Film review: Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Another Preston Sturges, this one supposedly his masterpiece.  It's an odd mixture, very meta, because its main character is a director of films with titles like "Ants in Your Plants 1939" and "Hey Hey in the Hayloft!" who wants to direct a serious film about the plight of the poor in modern capitalist society called "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" (which is, of course, where the Coen Brothers got the title), and hatches the idea of going incognito as a hobo with only 10 cents in his pocket for purposes of research.  The meta part is that the actual film alternates between the slapstick of Hey Hey in the Hayloft, much-loved by the character played by Veronica Lake (who pays for Sullivan's ham and eggs in an "owl wagon" (apparently a mobile diner) because she thinks he can't afford it, even though she, as a broke failed actress on her way out of town can't really afford it either, but Sullivan himself now scorns, and the gritty social realism he intended to capture in Brother. 

It is also a romantic comedy (and McCrea and Lake make a very attractive couple with good chemistry) until the point at which, just as Sullivan is ready to give up the hobo lifestyle and is spending one last evening distributing $5 bills on skid row, and gets knocked out by a less-than-grateful tramp who had earlier stolen his shoes when they were sleeping next to each other in a doss house (this is important) and pushed into an empty train car.  That same tramp is cutting across some railtracks when he drops the pile of notes and is frantically trying to gather them up when a train squishes him.  He is then identified as Sullivan himself because the shoes had an emergency ID card sown into the soles in case Sullivan, out on his travels, desperately needed help and had to prove that he was really rich.  Meanwhile the groggy Sullivan gets arrested because he knocks out a railyard guard who pushes him down when he has a splitting concussion, and sentences to seven years in a cruel prison/workcamp.  The prisoners' only relief comes when they are taken to a local (African American) church where a Mickey Mouse (and Pluto) cartoon is shown.  Sullivan is amazed to find his fellow prisoners and himself reduced to hysterics by the cartoon antics and has an epiphany that actually the world's downtrodden don't actually need films like Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? they need comedies (you know, like Miracle of Morgan's Creek). 

But how does he get out of prison, when everyone thinks he's dead?  Watch it and see.