Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Directed by Preston Sturges
Successful movie director John L. Sullivan, convinced he won't be able to film his ambitious masterpiece until he has suffered, dons a hobo disguise and sets off on a journey, aiming to "know trouble" first-hand. When all he finds is a train ride back to Hollywood and a beautiful blonde companion, he redoubles his efforts, managing to land himself in more trouble than he bargained for when he loses his memory and ends up a prisoner on a chain gang.
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What critics compared Sullivan's Travels to
The movie takes its title from Preston Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels."
The film's title and its opening 1930s chain-gang setting are a tip of the hat to Preston Sturges' classic Hollywood comedy "Sullivan's Travels," but what "O Brother" is really riffing off is something different.
Preston Sturges, in "Sullivan's Travels," told the story of a Hollywood director known for lightweight comedy who sets out to make a serious social statement in his next film, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"--though his producer insists it should be a musical.
Taking its classical-sounding title from an in-joke in Preston Sturges' screwball comedy " Sullivan's Travels ", "O, Brother" is resolutely uncategorisable.
The title comes from Sturges's great movie, the 1941 "Sullivan's Travels," in which a filmmaker (played by Joel McCrea) decides to draw inspiration for his next film from the "real world" and sets out with only ten cents in his pocket.
Yet, following an amiable trio of escaped cons through an embellished rendition of the Depression-era South, the Coens' new widescreen odyssey appears more strongly informed by The Wizard of Oz, Down by Law, the films of Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels in particular), and, perhaps most of all, the toe-tapping bluegrass tunes that pepper the soundtrack.
…as it made me think at times of Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Preston Sturges’ sublime Sullivan’s Travels.
Con un poco del Fellini de 8 y medio, otro poco del Preston Sturgues de Los viajes de Sullivan y hasta dos gotas del Hitchcock de cualquiera de sus películas con un hombre que huye, el director compone la quintaesencia de las películas agradables, simpáticas, disfrutables y bastante bobas, todo sea dicho.
En esos momentos en que la película pretende ser Los viajes de Sullivan (ya quisiera el director de Historia de matrimonio tener el toque de Preston Sturges), el andamio se tambalea.
La huella de Sullivan’s Travels sobrevuela el film, pero solo como eco temático. En vez de un viaje físico y emocional que confronte al artista con su propia ignorancia, Baumbach parece replicar el gesto sin la convicción necesaria.
Jay Kelly’s attempt to reconnect with the people who watch his movies is akin to Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels…
Baumbach, a skilled neo-screwball farceur, pays extended homage to “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941), Preston Sturges’s comedy about a commercial Hollywood filmmaker who, in a fit of high-mindedness, seeks to rub elbows with the common man.
Its rehashed theme, which dates back at least as far as Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, holds that entertainment has an inherent value in its capacity to amuse the downtrodden classes and make them forget their worries.
It wouldn't be a Bond movie without a high-stakes prologue, but the "Skyfall" showdown has another precedent in film history: Preston Sturges' indispensable 1941 Hollywood satire "Sullivan's Travels" opens with a movie-within-a-movie featuring two men coming to blows while holding tight to a moving train.
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Her and Harry’s laughter isn’t sweet, though, but off-puttingly exaggerated — just like Joel McCrea’s in the Sullivan’s Travels sequence it nods to.
John and Jeremy's hapless attempts to bluff their way through a weekend at the Cleary estate by pretending to be venture capitalists from New Hampshire are oddly reminiscent of writer-director Preston Sturges' 1940s social satires, such as "Sullivan's Travels," in which a rich filmmaker decides to live among the common people to get a taste of the real world, or "The Palm Beach Story," about a flighty wife who leaves her penniless husband to hobnob with millionaires.
"Up in the Air" bears comparison to Preston Sturges ' " Sullivan's Travels ," that dark, dark comedy about Hollywood and Depression America.
I suppose if you’ve never seen Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels” or Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt”, “Birdman” might pass muster.
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I suppose if you’ve never seen Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels” or Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt”, “Birdman” might pass muster.
Race as a fable, Africa as a fantasy--and the last reel interested in beautiful, rich white people falling in love; I think about Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels and a couple of challenges presented therein to white, privileged, "morbid rich" filmmaker Sully, played by Joel McCrea: "What do you know about trouble?" and, later, "I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir."