In many ways, except for the enduring popularity of The Lady Eve, Sturges has faded from view in film history. Certainly he has not enjoyed the constant attention and adulation of a Hitchcock, Hawks, or Ford, thus necessitating this ReFocus volume. Even many film scholars have seen only a few of his films. Some titles are hard to find, or available only in poor, unrestored versions.

Yet if one is sensitive to Sturges's themes, tone, and style, in actuality, he lurks everywhere in contemporary films. The reason we must bring him back into focus is that, in many ways, modern filmmakers should be counted as Sturges's (multiple) offspring.

THE COEN BROTHERS

Though it adds a clever touch, film history aficionados didn't really need the title, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to see Preston Sturges hiding behind the Coen Brothers’ 2000 movie, grinning. In that film alone, we have a picaresque narrative (like Sullivan's Travels); government corruption (The Great McGinty, Hail the Conquering Hero); a stock company of strange male figures speaking odd dialects (John Goodman, John Turturro, Charles Durning); and equally capricious character names, such as “Pete Hogwallop,” “Vernon T. Waldrip” and “Ulysses Everett McGill.” For Everett to turn out to be the father of seven daughters just does the sextuplets of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) one better.

For that matter, critics perceive Sturges's influence even earlier in the Coen canon, in Raising Arizona (1987), which throws together physical slapstick, verbal ingenuity, larceny, and … actual quintuplets. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)—which adds Hawks and Capra to the masala, specifically in the hard-boiled female reporter character—also explicitly refers back to Sturges.