alr

Sullivan's Travels

Screening on Film
Directed by Preston Sturges.
With Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick.
US, 1941, 35mm, black & white, 91 min.
Print source: HFA

One of director Preston Sturges’s many great comedies of the 1940s, this brilliant probe into the psyche of a comedy filmmaker—decades before Woody Allen or Blake Edwards found success with the theme—is his most personal film and a classic road movie. Joel McCrea stars as a successful movie director who, longing to direct a "serious" film, sets out on the road, dressed as a hobo, to see the "real world." Along the way he befriends an actress wannabe and learns a few valuable lessons on human resilience and the power of laughter. A masterful combination of razor-sharp satire and sentimentality, Sullivan’s Travels inspired the recent Coen Brothers feature Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Part of film series

Read more

Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: S–T

Other film series with this film

Read more

Sullivan’s Travels Revisited. A Conversation with Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

The Cold Heart is More Precious than Diamonds. The Cinema of Graham Greene

Read more

João César Monteiro, Poet-Provocateur

Read more

Marathon '77 All-Night Movie Marathon

Read more

Marie Antoinette and Friends, Three Films by Sofia Coppola