Scheduled across five successive Monday mornings, our latest Film Studies series will feature 25 minute introductions by film historian and curator Donald Brackett, followed by the screenings and a brief audience talkback.
Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
A satire on the film industry, it follows a famous and successful movie director, John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), convinced he won’t be able to film his ambitious masterpiece until he has suffered, dons a hobo disguise and sets off on a journey, aiming to “know trouble” first-hand. When all he finds is a train ride back to Hollywood and a beautiful blonde companion (Veronica Lake), he redoubles his efforts, managing to land himself in more trouble than he bargained for.
All films will screen again, without the talk.
Donald Brackett, a Vancouver-based film critic and historian who writes about the art and craft of movies and their place in our pop culture, is the author of many articles and essays on the subject, as well as being the guest-curator of several film programs for Cinematheque. He is the author of several related books, the most recent being Double Solitaire: The Films of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, which explored their collaborative impact on the golden age of Hollywood.
10:30 am
11:00 am
Donald Brackett
Preston Sturges
Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake
USA
1941
English
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Preston Sturges
Cinematography
John F. Seitz
Editor
Stuart Gilmore
Original Music
Charles Bradshaw, Leo Shuken
Art Director
Hans Dreier, Earl Hedrick
Also in This Series
What Price Hollywood?
In our latest Film Studies series film critic and historian Donald Brackett gives us a whistle stop studio tour of movies about movies, taking us from the Golden Age to the C21st, beginning with George Cukor's seminal 1932 film, What Price Hollywood.
Sullivan's Travels
Continuing his exploration of Hollywood's fascination with itself, Donald Brackett introduces one of the great satires of the Golden Age, Sullivan's Travels. Earnest filmmaker Joel McCrea disguises himself as a hobo to get to know the real America...
The Bad and the Beautiful
Film scholar Donald Brackett introduces Vincente Minnelli's 1952 Hollywood melodrama--a portrait of a driven producer, Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) that went on to win five Academy Awards.
The Day of the Locust
Midnight Cowboy director John Schlesinger turned his gaze on Hollywood in this rich adaptation of Nathanael West's famous satirical novel, in the latest screening in our Film Studies series, Hollywood Through the Looking Glass.
Babylon
Damien Chazelle's second Hollywood on Hollywood movie (after La La Land) follows Margot Robbie as a starlet on the make at the tail end of the silent film era in the late 1920s, and a couple of friends she makes along the way.