Sullivan's Travels directed by Preston Sturges

The film Sullivan's Travels was released in 1941 and was directed by Preston Sturges. This film is a screwball comedy that is a satire of the movie business as well as a journey film of self-discovery and a depiction of the social-order at that time. Sullivan's Travels was a film within a film and followed movie director John Sullivan and his female counterpart, an aspiring actress who has given up on Hollywood, as they travel the country looking for "trouble" in order for Sullivan to make a socially relevant drama. But Sullivan ends up in more trouble than he bargains for.

This film followed the themes of early American film comedy such as, the comic integration of outsiders, exposing divisions in society through exaggeration but also working to heal those divisions, comic disruption of the forces of social order through chaos and disorder and often ends in a marriage. These themes were all generously applied to the film. The theory of battle of the sexes was also included in the film from the two main female leads (his first wife and the aspiring actress) and generally had Sullivan losing these battles. Also the setting of the film also followed the standard comedy outlines for setting. The film began in an elaborate office (a contemporary setting of wealth and excess) and then moves into the country as Sullivan embarks on his journey. The setting also moves between the social classes (rich and poor) by highlighting the hardships that the poverty-stricken lower class had to endure and the naiveness of the rich upper class about these everyday hardships.

Overall I thought this film was a great example of the screwball comedy and the themes utilized within most comedies. I also really enjoyed the movie business satire used throughout the film because that also introduced a level of comic absurdity to the film.