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Created Mar 10, 2013 05:23PM PST • Edited Mar 10, 2013 05:23PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Joel McCrea plays a successful Hollywood director who is known chiefly for “popcorn movies” Let’s face it, Orson Welles he ain’t. But what he does he does well. That is, light fluffy fare like “Pardon My Sarong” and “Ants in Your Pants 1938” One day Sullivan decides he wants to make the film version of “Brother Where Art Though” a book whose content we never discover but we know it’s serious. Although the studio couldn’t be less interested, they humor him when he says he wants to find out how it is to be a bum.

   Have you heard of the expression “Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it”?

   What follows is a unique blend of screwball comedy and message movie as Sullivan endures all kinds of hell until he gets rescued.

   (Spoiler Alert)

   On the way home in the plane one of the studio guys says "Well I guess you earned the right to make “Brother Where Art Thou” to which Sullivan shrugs off. “Laughter is all people have in this cockamamie world” as Sullivan realizes that he makes the kind of movies that people not only want to see, they need to see.

   I don’t know if this is one of the greatest films of all time, but it’s way on top of my list.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   There is an expression “The whole is something greater than the sum of its parts” McCrea, Veronica Lake and Sturges usual band of motley character actors are all great. But are they perfect. No they are not. But it doesn’t matter. And McCrea, who many people don’t even know about any more, had an everyman persona that got him work with some of the best directors of the day, including Hitchcock.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    Everything works the way it should. And the soundless montage where Sullivan and “The Girl” visit soup kitchens and missions is a classic. Or should be.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Perfect 5.0

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    Tame for these days but for its time was pretty gutsy.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.5

    Combines gritty reality with scenes that would probably never happen in real life.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.5

23. Biological Surreal 2.5

24. Physical Surreal 2.5