Cinema Seminar:
Sullivan’s Travels

Taught by Paul McEwan, Ph.D.
Professor of Media & Communication and Film Studies, Muhlenberg College

Hollywood has always loved stories about itself, and Sullivan’s Travels (1941) gets at one of the dilemmas that has long tormented filmmakers–whether to tell a story with a social message or simply make a crowd-pleaser.

In it, a successful director named John L. Sullivan, played by Joel McCrea (Foreign Correspondent, Ride the High Country), resists his studio’s attempts to get him to make another hit comedy. He instead chooses to disguise himself as a vagabond to gather material for his next, socially conscious movie. Things get a little bit more real than he bargained for, with emotionally resonant and hilarious results.

This is a film that manages to have it both ways–plenty of heart and first-rate comedy in a combination that has helped it stay higher in audience esteem than its initial reviews would have suggested. It also features then-rising star Veronica Lake (This Gun for Hire, The Blue Dahlia), in only her second major role, as a struggling actress who teams with Sullivan on his escapade.

Writer-director Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story) had already built a successful career by this point as a comedic filmmaker with a sharp eye for human quirks and foibles. He is able to balance cynicism and heart in just the right amounts for audiences in the early years of WWII. What is remarkable is that this balance has held up across the decades.

This seminar will explore the social context of the wartime film industry and the cinematic legacy of the Great Depression, as well as the lasting influence of a movie that has not only entertained audiences consistently for 75 years, but has also inspired filmmakers like the Coen Brothers, Noah Baumbach, and others.