Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 4 December 1941 by Paramount Pictures Inc. New York opening at the Paramount: 28 January 1942. Sydney opening at the Prince Edward: 31 July 1942 (ran 3 weeks). 8,251 feet. 91 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A successful Hollywood film director who has made nothing but lightweight films such as "So Long, Sarong", suddenly gets the notion that he should make a searing drama about human suffering.COMMENT: Most critics feel that the message of this comedy is simply that expressed by the hero at the fade-out, namely that making people laugh is more important than dishing out a "message". So far as it goes, that's true. Notice, for instance, how the guy twisting out a sermon to all the captive bums in the mission house is so cleverly lampooned as the camera devastatingly tracks back from his harangue to the rows and rows of poor souls forced to listen to him.But the film is more than an artist-be-content-with-thy-lot. It's an attack on poverty itself and the sort of society in which it breeds. It's significant that, aside from the stars McCrea and Lake, the only actor who gets a really close, dialogue close-up in the movie is Robert Grieg: "You see, sir, rich people and theorists — who are usually rich people — think of poverty in the negative: as the lack of riches; just as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn't, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera; with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms. It is to be stayed away from, even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned!" What few critics have noticed is that the movie is also an attack on America's class-rigid society. "I'm a motion picture director," exclaims Sullivan, on finding himself in a chain gang. "They don't sentence motion picture directors to six years in prison for a little altercation with a yard boss." — "They don't?" questions the little trusty (Jimmy Conlin) most dubiously. And that so-called "little altercation" put the yard boss in hospital with a cracked skull and lacerated face. A "vicious assault", as the judge properly describes it. Yet Sullivan is freed with remarkable celerity as soon as his claim is verified. Someone as important in society as a motion picture director is above the law. Another example occurs earlier on in the movie when McCrea, pretending to be an ordinary member of the public, is rudely rebuffed by a railroad information clerk. However, when his valet, Eric Blore, putting on his smarmiest accent, announces that "A few of us down at the club were having a little bet...", the information is readily forthcoming. The rich man's foibles are instantly catered for.

martin-m-a "John L. Sullivan: There's always a girl in the picture. What's the matter, do not you go to the movies?"Sullivan lets us accompany him on his travels and unknowingly modifies his way of thinking as well as that of the spectator.Preston Sturges plays very ingeniously with a mechanism that in the post-modernity ended up being considered abused and basic. Self-referential has an innate condition, it removes responsibility. "Who is going to mock my movie if I do it myself?"Between Billy Wilder and Frank Capra there's Preston Sturges.Comedies tend to earn seriousness as they approach the end, in this film, seriousness does not just happen to win sentimentality in order to close the story. The emotional end of the film does not do more than give more value to comedies. A narrative structure intact in a movie against the pretentious viewer.

De_Sam From a sociological standpoint it certainly loses in power and sharp dissection of North America's problems -which certainly had grown since 1932, to 'I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang'. Given, Warner Bros. has always been the studio of the 'working man' and does have more authority on the subject.Paramount seems to understand their precarious position to speak about poverty and what was in fact 'legal slavery' in the chain gang system, as the whole film could be read as a argumentation for the continued production of comedies while the whole world burned: "Laughing should not be underestimated, for some people it is all they have". They certainly were not alone in this disposition; Goebbels also made sure comedies kept being made in Nazi Germany to reassure the German public all was well with the Third Reich and the war. Note that I am not trying to compare Paramount to the Nazi media policy, just naming the best example that this argument was used in many countries at the time.The film still shows the major influence religion had on any kind of narrative form, as good deeds are highly rewarded (the charitable girl played by Veronica Lake, the shop owner who gives them free doughnuts and coffee) and those who do evil are severely, and immediately, punished ( the greedy homeless person who robs Sullivan ). Plus African Americans get -what must be rare at that time in the united States, a positive representation, yet only because they are religious; God apparently solved the racial issues (weird how they still seem to exist today, wonder when they came back?).So in all, Paramount could not help those unfortunate victims who suffered the indirect effects of the war, they could at least still make them laugh.

dougdoepke The movie's an audacious comedy-drama. The comedy shows up in a number of slapstick sketches like the run-away trailer coach, plus snappy dialog. However, director Sturges took a real chance by shifting gears into dark melodrama of the prison farm. On the whole, it works without too many seams showing. Frankly, the Veronica Lake role appears unnecessary. But her star was rising and was no doubt a big marquee plus. At the same time, seeing McCrea in this cosmopolitan role takes some getting used to if you're used to his laconic westerns. Still, he does well enough. And whose burst of inspiration was the Black minister and congregation, plus the poignant gospel number, Go Down Moses. Catch the hymn's refrain about "letting my people go". In the movie's context, that suggests the Blacks are imprisoned as much as the convicts, even if within a different kind of prison. Still, I'm not sure I agree with the movie's overall message. Of course, comedy and laughter are especially important to the aggrieved and downtrodden. Still, social message films can provide hope and inspiration for those who actually need to change onerous conditions. Trouble is that director Sullivan renounces protest films in favor of comedy, and that strikes me as a retreat into easy commercialism. However, that probably suited movie industry's interests in not rocking the political boat. Anyway, this observation aside, the movie remains an effective combination of comedy, drama and societal expose.