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.
11 Dec Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
A Turning Point about Turning
There are films that do a good job occupying your time and those that enrich your life. My comments here are part of an enterprise to build a fully enriched visual imagination. But there is a third category, it seems: films that in the modern context are powerless, but which were influential in changing the course of the world of film. This effectively means they changed the world.
‘Birth of a Nation’ is one of these. Quite apart from the topic of the story, it turned the new unfettered medium of film into an extension of stage plays. This hampered film for decades. Many people – including filmmakers – still believe that films can be ’about’ something. That started to change in 1941 with the appearance of two films: ‘Kane’ in which narrative folding was merged with the choreographed camera (already being played with by Hitchcock), and’Travels’ which introduced irony into the notion of watching.
It is tricky, what Sturges has done: the film is ostensibly `about’ a film. One expects lots of blurring between the two, but he fools us. In the story proper, there is no such blurring. Instead, he blurs the style of the entire enterprise, where it is unclear whether we are IN the movie or watching it. (Look for the incongruous legs in the tree by the riverbank.) This notion of in/out, supplemented by the revolution in acting from Brando, is part of every film made today.
It is not the grand tour, the loud obvious excess of ideas that is `Kane,’ it is simple, single-minded, rather subtle. That he gives us the cue in the plot is something of a matter of genius. Having done this one clever thing that changed how we all think, even govern, he faded from the scene.
Posted in 2003
Ted’s Evaluation — 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.
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