SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (1941)

Neha says

Writer/director Preston Sturges was truly the master of dialogue comedies and Sullivan’s Travels is yet another case in point. Refined writing with clever one-liners as memorable as the movie; with dramatic irony that wonderfully carries characters and themes forward; with biting Hollywood satire and depression era commentary that creates a unique language of communication for the film and Sturges own uncanny, intuitive strength of using the rights words to communicate a thought, emotion, mood or motivation penetrates straight out of the tube and hits you where it matters most. Never missing a beat to mock his hero, maybe even an alter ego of Sturges himself, Hollywood movie writer/director Sullivan (Joel McCrea) decides to venture away from light hearted movie making to make serious cinema in the form of a script titled “O Brother, Where Art Thou” (Yes the Coen Brothers movie title got its inspiration right here!!!) Sullivan sets off for a tramp adventure, hoping real world troubles would give him that first hand knowledge to enrich his cinema. I like how Sturges adopts and abandons genre conventions at will. Never really fitting in the box of a true blue comedy, Sturges brings romance, drama, tragedy, road movie and prison film dynamics into play that feed off each other with aplomb while making the graph of his story dramatically unpredictable and intriguing. Yet he has a conventional regard for characters and set-up and understands the piercing impact of tone-spending the first half to amuse and tickle our senses with a romance sub-plot that has more fireworks between its leads, a charming McCrea and a luminous Victoria Lake in their first meeting alone than most movies can accomplish between its stars during an entire running time. Sullivan’s desperate antics to find “trouble”, his attempts at hoodwinking the hired brigade keeping tabs on him or his slice of slum life with Lake that plays out like a silent era movie handsomely complements the director’s screwball comic overtones. But then in the second half Sturges unexpectedly tightens the screws, adopts a darker, more sinister and realistic tone as Sullivan finds himself smack-bang and alone at the centre of inhumane, inescapable trouble that leads up to a climax that beautifully makes a statement for both the canvas of cinema and life, The message of the film, like Sullivan’s realizations, is both poignant and unassuming as it tells us with an entertaining and crisp 90 minutes how movies are remedies and the only source of pure escapism for the tragedies and stresses of life. One wordless moment that sums it all up with a pinching honesty has Sullivan along with other inmates at a chapel, laughing out loud in gay abandon at the innocuous, brainlessness of a cartoon, Well-acted, superbly written and skillfully directed-Preston Sturges puts his money where his mouth is with a film that echoes his belief- “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

Ira says

Right, so it isn’t as dense as and hasn’t the scope and depth of self-discovery that Jonathan Swift’s classic (a requisite feature for anyone who’s ever studies English Literature beyond high school) Gulliver’s Travels has, and perhaps just as well, because this one more than anything is a good old fashioned feel good film. Preston Sturges’ satire, Sullivan’s Travels, a story about a director named Sullivan (Joel McCrea) who wants to make socially relevant cinema but finds out comedies maybe arts finest purpose after all, is a lovely film. We’ve seen movies about movies; movie making and showbiz in Hollywood for years and many of these have had satirical, political, social and romantic undertones. Some of these, in fact, we’ve looked at right here in the AFI project! (Remember YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, The Marx Brother’s A NIGHT AT THE OPERA and Chaplin’s, MODERN TIMES?) But Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels is an uncommon and memorable one thanks to some fine storytelling and a well etched, well written story.

The film opens with a dedication to comediennes the world over and slips effortlessly into a quickly edited, well-executed action sequence between two men atop a moving train. The cuts become faster, the shots closer till the men fall off in a frantic tussle and the screen says “The End”. The above happens on a projector screen and illustrate Sullivan’s latest efforts at movie making; a shift away from lighter fare, a move to make meaningful cinema about the common mans crisis that he tries desperately to sell to his colleagues and employers. No luck. According to them, Sullivan, who went to private boarding schools and college was not one to go around talking of human misery. And so determined, brilliant filmmaker Joe Sullivan sets out on a hilarious, poignant and life altering mission to find “trouble” and learn to experience what it is.

Intelligently directed with a confident, strong hand by Sturges with a delightful screenplay that blends irony, with just the right splashes of farce, humor, wit, romance and moments of real pathos and tragedy, this one tugs at your heart strings and still leaves you with an uplifting feeling that’s hard to resist or forget. Sturges avoids sentiment and sassiness, though the film has elements of both and characters with each, but things never get mushy, heavy handed or didactic. Instead we get clever wit and humor in abundance. McCrea’s understated, dry performance carries this one. He has an air of dignified charm and inherent goodness about him whether dressed in a suit, bathrobe, or tattered clothing, scrambling onto a moving train, caught with chains on his feet or falling into a swimming pool. I loved the chemistry and relationship between the vibrant Lake & McCrea, the montage of the two as homeless wanderers, the significance and symbolism of feet in the film, and a wonderful moment of surprise when a man who steals money from Sullivan, driven by greed and poverty meets an unexpected, tragic fate. As Sullivan wanders, loses and later finds his way, the film takes on a slightly graver tone, but Sturges balances the serio-comic with ease and doesn’t lose control of his storytelling. The dark and light, the high and low, the rich and poor, black and white, love and divorce, life and death and all those wonderful opposing pairs of contradictions in the narrative that really reflect the very fabric of human existence find a eureka moment in a scene in a church where criminals in chains, men of god, common folk, men, women, strangers and children find something common to laugh at; Disney’s MICKEY MOUSE. “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all people have? It isn’t much but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan”. Amen sir, to that.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)

Neha says

The title doesn’t quite prepare you for the loving and atmospheric homage director George Lucas pays to a bygone 60’s era and yet in retrospect there couldn’t have been a more enigmatic title to capture the dying vestiges of innocence, youth, spirit, rebellion and 60’s American culture. In many ways it’s semi-autobiographical as Lucas tries to recreate the mood, look and feel of a time that carved his own childhood and yes in many ways for someone like me who hasn’t been a part of that era, American Graffiti (1973) and the director’s personal insight immortalizes the period so skillfully and soulfully. It almost feels like a time travel device to the 60’s!!! Vintage cars dominate the screen in fine glory (Boys, it’s your Wonderland!!!). An American drive-in diner subliminally becomes a witness to the events of this high school story with interwoven stories of a bunch of young individuals and their difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood. A radio-jockey, The Wolfman, his commentary, his music and his omnipresence adds yet another intriguing and revealing dimension that captures man’s relationship with the radio at the time. Drag cruising and the intimacy of a small town existence captured primarily through the many conversations characters have, rolling down their windows and talking across cars at a traffic light or while driving becomes a wonderful counterpoint to their own internal conflict of moving away from the familiar and embracing the real world that’s full of the unfamiliar. The icing really is the foot-tapping, nostalgic soundtrack full of pop hits that occur almost continuously creating an energy, mood and character that’s so divine and so very 60’s. A fine ensemble cast including Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Charlie Martin Smith, McKenzie Phillips and a very young Harrison Ford got their first break in this low budget movie and as far as fans of the director are concerned- If you want an insight into the man and the road that led to his follow-up blockbuster Star Wars then American Graffiti must be on your to-view list if you haven’t seen it already. Romance, Racing and Rock n’ Roll- Buckle up for a sublime Blast from the Past!!!

Ira says

“Same ol Curt. All the time we were going together, you never knew what you were doing! (Pause) I gotta go”
“Where you going?”
“Nowhere”
“Mind if I come along?”

Straight out of an Archie comic book? Well, almost. Coming of age meets high school pains and pangs, in George Lucas’s American Graffiti, as a pair of friends tries to figure out where they want their lives to go, the night before they are scheduled to go off ‘east’ to college. The most amazing discovery for me in this one, which really is all about pubescent eye openers, experimentation, and lesson learning, is that George Lucas, the visionary creator-director of the Star Wars empire and one of Hollywood’s most successful effects wizards, (Industrial Light and Magic anyone?) writers and filmmakers to date, once made a slice of life of American high school life, circa the 1960’s. Set in the age of free love and rock and roll, he gives us a simple, accessible, relatable tale about all those angst’s, tensions and desires that we’ve all felt and struggled with. Nostalgic strains of that first love, punch, kiss, all those ‘first times’, complete with a “Freshman Hop” (prom/annual dance/social, whatever the equivalent is across schools and cultures) and a flurry of stock teen school characters you know actually do exist in every group of young teens everywhere!The second most amazing thing here is that the wonderful, underrated Richard Dreyfuss, 26 years old when he starred as our hero Curt in this one, pulls off a seventeen year with an effortless, infectious and totally endearing charm. And the third most amazing thing is that that lanky guy who plays Steve, the one dating Curt’s sister Laurie (Cindy Williams), is the man who made A Beautiful Mind and Frost/Nixon. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s Ron Howard!

Shook you up a bit yet? Right, lets get back to Lucas then. There’s no special effects, no fancy tricks, no science fiction just a friendly neighborhood drive in and one night of some serious realizations and decision making to unfold in this character driven tale which Lucas controls masterfully without fuss or frills. I love how he uses music, (the film has a fantastic sound score of some of Rock and Roll’s finest tracks) and cars in the film as both storytelling tools and as symbols of energy, laughter, sadness, fear and ownership, feelings that are synonymous with youth and imminent change. There’s lots of deceptively aimless driving around, lazily shot driving sequences with great looking vintage cars, sequences where the world of these teenagers comes alive, a world of cruising, teasing, making out, and making up, where finding strangers to ride with and falling prey to dangers is part and parcel of these characters’ scope of excitement and adventure. There are couples with problems, out of towners, bullies, and nerds, and girls of different shapes, aspects and ages to complement the boys. Where the high school sweethearts Steve and Laurie are having some issues, high school stud Milner (an adequately good looking, cool Paul Le Mat) finds himself stuck with a fourteen year old kid sister and group nerd Toad (the perfectly cast Charles Martin Smith) ends up having the most fun with an exotic looking blonde, and a night of unexpected mishaps.

Lucas’s tone is consistent, his characters real and living and his landscape just the right blend of colorful and dark. As tension builds in the narrative, once that climactic scene of graffiti spraying and trickery is complete, the mood becomes grimmer, the lighting dimmer, and frames are shrouded with foliage, dark roads, old garages, and murkier waters in the characters’ individual emotional journeys. There’s a road race and a hint of tragedy in the air, but life is just starting and these guys are too young for things to get so real, no matter what else blows up in their faces. A surprising, sweet, classic high school gem courtesy some of Hollywood’s best, it’s a keeper.