O Preston Where Art Thou? - Discussing Preston Sturges and the Coen Brothers Movies

The great comedic screenwriter and eventual director, Preston Sturges, created some of the funniest and socially conscious films of the 1940's. Whether or not Sturges' films were deliberately aware and intending to address such issues as the Depression, poverty, and class politics is debatable, but what is not debatable is the fact that Sturges possessed a unique gift for writing characters and stories that are interesting, funny, and endearing.

Along the same vein in more recent times are writer and director Joel and Ethan Coen, better known as the Coen Brothers. I see them as carrying the torch for this sub-genre that I am so fond of, sort of a serio-comedy mishmash of films. Both Joel and Ethan share equally the process of making their films in that they both write, direct, produce and edit their films. However, one will usually write the film and the other will direct. To this end, they accomplish what Sturges' did essentially by himself in the 1940's. The Coen Brothers have tackled virtually every film genre in their prolific career, from the gangster film-noir Miller's Crossing to the character-driven Big Lebowski .

Two movies that I will focus on are Sturges' Sullivan's Travels and the Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou? Joel McCrea's character in Travels is a film director who has to decide between making a serious and a comedic film. One of the films that his producers want him to make is titled O Brother, Where Art Thou? Besides the inside joke of the referential film title, there are several thematic and stylistic similarities between the two films. (Incidentally, Sturges' film is a reference to a book, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.)