Film industry satire Sullivan’s Travels (1941) isn’t Preston Sturges’ funniest picture; it’s not even his funniest Joel McCrea picture (stay tuned for that next week). But it’s uniquely interesting for its contradictions – as an inevitably dated comedy that nonetheless takes inequality and extreme wealth inequity as sincere topics of interest, and as a snub of social justice pictures (“leave the preaching to the preachers” he sniffed in his memoir) that itself becomes a message movie in its last reel. McCrea is a comedy director who wants to make a Very Important Drama titled O Brother, Where Art Thou? (yup, the Coens are fans). For research, and with a luscious Veronica Lake in tow, he odysseys from soup kitchen to chain gang before arriving at the perfectly reasonable conclusion that comedy is its own kind of social good. – Kimberley Jones
