If any documentary needs to be shown regularly on TV in the English speaking world, this one certainly does. People - especially those who love good comedy - need to be turned on to Preston Sturges, and this will do it for them. Their lives will never be the same!

I remember seeing it on TV here in the UK many years ago, and not knowing who Preston Sturges was, I never recorded it. Damn!! I had to wait over ten years before I managed to see it again as an extra on the Criterion Collection DVD of Sullivan's Travels.

Luckily though, that first viewing heralded a short season of Preston Sturges movies as a Christmas treat on the BBC, so I did manage to record five of his best movies within the same number of days. That's the sort of Christmas we should always enjoy. "I'm dreaming of a Sturges Christmas"

The documentary gives a good account of the life and work of Preston Sturges. It makes it clear how he broke through the demarcation of roles in Hollywood studios, and made it possible for himself and people like Billy Wilder to direct their own scripts, and produce comedy movies with a original vision and point of view.

There are familiar but well chosen clips of his famous movies, but there's also bits from the earlier movies he wrote for other directors. But the big story told by the talking heads is the rise and fall of Sturges, as he went from writing, directing, and producing movies of true genius to essentially a has-been within only a few years.

Watching this documentary may not be as good as watching one of Preston Sturges' best movies, but it certainly beats most movies, and remains worth repeated viewings for me.

I knew practically nothing about Preston Sturges going in to this, other than he was an expert writer on fast-paced dialogue.

Now I know as a child he spent much time in Europe due to his mother, providing him with "cultural indoctrination". Interestingly, he tried to run from the European culture, though so much became a part of who he was. Isadora Duncan, the famous dancer, was a big part of his childhood, which is odd.

Sturges was possibly the first writer to turn director. This was very uncommon, at Paramount or anywhere else. Sam Goldwyn hated this sort of crossover, as we know from Howard Hawks -- Goldwyn wanted directors to direct, and not tamper with the scripts.

The narrator says Sturges "introduced irony to screen comedy". Now, that is a hard claim to back up. Was he really the first? Probably not. But to say his style was not larger than life would be a lie.