The 8 Essential Films Of Preston Sturges

“Unfaithfully Yours” (1948)

Coming shortly after Sturges’ creative apex in the early ’40s and amounting to his last solid film, “Unfaithfully Yours,” though a flop at the time, has been re-evaluted since on the basis of its great craft and wonderful performances. But it can’t be ignored that despite its good points, the film strikes an unavoidably sour note in its tale of a famous conductor (Rex Harrison) who fantasizes three different ways, set to three different classical pieces, of dealing with the wife (Linda Darnell) he adores but whom he believes to be having an affair. When it is only circumstance that prevents tragedy (here the circumstance is an extended slapstick apartment-demolition scene as the usually urbane Harrison falls over tables, gets tangled in lamps and puts his foot through chairs in an effort to set up the elaborate murder plot he has apparently settled on), the film becomes difficult to wholly embrace. Sometimes Sturges’ idiosyncrasies and cynicism could produce a kind of myopic, misanthropic edge, and it’s hard not to read a self-serving agenda into the conclusion of the film in which Darnell forgives Harrison on the grounds that she worships him entirely and he is a great creative mind or some such nonsense. Still, both actors are great, with Darnell getting to play the fantasy femme fatale version of her character as well as the sappy lovelorn version, but also, as so often with Sturges, selling the lines of dialogue and the moments in between with a kind of spirit and individuality that belies her rather passive arc. In this film and in “The Great McGinty,” “The Palm Beach Story” and “Sullivan’s Travels,” Sturges wrote his supporting female characters with a spark and an inner life that their overarching stories only seldom matched.

“Unfaithfully Yours” has been somewhat reclaimed in recent years, but after his remarkable string of hits in the early ’40s, nothing else, including that picture, ever really made an appreciable impact again. His first stumble came with his first attempt at a “serious” film, a biopic of a pioneering anesthesia surgeon titled ‘The Great Moment,” his last film with the perennially underrated Joel McCrea which did not connect with audiences, nor did it much deserve to.

After that, Sturges went on to form a production company with Howard Hughes, California Pictures, but worked on just two films there — Harold Lloyd‘s last pic “The Sin of Harold Diddlebock,” which was such a flop that Hughes re-edited and re-released it years later under a new title but to no better reception; and “Vendetta,” which was a vehicle for Hughes’ squeeze Faith Domergue on which Sturges replaced Max Ophuls, only to be subsequently fired.

He also turned in the workmanlike but lacklustre comedy western “The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend” which was a big disappointment for star Betty Grable and finished up his directing career in France with a film that did passably there but sank without a trace when released in the U.S. under the title “The French They Are A Funny Race.” He would continue writing for movies until just before his death in 1959 (in the Algonquin Hotel while penning his autobiography, the never finished but brilliantly titled “The Events Leading Up To My Death”), but he never again enjoyed the kind of creative streak that gave rise to his run of seven indelible hits in the space of just four years (1940-44).

Then again, neither did anyone else.

“Sullivan’s Travels” is out on Criterion now, and Film Forum’s “Strictly Sturges” series is running until Thursday.