At the start of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels we see two men fighting on a train. The two wrestle each other off and fall into the ocean, followed by a “The End” title card, just two minutes into the film. We cut to a small dark screening room where we discover we’ve been watching a film-within-a-film. As we laugh at the ridiculous bait-and-switch, we know that from that point on, we’re not in the hands of regular comedy filmmaker. A defining feature of the “Golden Age” of Hollywood was the way in which filmmakers subverted the social beliefs of the time, and perhaps the genre most suited to this kind of social transgression is the comedy. The films of iconoclast wartime comedy directors such as Sturges and, also in particular, Ernst Lubitsch, attempted to subvert prevailing ideas involving class and politics through their use of comedy, both in its humour and genre conventions, as well as through the self-reflexive forms of their narratives, telling stories aware of the space between themselves and the audience.
The genre of comedy itself is perfectly suited to Surges and Lubitsch’s kind of socially conscious, self-reflexive subversive films. Historically comedy has served a dual function; it will either break taboos and subvert social norms, opening the door for social transgression, or it will re-assert and re-assure already existing values. Interestingly, this dichotomy can be applied to Hollywood comedy films of the 30s and 40s, which fall into two categories: those that ultimately reinstate and strengthen already widely held beliefs (many of Frank Capra’s film, and even Charlie Chaplin’s, could fall here), and those that ultimately challenge and subvert those beliefs (Lubitsch, Sturges, Hawks on a good day). Comedy can also be used as a form of social leveling, and it’s telling that jokes that involve the most basic of human processes and point towards a common humanity – eating, defecation, birth, death – are the ones that people come to understand the earliest in life, regardless of social status or cultural background. This aspect of social leveling is particularly true of screwball comedy films such as It Happened One Night or Bringing Up Baby, where this is achieved through the relationship between two seemingly incompatible, screwy romantic leads, their move towards a common rapport, and a more settled future together. One could be reminded of Chaplin’s comment that tragedy should be filmed in close up, and comedy in long shot; meaning that comedy is never simply about the individual and their interior world, but rather the world around them, and their relationship to it. The long shot also holds a notion of detachment from the character’s fate, so we see it in a broader perspective and laugh at it. It can then be said that in self-reflexive films that this detachment is taken a step future, the “long shot” extending outside of the frame of the film itself, including itself in its own broader perspective of society.
The genre of comedy itself is perfectly suited to Surges and Lubitsch’s kind of socially conscious, self-reflexive subversive films. Historically comedy has served a dual function; it will either break taboos and subvert social norms, opening the door for social transgression, or it will re-assert and re-assure already existing values. Interestingly, this dichotomy can be applied to Hollywood comedy films of the 30s and 40s, which fall into two categories: those that ultimately reinstate and strengthen already widely held beliefs (many of Frank Capra’s film, and even Charlie Chaplin’s, could fall here), and those that ultimately challenge and subvert those beliefs (Lubitsch, Sturges, Hawks on a good day). Comedy can also be used as a form of social leveling, and it’s telling that jokes that involve the most basic of human processes and point towards a common humanity – eating, defecation, birth, death – are the ones that people come to understand the earliest in life, regardless of social status or cultural background. This aspect of social leveling is particularly true of screwball comedy films such as It Happened One Night or Bringing Up Baby, where this is achieved through the relationship between two seemingly incompatible, screwy romantic leads, their move towards a common rapport, and a more settled future together. One could be reminded of Chaplin’s comment that tragedy should be filmed in close up, and comedy in long shot; meaning that comedy is never simply about the individual and their interior world, but rather the world around them, and their relationship to it. The long shot also holds a notion of detachment from the character’s fate, so we see it in a broader perspective and laugh at it. It can then be said that in self-reflexive films that this detachment is taken a step future, the “long shot” extending outside of the frame of the film itself, including itself in its own broader perspective of society.
Comedy’s sense of anarchy and tendency to break rules is also paramount to making it the perfect fit for self-reflexivity. When a joke makes us laugh it becomes, to use Sigmund Freud’s words, “safe from the reason of protest”, and so comedy, less obliged to follow the rules, has the ability to make lapses in logic and causality as well as unconventional narrative structures with strange shifts in tone and genre seem appropriate. Comedies also have the potential to fulfill the Brechtian ideal of joyful learning. Ironically, the light, enjoyable surface of a comedy gives it a unique freedom to make subversive social comments and, not considered a “serious” genre, avoid scrutiny. From the perspective of a filmmaker wishing to incite at least some level of social critique and social change, the fact that comedies are a popular form and widely seen makes them an ideal platform for social transgression. The audience laughs while they think; thinks while they laugh.
For America and Hollywood, the time that Lubitsch and Sturges’ best films appeared was a period caught between the closing reel of a Depression and the opening reel of a War, the country in turn moving towards more conservative values that would hopefully help win the war, yet not without greater self-loathing. There’s a sense of innocence contained in films made during the depression, which, when they did concern the poverty of the time, did it indirectly. A common narrative involved a member of upper-class society posing as a member of the lower class, for the sake of seeing how the other-half lives. Claudette Colbert is hitchhiking away from her rich father in It Happened One Night (1934), and William Powell’s Godfrey, a Boston aristocrat, lives in a city dump in My Man Godfrey (1936). These characters, and thus the films themselves, only experience poverty from a distance. They never actually struggle. This strange dichotomy between rich and poor can be seen as a reflection of the economic necessity for Hollywood to entertain while not being completely removed from the realities of the viewer. It also reinforces what critic Robin Wood calls “the Rosebud syndrome”, the idea that money corrupts and the poor are happier and wiser. Both Colbert and Powell’s characters learn valuable lessons from the poor and apply them to better the lives of those in the upper class. In It Happened One Night Colbert ultimately teaches her father to encourage her to marry Clark Gable’s struggling newspaper clerk, and in My Man Godfrey Powell’s Godfrey attempts to ground Irene’s (Carole Lombard) insane, screwball family. Only towards the very end of the Depression did Hollywood feel it comfortable to confront poverty more directly through the likes of John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) or the social-problem films of director/producer Mervyn LeRoy. There is an issue here though, of Hollywood’s exploitation of the poor – something crucial in understanding the context of Sullivan’s Travels. Nary two years later, Hollywood went off to war, before the country did. While America’s involvement in World War II doesn’t begin proper until the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, many films had already begun taking strange, propagandists turns. In They Met in Bombay (1941), a romantic comedy involving jewelry thieves suddenly has its male lead joining the British army to fight the Japanese. This patriotism of course, was in full swing by the time America’s involvement in the war begun proper, and even an auteurist, usually subversive director like Alfred Hitchcock became suspect when his Lifeboat (1943) suggested that even a German stranded at sea can’t be trusted.
And so, as the lights flicker on in that screening room at the start of Sullivan’s Travels, we’re introduced to John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), a Hollywood director wanting to make a “socially significant picture”. Though, realising he knows nothing about “trouble”, he decides to pose as a hobo and make his way across the country, hoping to get a real idea of how the poor live. What separates Sullivan’s Travels from the similar narratives in My Man Godfrey or It Happened One Night is the self-reflexive nature that Sturges approaches the problem of making a film about the plight of the poor with. Realising it as a world he’ll never be able to truly understand and represent, he instead uses a world he does understand – filmmaking – and makes a film about making a film about the plight of the poor. The director Sullivan is a very clear stand-in for Sturges himself, as both are successful comedy directors attempting to make a “serious” film for a change, and its likely that Sturges began writing Sullivan’s Travels with the same conviction that Sullivan does with his film. After the screening of the film-within-a-film, Sullivan announces to his two producers that he plans to make a film that will “realise the potentialities of film as the sociological and artistic medium that it is”. Yet while the director admits that he really “[doesn’t] know what trouble is”, his two producers spin stories of the hardship they’ve faced to get where they are. Once Sullivan leaves the room they reveal to each other, and the audience, that they made these stories up. This is a clear criticism of those real-world producers who pretended to understand the poor, only for the sake of exploiting them, getting rich as the poor stay just as poor as before. Sullivan though, aware of his shortcomings and the issues of representation he faces, is let off the hook, and by extension Sturges too acknowledges this, and is also let off.
For America and Hollywood, the time that Lubitsch and Sturges’ best films appeared was a period caught between the closing reel of a Depression and the opening reel of a War, the country in turn moving towards more conservative values that would hopefully help win the war, yet not without greater self-loathing. There’s a sense of innocence contained in films made during the depression, which, when they did concern the poverty of the time, did it indirectly. A common narrative involved a member of upper-class society posing as a member of the lower class, for the sake of seeing how the other-half lives. Claudette Colbert is hitchhiking away from her rich father in It Happened One Night (1934), and William Powell’s Godfrey, a Boston aristocrat, lives in a city dump in My Man Godfrey (1936). These characters, and thus the films themselves, only experience poverty from a distance. They never actually struggle. This strange dichotomy between rich and poor can be seen as a reflection of the economic necessity for Hollywood to entertain while not being completely removed from the realities of the viewer. It also reinforces what critic Robin Wood calls “the Rosebud syndrome”, the idea that money corrupts and the poor are happier and wiser. Both Colbert and Powell’s characters learn valuable lessons from the poor and apply them to better the lives of those in the upper class. In It Happened One Night Colbert ultimately teaches her father to encourage her to marry Clark Gable’s struggling newspaper clerk, and in My Man Godfrey Powell’s Godfrey attempts to ground Irene’s (Carole Lombard) insane, screwball family. Only towards the very end of the Depression did Hollywood feel it comfortable to confront poverty more directly through the likes of John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) or the social-problem films of director/producer Mervyn LeRoy. There is an issue here though, of Hollywood’s exploitation of the poor – something crucial in understanding the context of Sullivan’s Travels. Nary two years later, Hollywood went off to war, before the country did. While America’s involvement in World War II doesn’t begin proper until the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, many films had already begun taking strange, propagandists turns. In They Met in Bombay (1941), a romantic comedy involving jewelry thieves suddenly has its male lead joining the British army to fight the Japanese. This patriotism of course, was in full swing by the time America’s involvement in the war begun proper, and even an auteurist, usually subversive director like Alfred Hitchcock became suspect when his Lifeboat (1943) suggested that even a German stranded at sea can’t be trusted.
And so, as the lights flicker on in that screening room at the start of Sullivan’s Travels, we’re introduced to John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), a Hollywood director wanting to make a “socially significant picture”. Though, realising he knows nothing about “trouble”, he decides to pose as a hobo and make his way across the country, hoping to get a real idea of how the poor live. What separates Sullivan’s Travels from the similar narratives in My Man Godfrey or It Happened One Night is the self-reflexive nature that Sturges approaches the problem of making a film about the plight of the poor with. Realising it as a world he’ll never be able to truly understand and represent, he instead uses a world he does understand – filmmaking – and makes a film about making a film about the plight of the poor. The director Sullivan is a very clear stand-in for Sturges himself, as both are successful comedy directors attempting to make a “serious” film for a change, and its likely that Sturges began writing Sullivan’s Travels with the same conviction that Sullivan does with his film. After the screening of the film-within-a-film, Sullivan announces to his two producers that he plans to make a film that will “realise the potentialities of film as the sociological and artistic medium that it is”. Yet while the director admits that he really “[doesn’t] know what trouble is”, his two producers spin stories of the hardship they’ve faced to get where they are. Once Sullivan leaves the room they reveal to each other, and the audience, that they made these stories up. This is a clear criticism of those real-world producers who pretended to understand the poor, only for the sake of exploiting them, getting rich as the poor stay just as poor as before. Sullivan though, aware of his shortcomings and the issues of representation he faces, is let off the hook, and by extension Sturges too acknowledges this, and is also let off.
What makes Sullivan’s Travels particularly remarkable is how by double-backing on itself, the film pardons itself of it’s own criticism and transcends it, actually managing to make powerful social statements in the end, more powerful than those in films with more conventional narrative structures. The clearest statement is that comedy shouldn’t be used to separate the classes, but rather as a social leveler, exemplified when Sullivan, caught in a southern prison camp after a case of mistaken identify during his titular travels, watches a Mickey Mouse cartoon with his fellow inmates and members of a black church. The whole room explodes with laughter, Sullivan included. The film also points out the injustice of the American system as Sullivan escapes prison without any qualms the moment he’s able to prove he’s a Hollywood director (“They don’t put directors into prisons like this”, he points out). In the film’s final scene, Sullivan realises the mistake in his original conviction, and announces his next film will be a comedy. It’s possible to imagine that this film is actually Sullivan’s Travels itself. Tellingly, an earlier draft of Sturges’ screenplay sees Sullivan stating that his film will open with a dedication “To the memory of those who made us laugh…” This line was removed from the final film but became the actual opening dedication to Sullivan’s Travels. Once again, the real director Sturges and fictional director Sullivan are one and the same.
Remarkably similar in its use of unconventional narrative structure and self-reflexivity to Sullivan’s Travels is Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942). Yet while Sturges’ film deal primarily with issues of justice and class, Lubitsch’s takes on bigger targets, poking fun at the Nazi regime while also, interestingly, subverting fascist ideologies that lay dormant in America too. To Be or Not to Be opens in a very similar manner to Sullivan’s Travels. After a brief sequence involving an actor dressed as Hitler being mistaken for Hitler himself, we see scene inside the Gestapo office, only to have it interrupted by a director yelling “cut”, revealing that we’ve been watching a play within the film. From then on, the film concerns a troupe of Polish actors who, after the invasion of Warsaw by Nazi Germany and the subsequent censoring of their play “Gestapo”, become involved in leading the Polish resistance, and eventually, through imitation and trickery, fool the occupying forces, foil their plans, and escape Poland. Throughout the film, Lubitsch consistently presents “fake” articles (the acting troupe) before the “real” ones (the actual Nazi figures they’re playing). This in tune with the film’s title, which can be read as meaning, aside from its reference to the Shakespeare play the actors put on, “to actually be, or merely appear to be”.
This doubling creates a confusion of reality and appearance, as well as setting up points of comparison between the two groups. Yet, it’s not in the differences but in the similarities that the truly subversive nature of Lubitsch’s film appears. The Nazis, like the Polish actors, are jokesters. The most important line in the film comes when the Gestapo officer “Concentration Camp” Ehrhardt says, in relation to the ham acting of Jack Benny’s character, that “What he did to Shakespeare we do now to Poland”. The line tells us that Lubitsch’s Nazis are not monsters, they’re sophisticated, cultured human beings, able to make comment on the theatre and Shakespeare while enacting unfathomable terror across an entire country (and soon continent), and most importantly, be able to joke about it, aware of what they’re doing. The Nazis are human, and this is the true terror of Lubitsch’s film. One could be reminded of the utterance of Jean Renoir’s own character in his La Règle du jeu (1939); “Every man has his reasons”.
Remarkably similar in its use of unconventional narrative structure and self-reflexivity to Sullivan’s Travels is Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942). Yet while Sturges’ film deal primarily with issues of justice and class, Lubitsch’s takes on bigger targets, poking fun at the Nazi regime while also, interestingly, subverting fascist ideologies that lay dormant in America too. To Be or Not to Be opens in a very similar manner to Sullivan’s Travels. After a brief sequence involving an actor dressed as Hitler being mistaken for Hitler himself, we see scene inside the Gestapo office, only to have it interrupted by a director yelling “cut”, revealing that we’ve been watching a play within the film. From then on, the film concerns a troupe of Polish actors who, after the invasion of Warsaw by Nazi Germany and the subsequent censoring of their play “Gestapo”, become involved in leading the Polish resistance, and eventually, through imitation and trickery, fool the occupying forces, foil their plans, and escape Poland. Throughout the film, Lubitsch consistently presents “fake” articles (the acting troupe) before the “real” ones (the actual Nazi figures they’re playing). This in tune with the film’s title, which can be read as meaning, aside from its reference to the Shakespeare play the actors put on, “to actually be, or merely appear to be”.
This doubling creates a confusion of reality and appearance, as well as setting up points of comparison between the two groups. Yet, it’s not in the differences but in the similarities that the truly subversive nature of Lubitsch’s film appears. The Nazis, like the Polish actors, are jokesters. The most important line in the film comes when the Gestapo officer “Concentration Camp” Ehrhardt says, in relation to the ham acting of Jack Benny’s character, that “What he did to Shakespeare we do now to Poland”. The line tells us that Lubitsch’s Nazis are not monsters, they’re sophisticated, cultured human beings, able to make comment on the theatre and Shakespeare while enacting unfathomable terror across an entire country (and soon continent), and most importantly, be able to joke about it, aware of what they’re doing. The Nazis are human, and this is the true terror of Lubitsch’s film. One could be reminded of the utterance of Jean Renoir’s own character in his La Règle du jeu (1939); “Every man has his reasons”.
This draws an interesting comparison to other wartime comedy films, in particular Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Popular with critics and audiences, Chaplin’s film functions on the way it dehumanises its target, Hitler, by turning him into a cartoon character, spouting faux-German gibberish as he pours water down his pants. It’s not unlike the actual Nazi cartoon characters in Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), starring Donald Duck, and also incredibly popular in its time. It’s worth noting that both To Be or Not to Be and The Great Dictator involve the Third Reich being undone by a hero posing as the villain, yet while in Chaplin’s film this doesn’t occur until the very end, tacked onto the comedy portions, in Lubitch’s it’s implicit from the film’s first scene, and the source of almost all the film’s laughs. So while the Nazis in To Be or Not to Be are silly and buffoonish, they’re no more so than the film’s heroes. Of course, To Be or Not to Be still proposes that the Nazis must be stopped. However, it also proposes that they must be understood as human beings, as understanding them is the only way to defeat them. This is demonstrated quite literally in how the acting troupe defeat the Nazis by impersonating them and fooling their troops. The heroes win not through military strength or any special abilities, but through, well, comedy. To Be or Not to Be is one of the most anti-fascist films of them all. It attacks not only Nazi ideologies, but also the ideologies of dehumanisation in America’s own system of propaganda and conservatism. To Be or Not to Be came under heavy fire from its contemporary critics, most notably Bosley Crowther, who wrote for the New York Times that “to say [the film] is callous and macabre is understating the case.” Interestingly though, Crowther call the opening short at To Be or Not to Be’s premiere, the clear propaganda film Churchill’s Island (1941), a film that “has balance and feeling. There is no question about it.” Not only does he miss the point of Lubitsch’s film, he goes on to demonstrate the very prevailing ideology that Lubitsch was attempting to subvert.
Most importantly, Lubitsch and Sturges’ use of self-reflexive narrative form and comedy don’t make light of the issues they present, nor make them any more palatable. They actually make them more powerful and potent, as the audience isn’t let off the hook so easily. Lubitsch himself noted, in an open letter written in response to To Be or Not to Be’s negative response, that he wanted to make a picture “with no attempt to relieve anybody from anything at any time”. As these films draw attention to themselves and challenge the conventional beliefs of their genres, and by extension the values of America and Hollywood tied to those conventions, so too does the audience.
Bibliography
Freud, S. (1960). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. London: Routledge.
Henderson, B. (1986). Five screenplays by Preston Sturges. Berkely,
CA: University of California Press.
Lubitsch, E (2013). Lubitsch answers his critics. In To be or not to be [Blu-Ray]. New York, NY: The Criterion Collection.
Rowe, K. (1995). Comedy, melodrama and gender: Theorizing the genres of laughter.
In K. B. Karnick & H. Jenkins (Eds.), Classical Hollywood comedy (pp. 39-
59). New York, NY: Routledge.
Wood, R. (2003). Ideology, genre, auteur. In B. K. Grant (Ed.), Film genre reader III
(pp. 60-74). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Originally written in May and June 2015, with revision in April 2016.
Most importantly, Lubitsch and Sturges’ use of self-reflexive narrative form and comedy don’t make light of the issues they present, nor make them any more palatable. They actually make them more powerful and potent, as the audience isn’t let off the hook so easily. Lubitsch himself noted, in an open letter written in response to To Be or Not to Be’s negative response, that he wanted to make a picture “with no attempt to relieve anybody from anything at any time”. As these films draw attention to themselves and challenge the conventional beliefs of their genres, and by extension the values of America and Hollywood tied to those conventions, so too does the audience.
Bibliography
Freud, S. (1960). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. London: Routledge.
Henderson, B. (1986). Five screenplays by Preston Sturges. Berkely,
CA: University of California Press.
Lubitsch, E (2013). Lubitsch answers his critics. In To be or not to be [Blu-Ray]. New York, NY: The Criterion Collection.
Rowe, K. (1995). Comedy, melodrama and gender: Theorizing the genres of laughter.
In K. B. Karnick & H. Jenkins (Eds.), Classical Hollywood comedy (pp. 39-
59). New York, NY: Routledge.
Wood, R. (2003). Ideology, genre, auteur. In B. K. Grant (Ed.), Film genre reader III
(pp. 60-74). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Originally written in May and June 2015, with revision in April 2016.
