Definitely a big film of the time. This movie explores the notion of creating a conversation with other filmmakers at the time through the work. Sturges directly criticizes and attacks his contemporaries through his script for taking the “higher road” at the expense of helping the audience get what they need from films; entertainment and escape from the horrors of WW2.
This movie is film as a means of conversation for the times. This is something new. History is catching up with itself and film is helping that transition. People are seeing people and what they’re doing all over the world. Yes, it’s before the internet but this film serves as a connective tissue to that effect of making people aware of both how vast the world is but also how small a place it is in how someone's life in Kansas is affected by someone's life in Germany or Japan. There's an awareness that we can't just isolate ourselves in castles of high-minded art and philosophy but must acknowledge the "common man" around us because he is the majority of the people on this earth not the elite artists who live in their bubble in Hollywood.
I love the storyline here of the poor Veronica Lake tagging along with Joel McCrea as he traverses around like a bum. There's great back and forth banter between the two of them especially as she gives him the cold shoulder initially and then slowly warms up to him. That dynamic definitely mirrors the dynamic of the characters in It Happened One Night, there's absolute similarity between the two love stories. My favorite moment from this film and probably the most iconic in its messaging is when McCrea is led into the Church turned movie theater with the other prisoners and they sit next to ordinary people and watch Mickey Mouse cartoons which make all of them laugh. It's this great moment that shows the common thread between all human beings. We all feel, we all laugh at the same "base" jokes. We share this connection that many would have us believe is not there due to differences of intelligence, education, upbringing etc... But this movie rebukes that separation of classes and people through this scene and encourages filmmakers to embrace that commonality and try to make films that make people come together through universal emotional experiences.
This scene was referenced in O Brother Where Art Thou when the chain gang is led into watch a movie.