O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Directed by Joel Coen
In the deep south during the 1930s, three escaped convicts search for hidden treasure while a relentless lawman pursues them.
15 connections found
View:
15 films that influenced O Brother, Where Art Thou?
What critics say influenced O Brother, Where Art Thou?
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.
It's enough to make you want to rent the old Kirk Douglas-starring "Ulysses" to compare and contrast plot points and adaptation styles.
Supposedly inspired by Homer's The Odyssey, it also borrows heavily from Moby Dick, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Wizard of Oz, as well as the Faulkneresque trappings of the Depression era South.
It pays homage to "The Wizard of Oz" and "Bonnie and Clyde," takes its name from the movie that Joel McCrea's character is making in Preston Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels" and uses "The Odyssey" as a narrative template to give a hayseed spin to the ancient Greek poem.
They also pass themselves off to a blind radio DJ as a singing quintet called the Soggy Bottom Boys, recording a seriously catchy banjo ditty that becomes a hit record while they're busy ducking and dodging the law, "Bonnie and Clyde" style.
Why if it isn't George Clooney in a perfectly jaunty performance that seems to channel both the roguish comedic charm of Clark Gable in "It Happened One Night" and the earnest zaniness of Cary Grant in his screwiest comedies.
But the film, essentially a road movie, isn't as much fun along the way as such old gems as Sturges' The Palm Beach Story or Frank Capra's It Happened One Night.
Advertisement
Supposedly inspired by Homer's The Odyssey, it also borrows heavily from Moby Dick, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Wizard of Oz, as well as the Faulkneresque trappings of the Depression era South.
But the film, essentially a road movie, isn't as much fun along the way as such old gems as Sturges' The Palm Beach Story or Frank Capra's It Happened One Night.
Waldrip is a secret racist, which leads the boys to a Klan rally that's filmed as a parody of the marching, singing, beefeater hat-wearing guard platoon outside the witch's castle in "The Wizard of Oz."
Cut that KKK lynch mob/Triumph of the Will parody sequence in twain!
Advertisement
Not coincidentally, perhaps, Joel Coen's only impassioned comment at the press conference came in response to one critic's astute observation--along with his assertion that the brothers were being "cagey"--that O Brother pulls specific bits of business from The Searchers and The Grapes of Wrath as well.
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.