The greatest comedy ever made, according to Richard Linklater: “Hasn’t aged a day”
There’s no one way to describe a Richard Linklater film because each of his directorial efforts challenges and subverts expectations regarding genre, where even the goofiest of his features have deep meaning, and tend to be more profound than self-important dramas.
The primary reason why his career is just as exciting as it was over three decades prior, when he burst onto the independent film scene with Slacker, is that he has continuously shown a willingness to try new things, wherein by experimenting with different mediums, time periods, and thematic subtext, Linklater has ensured that his upcoming projects are unpredictable.
He has been credited for helping to develop the contemporary ‘hangout’ movie thanks to Dazed and Confused and Suburbia, which were largely observational stories that simply explored a day-in-the-life for an ensemble of quirky characters. Although the filmmaker has developed a way of authenticating the lived-in experience of his audience in a way that feels very modern, he has also consistently shown an interest in classic Hollywood.
Beyond the frequent references to films from the Golden Age, Linklater has made several biopics about icons of the film industry’s renaissance: Me & Orson Welles explored an unknown incident within the life of Hollywood’s ‘boy genius’, Blue Moon told the tragic story of Lorenz Hart, and Nouvelle Vague examined the making of Breathless and the dawn of the French New Wave. Thus, it should come as no surprise that he idolises many of the filmmakers who epitomised this era.
Linklater told Rotten Tomatoes that his favourite comedy of all time was Sullivan’s Travels, a 1941 film from Preston Sturges that follows a filmmaker, played by Joel McRea, as he tries to gain worldly experiences in order to prepare to make his next epic.
He called it “the greatest comedy of all” and waxed poetic about its message of creativity and inspiration, noting, “This film hasn’t aged a day from 1941 when it came out. It’s amazing, especially with Hollywood in mind. It’s the ultimate inside Hollywood movie. It’s about a guy searching for meaning in his art who’s had all this success in Hollywood. The human dynamics of it are very true to life. I mean, it’s a comedy, and it’s all pitched at that point, but Preston Sturges was the master of dialogue and delivery.”
While Sullivan’s Travels is set during a very different era of the industry in which audiences had a much different relationship with Hollywood, Linklater found that the film was still relatable today because of how relevant its themes are.
“It’s amazingly contemporary,” the director continued. “This character’s desires and the timeless subject of, say, art versus commerce, is one of the best film depictions of that you could ever find, and in a very comedic way. He has a project that the studio doesn’t want him to make about homelessness, this is coming out of the Depression, and he’s a spoiled rich guy, and he has a project he wants to make.”
The film is a rare comedy that allows its viewers to both laugh with and at its protagonist; while McRea’s character is a privileged, ridiculous filmmaker who has overestimated his ability to make change, he’s also someone with noble intentions who makes startling discoveries about the triumph of the human spirit. This combination of satire and sincerity is certainly something Linklater has inherited, and why he is considered to be one of the greatest living filmmakers.
