Sullivan’s Travels

(1941) dir. Preston Sturges
viewed: 11/28/08

Well, I’ve broken through on another important director whose films I had up til now never seen.  Preston Sturges is a much loved and hailed writer/director of Hollywood comedies, and it’s crazy that I’ve just now finally seen one.

Sullivan’s Travels is an excellent film, at times somewhat of the class of the rapid-fire dialogue that the Screwball Comedy came known for, but at others a far more physical style of Slapstick, too.  And beyond that, it’s also a film of social criticism, in some ways dramatic and significant like a Frank Capra film.  So, it’s a lot of things in one.  And all of it good.

Starring Joel McCrea and Veronica (What a babe!) Lake, it’s solidly helmed on every front, with top-notch talent and game cast.  McCrea plays the titular Sullivan, a successful Hollywood director of broad comedies who yearns to make a serious film about the downtrodden.  When his studio and his valets suggest that he doesn’t really know what it means to be poor and down-and-out, he decides to hit the road, disguised as a hobo.

His first few efforts are stalled out, bringing him back to Hollywood without any genuine experience, though he does manage to stumble on the gorgeous Lake in a coffee shop, who offers to buy him breakfast, even though she is a failed actress, about to return back East.  They end up striking out together and they eventually get enough of the experience to satisfy Sullivan’s exploration and return to Hollywood.  But, when Sullivan goes out with $1000 in $5 bills, handing them out to the poor and homeless, in an anonymous attempt to repay his education, he’s knocked unconscious and stuck on a train down South, where he winds up arrested and jailed in a tough labor camp.

Well, there is a lot more to the story, but the laughable and ignorant attempt to understand the “real” social issues actually allows Sturges to demonstrate the plights of the poor himself, somewhat reflexively to his character Sullivan.  The whole film has much reflexivity in it, as it begins with an action sequence atop a speeding locomotive that ends with “The End”.  Is this the end of the movie?  No, it’s just a preview screening of Sullivan’s latest film in a screening room with the producers and studio executives.

There is much name-dropping and joking about stars and directors and studios in the rapid-fire dialogue that opens the film.  It makes you wonder if Sturges really went through such a conflict, since he himself was known for comedies, and utilized this narrative and title character to play out a fantasy (and reality) of his to make a film that had a serious social aspect, portraying the plight of the poor.  It also includes a very atypically positive portrayal of African Americans in a scene in a church, though earlier on there is a cook character who seems more typical of the Stepin Fetchit category.

All in all, an excellent movie that succeeds at its many aspects of verbal and physical comedy, as well as a heartfelt drama.

Additionally, the movie that Sullivan wants to make is “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, which was cheekishly usurped by the Coen brothers into one of their most entertaining films.  A nice touch.

Factotum

(2005) dir. Bent Hamer
viewed: 11/24/08

I’m currently reading Charles Bukowski’s Tales of Ordinary Madness, the first of any of his books that I’ve ever read.  I did read an excerpt of one of his books before, but mostly I am familiar with him from his reputation and the film Barfly (1987).  And actually, though I had had this film in my Netflix queue for a couple of years, I was trying to watch it as a double feature with the earlier film.

Factotum is adapted from a Bukowski novel, with some other elements in it.  It’s very much autobiographical as far as I can tell.  The film stars Matt Dillon as Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter ego.  Dillon was once one of the best-looking guys in Hollywood.  Arguably, he still is.  He’s only 40 years old or so when this film is made, and while he tries to slum it, he’s still pretty striking.

This is one of the film’s major flaws.  The film wants to “slum it” along with Bukowski, who was a “poet of the gutter”, a reprobate, sleazy sort, whose life is part of the legend that attracts people to him.  So, when he’s bedding Lili Taylor, who is a good actress, but has this totally highly excersised body, the modern style, she doesn’t physically “read” as of the slum as her character is.  I mean, does she drink and fuck and puke and then hit the gym for a couple hours?

Marisa Tomei also shows up, looking great, too, more fitting to her character.  She’s odd.  She’s not a bad actress and actually shows up in pretty decent films a lot of the time, and she’s quite beautiful.  Still, this is the film’s flaw.  Bukowski was an acne-scarred bum, whose beauty, if he had any, was in his soul.  As much as these characters try to eke out the comedy and the sublimeness of the material, it’s all very much a pretense.

The actors all seem to be game, so I’m guessing it’s the directorial deficiencies that drag the film down.  It’s not abysmal, but it’s not good.  It’s even kind of boring, and despite a few good one-liners and so forth, it’s just not up to snuff.

It seems that Barfly isn’t yet on DVD.  I’ve still got to finish the book I’m reading.  I haven’t passed my assessment of Bukowski as yet.  This film was not particularly helpful.