Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Both Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Sullivan’s Travels employ an exhilarating opening. Mr. Deeds… begins with a truck flying down a road and crashing off the bridge. Then a montage of newspapers and people telling who died in the car accident occurs. Likewise, Sullivan’s Travels opens with a gunfight aboard a fast moving train, although it is actually on film with Sullivan analyzing a film, creating a self-reflexive film.

In Sullivan’s Travels, Sullivan and others glamorize the life of the poor through his wanting to make a film about that lifestyle. However, when he truly experiences the mundane activities that the poor have to deal with such as sleeping with the multitudes in a shelter, being stolen from, and digging through the trash for food, Sullivan realizes that being poor is not such a charming life. Sullivan fully assimilates into the poor lifestyle when he is at the church and finally begins to laugh at the Mickey Mouse cartoon shown, like the others. This is also Preston Sturges’s way of making the film a satire of Hollywood, for the film seems to say that laughter alleviates everything, even social standing, in the way the film concludes and how it simplifies poverty.

As Sullivan’s Travels seems to celebrate cynicism, Mr. Deeds… is straight forward. Deeds romances his woman, unlike Sullivan. Even though everything bad happens to Deeds, he still ends up on top with the woman. The film also balances the character of Deeds between masculine and feminine to make him more endearing, such as singing in the rain and playing the tuba versus fighting and refusing help while dressing. Viewers tend to sympathize more with Deeds than Sullivan because Deeds was forced into his new existence; whereas, Sullivan chose it.