Engl. 339 - Sullivan's Travels

It occured to me, about 3/4 of the way through the film, that I had seen Sullivan's Travels before. I had been young at the time - maybe 8 or 9 - and that I had almost forgotten the experience altogether. I remembered Veronica Lake as soon as I saw her, but she (and that hair) are iconic enough already - some might have noticed that she seems to be part of the inspiration for Jessica Rabbit - that she could have been in any of a number of films.

Back to my point: I had been sitting through most of the movie blissfully unaware that it had passed berfore my eyes before. It was funny, but not terribly. I chuckled a few times at the pratfalls, but the swimming pool gag has been used so many times since, I was really only laughing out of respect for the humor it represented, rather than the humor itself.

No, it was when Sullivan went to the chain gang that my brain gave me a little kick and said "hey! you've seen this before!" Suddenly, I remembered - oh! this is where he has to work in the swamp, and he gets put in the hot box for no reason, and then he goes and watches the cartoon in the church! 'Go Down Moses' never seemed so familiar.

What interests me is the fact that, in a movie about comedy, it was the tragic part that stuck with me. I still don't remember my childish thoughts on the comedy, but the hot box incident has been stuck in my brain since I was eight, without a movie title to tie it to. Probably it is because children seem to be so much more sensitive to the unjust - the only times I remember my parents punishing me are the times I had felt I didn't deserve it. As adults, we've been told "life ain't fair" so much that we see Sullivan being punished unfairly, and think "of course." My eight-year-old self was appalled by it.

The humor v. tragedy element might also relate to my age when I first saw it; sure, the humor part was funny, but I had seen funnier things before and I can bet I never got the witty dialogue at the beginning. But kids are morbid. When I first discovered the real version of Grimm's fairytales, I was delighted. It was so much more wonderfully gruesome than the watered-down fairytales I was used to. Likewise, I quickly forgot the humor of Sullivan's travels; I was already happy and carefree, and I didn't need humor to heal my pains. The chain gang, though, was fascinating. Like the pre-travel Sullivan, I was interested in pain and suffering because I had never known it before; I wanted to romanticize it and make it more exciting than it was, while now - although I've hardly suffered at all yet - that part of the movie simply seems miserable and sad.

But I'll still remember it better than the comedy.