In his film Sullivan’s Travels (1941), director Preston Sturges successfully pulled off a difficult balancing act between the genre conventions of screwball comedy and social realism. Navigating this tightrope required a deft use of mise-en-scène, as exemplified in his lighting choices. Sturges judiciously used this element of cinematic form to seamlessly shift between satirical and serious tones. As the film’s protagonist descends from Hollywood’s ivory tower to the hardscrabble existence of shantytowns and soup kitchens, Sturges’s manipulation of atmospheric lighting similarly orchestrates the emotions of the viewer. The end result is a reflexive comedy that illustrates how a captive audience can be liberated through laughter.
In early 1941, laughter in American movie theaters was a precious commodity. As Hollywood director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) summarizes it, “[N]o work, no food, troublous times . . . war in Europe, strikes over here.” By rejecting his forte in comedy films in order to see the “real America,” Sullivan unknowingly darkens a collective pallor cast by the Great Depression and a world at the brink of war. This premise allowed Sturges to hold a mirror up to that society, and, in doing so, convey the merits of laughter. Like a mirror, his use of bounce-lighting (a technique of reflecting a powerful light source, such as the sun) in outdoor shots served to evenly illuminate a scene and its subjects. In Sullivan’s Travels, (particularly the first half) this lightening of the scenes facilitates a lightening of the spirit—apropos for physical comedy. An effective example of this principle occurs when Sullivan, his butler and valet (Robert Greig and Eric Blore, respectively), and The Girl (Veronica Lake), sequentially pratfall into his pool. The bounce lighting achieved in this sunny exterior scene allows for full exposure of their systematic loss of dignity, thus, honing the lustre of the comedy gold.
Dignity is mined once again along Sullivan’s journey, but this time it’s not for laughs. Disguised as a hobo, the privileged director’s ruse allows him to slip into anonymity, as well as a crowded homeless shelter. In this setting, motivated lighting is used to represent the harsh interior glow emanating from a single source of illumination. This is seen during a medium exterior shot revealing the midnight revival room’s captive congregants, as seen through the facade’s front window. As the night creeps around the solemn silhouette of the soup kitchen, the Noir-like composition moodily lights the lost souls inside (not unlike Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”). The congregation of penniless parishioners appear trapped in a frame within a frame, swaying dead on their feet while awaiting release.
Another weary congregation seeking freedom appears in the third act of Sullivan’s Travels. The main difference in this sequence is the low-key lighting used to enhance the transformation in mood. This instance occurs when Sullivan’s chain gang attends a black church’s screening of Disney’s Playful Pluto (1934). After the projectionist turns off the lights and starts the movie, the higher lighting ratio makes us focus our attention on the brightest available images; the onscreen cartoon and the prisoners bathed in its glow. This is significant in that, up to this point in the third act, Sturges has withheld all intentional humor in both content and form. Therefore, when we observe Pluto’s predicament with the flypaper, we laugh out of relief from this much-needed levity. This same deprivation motivates the inmates to erupt in glorious guffaws. As a result, they achieve a temporary freedom through their emotional release while we receive a renewed understanding of the importance of laughter.
The most poignant moment in Sullivan’s Travels occurs during the cartoon’s communal catharsis, notably when Sullivan asks the hack seated beside him, “Hey, am I laughing?” It’s a question we may be asking ourselves in this day and age of an America addicted to outrage and polarizing Tweets. The turbulent state of current world affairs seems all the more reason for going out to the movies to seek escape and, hopefully, have a laugh. In the case of Preston Sturges’s paean to that simple pleasure of cinema, laughter, Sullivan’s Travels certainly provides it.
Works Cited
Sullivan’s Travels. Directed by Preston Sturges, performances by Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick, Paramount Pictures, 1941.
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