Friday Happenings

Still from Sullivan's Travels courtesy Harvard Film Archive.

Whether or not you think rock critic Greil Marcus is kind of puffed up, it's worth sitting through whatever he is going to say about the film in order to see Sullivan's Travels (1941). Preston Sturges's comedy about a director of comedies who sets out to make a Serious Movie—"O Brother, Where Art Thou?"—is one of the director's best. Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake turn in career performances when they hit the road to find "real America" amidst the Depression. As a meditation on fame, privilege, and misery, the movie might strike you as oddly contemporary. Introduced by Marcus and Werner Sollors. Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge, 7 p.m. $10.

Melodrama

Bigger Than Life (1956) is Nicholas Ray's overlooked melodrama about a man whose quest to build the ideal suburban life leads to drug addiction, megalomania, and madness. A box office flop, the movie is an overlooked gem of social critique, and James Mason dazzles as he presents the Janus face of 1950s conformity: perfection and psychosis. Remis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, 6 p.m. $10/$8.

Burlesque

The Boston Babydolls present Buxom and Bawdy's Flirting Circus, a circus-themed strip show that we imagine has more acrobatics and less elephant dung than your average three-ring affair. Arlington Center for the Arts, 41 Foster St., Arlington, 8 p.m., through Saturday. $12.

Comedy

Tonight finds the monthly Union Square Roundtable setting up shop. From the looks of its website, the Roundtable features whimsically cute music, comedy, and film. If you like that kind of stuff, you might as well get it locally made. P.A.'s Lounge, 345 Somerville Ave., Somerville, 8:30 p.m. $10/$13.