCrea) is looking to abandon the mainstream cinema of the Great Depression, the light-hearted diversions of comedies and musicals, and create a masterpiece of contemporary social comment by filming O Brother Where Art Thou? Ostensibly pampered his entire life, Sullivan sheds his bourgeois threads and dresses as a penniless tramp, planning to infiltrate the miserable existence of America’s poorest. In a downtrodden diner, Sullivan meets “the Girl” (Veronica Lake), a failed actress ready to abandon Hollywood, who takes pity on Sullivan in disguise and buys him some breakfast.

Sullivan’s Travels is a classic screwball Hollywood comedy, with snappy lines, slapstick and silly humour that doesn’t let up, even when the film lurches uneasily into tragedy. A seminal postmodern film, Sullivan’s Travels is self-reflexive about Hollywood, cinema and why we watch comedies. [Rachel Bowles]