“How does the girl fit in this picture?”

“There’s always a girl in the picture. Haven’t you ever been to the movies?”

Before everything was meta, Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels was meta. It’s the story of director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) who is tired of making goofy movies and wants to make O Brother, Where Art Thou? and “hold a mirror up to life.” Life in 1941 wasn’t all Mickey Mouse cartoons, after all. Sullivan feels that what’s really needed is “A true canvas of the suffering of humanity!” Of course, what does a hotshot Hollywood director know of suffering? Nothing. Everyone in his circle tells him that, and tries to tell him that audiences want to laugh, to escape their suffering.

So in his movie, Sturges does both.

The first act features a zany chase, with Sullivan in a kid’s homemade go-kart as they try to escape his entourage in a motorhome. People are bouncing off the walls, getting covered in food, popping through the roof, and a lady shows a lot of leg. It’s practically a cartoon. He eventually ends up in a boardinghouse run by an old lady who wants to seduce him, and ultimately ends up right back where he started in Hollywood. Undeterred, he goes back out into the world dressed as bum straight out of central casting.

Then he meets The Girl. Because there’s always a girl in the picture.

The Girl (Veronica Lake) doesn’t have any other name. Again, meta. Sullivan’s Travels is a movie within a movie, but none of the characters are in on it. We aren’t really supposed to notice either. The Girl, though younger, is more worldly wise than Sullivan. She moved to Hollywood to become a star, and now that she’s run out of money, is heading home. Lake, of course, is drop-dead gorgeous and delivers her lines with acerbic wit. Immediately taken with her and without giving away his act, Sullivan tries to convince her to stay until his ruse has ended. 

It backfires and they end up getting arrested for stealing his own luxury sedan. 

Once the cat is out of the bag, The Girl insists on going with him. This time, without his own press crew and doctor, to give Sullivan an authentic taste of life in the real world. The scenes play out in montage (one of several), surprising for such a wordsmith as Sturges, and yet the perfect choice. When Sullivan and The Girl reach their limit and call an end to the experiment, we might think that the movie is over and his arc completed. And we would be wrong.

Sullivan’s Travels is structured as a mirror image of itself. 

I could write an entire essay on how it does this. Suffice to say, the madcap comedy of the first half reverses itself and becomes very dark in the second. Story elements are deliberately called back to, and not in ways so obvious that everyone will catch them on a first viewing. As clever as Sturges was he never felt the need to highlight that at the expense of the audience’s enjoyment. More than that, while he had a message that he wanted to make explicitly clear, he holds off until the very end. 

“There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

I used to be uncomfortable with this movie, wondering if the argument is for art for art’s sake. Now I realize that Sturges is arguing for anything but. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Sullivan’s movie, not the Cohen Brothers’) was the self-indulgent, look how edgy and artsy and wise I am, art piece Sturges was advocating against. Sullivan’s Travels is art, not for its own sake, but to offer perspective to storytellers and joy to the masses. 

The Lady Eve (1941) is a marvelous romantic comedy, meaning that while watching it one has to sit back in awe that such a movie exists. Hyperbolic? Maybe. But here we’re delving into the realm of fantasy and I’ll carry a bit of that spirit into my review. 

Why isn’t this movie talked about more?

Henry Fonda plays Charles Pike, the raw-boned and slightly gawky heir to brewery fortune. Thing is, he hates beer and loves snakes. In fact, he’s been in South America researching them along with his bodyguard Muggsy (William Demarist). Why does Charles need a keeper? Because this isn’t the stone-cold Fonda we know from the westerns, but a character who is more than a little naive. Muggsy, while worldly-wise, unfortunately isn’t the sort of person anyone can take seriously and is always ignored. He’s a glib, gruff, Cassandra.

Speaking of women…

Among Charles’ fellow passengers on the ocean liner is Jean (Barbara Stanwyck), her father Harry (Charles Coburn), and their butler/spy Gerald (Melville Cooper). They’re con artists, and Charles is an easy mark. They know it. Muggsy knows it. Charles hasn’t a clue. The story is largely driven by Jean and early on the story shifts to her perspective as she watches all the pretty girls on the boat attempting to catch the eye of the handsome, young heir. She does this from a distance, using a mirror and narrating the exchanges with wicked humor, revealing to us as much about herself as Charles.

When it’s time to make her move, she doesn’t use a coy trick (that’s for later).

She sticks out her foot and trips him.

And he falls right into her net.

Like Fonda, when we think of Stanwyck we tend to think of someone with a heart that runs more ice water than affection. But she could do tender comedy (see also: Christmas in Connecticut) and here she’s working with material specifically written for her. Jean quickly falls in love in Charles, and he with her, and she has to work double-time to keep him from getting taken at cards. Fortunately, she’s as clever at slight-of-hand as her father and knows all his tricks. All Charles wants, of course, is to be a decent fellow. But eventually he learns the undeniable truth and in a surprising turn cuts Jean to the core.

The thread of desire doubles back from ill-gotten financial gane and romance to revenge.

What I love most about what writer/director Preston Sturges does with this movie is that it doesn’t seem plotted (it is, very carefully). It simply feels like he allows the character’s motivations to move in an upward direction until the movie’s runtime and dramatic needs call for a sudden drop. Then all he needs to do is reunite the lovers in the most difficult, yet entertaining way, possible. And he wasn’t afraid of using physical comedy to color his sharp dialog and familiar story.

Charles falls over a couch, ends up with dinner in his lap, and a tray of drinks on his head.

But before all that, Jean and Harry run into another grifter, Alfred (Eric Blore), who just happens to be toying with the Pikes. In order to exact her revenge, Jean poses as Alfred's British niece, Lady Eve. All it takes to convince Charlie she’s someone else is a bad accent, a story about a coachman named Harry and an illegitimate daughter who looks just like her sister. Muggsy is pretty sure it's the "same dame." Charles falls for it hook, line, and applecore. Jean plots to marry him as Eve and then break his heart just as he broke hers.

Hilarity ensues, but I won’t spoil any more. 

As Roger Ebert notes, the brilliance of the movie is that it all seems so effortless. But as we’ve recently seen with dreck like Anyone But You, crafting a truly clever romantic comedy must be a labor, even if it is of love. And Sturges didn’t lift from Shakespeare but did something so original even The Bard might have sat back in awe and a smile on his face.

I’ve always had a difficult relationship with George Stevens’ film adaptation of Shane. I remember when I first read the novel as a kid and going to my mom to tell her, “I think I’ve found a treasure.” From that moment on, I’ve never sat with my back to the door, I’ve been more attentive, and thought about violence from a mature perspective. It’s a thoughtful novel, with symbolism and nuance I could appreciate then, and discover more on subsequent readings.

Pretty good for a book you get through in about in two hours.

The Shane story is arguably the greatest distillation of the myth of the American west. We have a man with no name (Shane is just what he tells them to call him), an outsider who sacrifices himself for the community of which he can never be part. Westerns, in their truest form, are about groups of individuals joining together to carve out a society. But sometimes they need help from a man like Shane.

See also: The Searchers

Westerns as a genre borrow from courtly romances of knights in shining armor and samurai films, but this story is purely American made. Shane is perfection. As Roger Ebert notes, if it was just a story of a lonesome gunslinger the movie would seem dated. There’s the undercurrent of remorse Shane carries, the attraction he has for Marion and the peaceful life she represents, and the code of honor he follows, which are all apparent on the screen. That said, the novel is so much richer, and some of the film's changes so inexplicable, some of the key moments so shortchanged... Well, I think the movie could've been even better.

Normally I can separate the book from the film, and the film is magnificent. 

Yet, for example, the stump chopping scene in the book is symbolic. In the movie, it feels more like a checkbox. Alan Ladd's buckskin costume is ridiculous (though I understand it's supposed to make him more other). In the book Shane wears dark colors, less a mountain man and more genteel man of culture. Finally, it's a very talky movie that sometimes interrupts the action for a conversation at the worst time.

There's also no denying that the kid who plays Joey is one of the most annoying child actors in film history.

Nevertheless, for all its faults, it's still one of the greatest western movies of all time. The cinematography is stunning. Alan Ladd and Van Heflin put in understated performances that hit just right. There’s life and vitality to these characters, and every supporting character, and the way they’re portrayed. We see people worth thinking about, so you can feel that everyone involved in the production has lived some life. While there's too much talking, what is said is usually worth hearing. There’s a lot of talk today about underwritten characters. They don’t say much because the screenwriters have nothing to say. When they do talk, too often it’s an untrue message. 

In Shane, we receive numerous affirmations of what we always felt was good and true.

If you've never seen Shane, especially if you've only seen it referenced in movies like Logan, you really owe it to yourself to see what it's all about. And then read the novel.