O Brother, Where Are Thou??

Don't panic. I'm not suddenly veering off on a tangent and embarking on a spontaneous Coen Brothers season, although yes, they did make a film called O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000. It's a very good film, and one that we screened exactly two years ago. 

The Coen Brothers were paying homage to the film that I am about to screen.

Most of you probably know by now that our current film series (Depression. Comedy.) celebrates films made during the very difficult years of the Great Depression.

At a time when people had no hope and no security, film-makers made the conscious decision to be a positive force in society. They didn't hit people over the head with heavy-handed parables of social ills and injustice (they didn't have to - everyone was living through it; they knew exactly how bad everything was). People went to the movies to feel better.

But don't just take my word for that.

Sullivan's Travels is a comic film-maker's apologia.

It tells the story of John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) a (fictional) film-maker whose films have enjoyed tremendous success, but who is now feeling guilty about making such light-hearted and trivial films at a time when so many in the country are suffering and struggling.

Much to his studio's dismay, he has decided to film a novel called O Brother, Where Are Thou? a heavy-handed tome about real lives in Depression-era America (nothing to do with The Grapes of Wrath. I don't know what made you say that).

When his producers convince him that he doesn't know anything about hardship and suffering in the real world, he decides to set out on an incognito journey of discovery, hoping to gain the experience he thinks he needs.

He gets an education all right, although not quite the one he was expecting...

Sullivan's Travels was written and directed by Preston Sturges, who by 1941 had established himself as one of Hollywood's preeminent comic film-makers. This film is his graduate thesis.

By 1941, the Depression had been dragging on for a decade and although things were not as bad as they were in the early 30s, millions of people were still out of work and homeless. The war in Europe had already started, although the US had not yet jumped in (Sullivan's Travels received its press screening on the 4th of December; three days before the Pearl Harbor attack). 

Wave after wave of refugees had been arriving in the US (and in Hollywood specifically) with horror stories about the situation in Europe and a few loud voices in the media were insisting that this was the wrong time for comedy and escapism.

Sturges' message (which was shared by the general public, if box office receipts were any indication) was that this was exactly the time for comedy. 

At a time of suffering and hardship, when so many people had nothing, escapism was not a dirty word. Escapism was a lifeline; it was the way millions of people held on to their humanity at a time when everything else was being taken away from them.

Preston Sturges understood this. And John L. Sullivan learns it over the course of the film.

We will be screening Sullivan's Travels at 7.30 on Thursday, the 7th of March at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.