No film has contemplated the divide between “high” and “low” art with as much flair, gusto and flat-out fun as Preston Sturges’s 1941 magnum opus Sullivan’s Travels. The writer-director elevated screwball comedies, making irresistibly entertaining pictures full of banter and repartee, showcasing some of the genre’s best dialogue and creating moments that rank among the most enjoyable of 40s-era Hollywood.
Part of the film’s focus is the tension between studio bigwigs and hotshot directors, the former driven by the almighty dollar and the latter craving acclaim and credibility. The protagonist is Joel McCrea’s John L Sullivan, a popular director known for lowbrow box office hits with titles such as Ants in Your Pants of 1939. He longs to change tack and make serious statements about the human condition: particularly a high-minded drama called O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which is where the Coen brothers got the name for their marvellous 2000 film). Sullivan intends it to be a “commentary on modern conditions, stark realism, the problems that confront the average man” and “a true canvas of the suffering of humanity”. One studio executive listens to this and adds: “But with a little sex in it.”
When Sullivan vents about the need to make serious films during “troublous times” with “grim death gargling at you from every corner”, the executives question his privilege as an educated middle-class man and eviscerate him for having no understanding of real hardship. Sullivan concedes that they’re right – so he hatches a kooky plan to try to experience hardship first-hand, resolving to dress up in ratty clothes, like a homeless person, and live on the streets for a while.
The protagonist’s erudite butler warns him against it: “The poor know all about poverty, and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous,” he says. This conversation pre-empts the debate about “poverty porn” that flares up from time to time, for instance in relation to films such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and Slumdog Millionaire, and other media such as advertising. This thread also raises the question of who gets to tell stories about the poor and downtrodden. As Ian Jack wrote in 2009, ideally this “should be the poor themselves” – but “writing is essentially a middle-class activity for a middle-class audience”, with many potential barriers to it including literacy, opportunity and inclination.
Sullivan is keen to know what suffering looks like but is shielded by his minders. Finally, accompanied by a struggling actor (Veronica Lake) who dresses up as a boy and joins him, Sullivan gets what he considers a decent enough taste – visiting soup kitchens, sleeping in a crammed homeless shelter and walking through back alleys frequented by the woebegone. But then, a cruel twist: Sullivan is robbed, assaulted and left unconscious by a homeless man, who dies shortly later after being hit by a train. Authorities mistake the dead man for Sullivan. Then the real Sullivan wakes up and, completely out of it after being hit on the head, is involved in an altercation that results in him being sentenced to six years in prison.
Stuck working hard labour, with nobody knowing he’s still alive, Sullivan now really does have a taste of actual hardship – but ultimately comes out of the experience with a newfound appreciation for art that, to slightly paraphrase Donald O’Connor, makes ’em laugh. In a great scene towards the end, Sullivan and other chain-gang convicts watch cartoons with a black congregation in a small church. Observing the joyful faces of the people around him, distracted from the misery of their lives, he finally gets it, understanding the value of good old-fashioned shits and giggles.
Part of the beauty of this film is Sturges’s ability to have his cake and eat it too – making a serious point about the downward spiral of impoverishment while also delivering plenty of action and comedy. There are chase scenes, jokes, a bouncy pace, frothy romantic chemistry between McCrea and Lake and, of course, the witty conservational ping-pong for which Sturges is known and loved.
The fabulous auteur’s body of work also includes The Lady Eve (unforgettably starring Barbara Stanwyck as a con artist and Henry Fonda as her new target), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (a kind of proto-The Hangover, about a woman who can’t remember the details of a wild night) and Unfaithfully Yours (a fiendishly entertaining film about a hotheaded maestro who fantasies ways to exact revenge on his supposedly adulterous wife). Are these terrific comedies high or low art? Both. Or neither. John L Sullivan would almost certainly agree that such definitions don’t matter.
