"Sullivan's Travels" is one of the strangest pictures that has come out of Hollywood in a long time; and also one of the best. Whatever it is is due entirely to Preston Sturges, because he both wrote and directed it, and because the ideas and the moods, rather than the plot, are the body of the film. Though Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake dos serve a good bit of credit for some fine acting, you cannot help feeling in a picture like this that they are merely interpreting somebody else's ideas. And those ideas are undoubtedly Mr. Sturges's.

Alfred Hitchcock once said that it would be an interesting experiment to make a Keystone Cop sequence--the regular stuff, with the cops running around batting one another and everyone else on the head; and then suddenly, without any warning, to shift the mood--have one of the cops thrown out on the street, blood pouring from his face, his body writhing in agony. Hitchcock was interested in seeing what the audience's reaction would be. Though Preston Sturges undoubtedly had different motives, it is precisely this sort of thing that he does in "Sullivan's Travels." If at times the sudden shift of mood and scene becomes a little confusing and incongruous, it is because Mr. Sturges has set for himself too difficult a task; but certainly he has handled it as well as anybody could.

The picture starts in Hollywood, where Joel McCrea is Sullivan, a Hollywood director who decides he hasn't seen anything of suffering and hardship, and therefore sets off as a tramp to see Life. Of course he runs into Veronica Lake and the two of them proceed out together on Sullivan's travels. At first it is pure comedy, and excellent comedy at that. But then, in a long, silent sequence, Mr. Sturges inserts a serious documentary account of the hobo's life. This in itself is beautifully done, but the sudden shift leaves the audience wondering for a short time just what is going on. Then comes more comedy, until again there is a sudden change of scene and mood, and the action is in a chain-gang prison camp, thoroughly brutal and realistic, without the slightest trace of comedy. Then back to the light note, a note on which the film ends. There are also inserted in the picture, with no bearing on the plot, a Negro revival meeting and a melodramatic struggle on top of a speding freight train.

Though you may say the picture is a bit disjointed, no one can deny that it shows Mr. Sturges's abilities as a director to be far more than mere talent; genius would be a better word.