Mel Brooks Centenary!

Mel Brooks (l.) in The Twelve Chairs (2:30 PM)

Today is the 100th birthday of director/screenwriter/comedian Mel Brooks, known for his parodies and often absurd comedies. TCM is celebrating with five of his movies this afternoon and evening:

2:30 PM The Twelve Chairs, in which Brooks looks for a missing chair that may be concealing a treasure;
4:15 PM The Producers, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as Broadway producers who get involved in a scam regarding their latest show;
6:00 PM Spaceballs, a parody of science-fiction movies in general and Star Wars in particular;
8:00 PM Blazing Saddles; a boundary-pushing absurd comedy western; and
10:00 PM Young Frankenstein; a comic retelling of a descendant of the original Dr. Frankenstein.

Normal programming returns with Silent Sunday Nights at midnight.

Mel Brooks does Ernst Lubitsch

José Ferrer was honored in Summer Under the Stars last year, and I think it was for his day that TCM ran the 1980s remake of To Be or Not to Be. I made a point of watching it before it expired from my DVR and writing up a post to put up later since I'm running well ahead in my blogging.

Now, I think most of you know the plot, since this is a remake of the 1942 classic that starred Jack Benny and, in her final role, Carole Lombard. The movie opens up in August 1939, which is just before the Nazis invaded Poland and set off what is the European theater of World War II. Frederick Bronski (Mel Brooks) runs a theater troupe in Warsaw together with his much more famous wife Anna (Anne Bancroft) and behind the curtain they engage in comic bickering. Frederick has come up with an extremely anti-Nazi revue but, with the political situation, the censors force him to close that show, leading him to do a revival of Hamlet.

Andrei Sobinski (Tim Matheson) is a flyboy in the Polish air force, and also a big fan of the theater, going to all of Anna's performances. One night, ahen Frederick is doing Hamlet's soliloquy, Andrei goes to the dressing rooms to meet Anna, with Frederick getting jealous over who's sending Anna flowers. Not long after, the Nazis invade, and the airmen are forced to flee Poland for the safety of the UK where they can reform a Polish squadron much like the Czechs did if you recall the movie Dark Blue World.

José Ferrer plays Prof. Siletski, a putative member of the anti-Nazi intelligentsia giving speeches and the like. But in fact he's actually a Nazi sympathizer and spy. So when he tells the airmen he's going on an underground trip to Poland, they all stupidly reveal the addresses of their families, which would basically give up the entire Polish resistance if Siletski could give those names to his Nazi handlers in Poland. The only way any of this is figured out is because Sobinski wants Siletski to give Anna Bronski the message "To be or not to be", which will of course make sense to her. But Siletski seems to have no clue who Anna Bronski is, as though everybody in the Polish elites would know every stage actor out there, something that's long been a weird conceit of the movies.

Sobinski is parachuted into Warsaw to try to get to Bronski first in the hopes that the underground can stop Siletski. This leads to Frederick finding out about Anna and Andrei, and Frederick and Anna (and the rest of the Bronski theater troup) having to work with the underground to stop Siletski and the rest of the Nazis.

Now, as I mentioned before, this is a remake of a very classic comedy, so it's a bit hard to watch it without immediately thinking of the musical. And, to be honest, there are I think some ways in which it doesn't quite reach the level of the original. One is the presence of Mel Brooks. Brooks was a great satirist and does a marvelous job for the most part with his parodies. But this version of To Be or Not to Be is not a parody of the original or of any genre of film. As such, the blunt style doesn't always work, as with an extra scene at the beginning where Anna and Frederick are bickering in Polish. Some of the studio sets also look a bit too artificial, much in the same way I commented on when reviewing New York, New York and Pennies from Heaven.

On the other hand, by the 1980s Mel Brooks could be daring in a way that Lubitsch couldn't. Anna's dresser is very obviously gay, even before he reveals the pink triangle that Nazis made homosexuals were. A film released in 1942 could never have mentioned the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.

So this remake of To Be or Not to Be is interesting, if not always great.

Young Frankenstein

In the 14 years that I've been doing this blog, it seems that I've never done a post on Young Frankenstein. It's been in the FXM rotation recently, and will have two airings tomorrow (Mar. 14), at 4:00 AM and 1:10 PM. So, since I had recorded it during one of the previous FXM showings a few weeks earlier, I made a point of sitting down and watching it to do a post on now.

Gene Wilder plays Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, pronounced FRONK-en-steen, thank you very much, an instructor at a medical school in something close to the present day when the film opens. At least, everybody looks like they're from the 1970s, and references are made to it being the 20th century. During one of his lectures, a man who's clearly not a medical student comes into the lecture hall and wants to see the good doctor after the lecture. It turns out that Frederick is the grandson of Victor, the Dr. Frankenstein who worked on reanimating the dead and created the famous monster (never mind that it just being a grandson, this means the dates don't work out at all). Whoever has owned the Frankstein estates in Transylvania has just died, and Frederick being the closest living relative, he's bequeathed the properties. So he leaves his fiancée Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) behind and sets out for Transylvania.

Transylvania, for no good reason, seems trapped in the 19th century. There don't seem to be any cars and almost no electricity other than what the Frankenstein castle is able to produce. Also, everybody speaks German, which might have been more likely during the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but certainly not by the Communist era. Frederick is met at the train station by Igor (pronounced EYE-gore, thank you very much), a hunchbacked assistant, who takes Frederick to the castle. Also in the wagon waiting for Frederick is Inga (Teri Garr), who is intended to serve as another of Frederick's assistants.

Running the household is Frau Blücher (Cloris Leachmann) who, it turns out, wants Frederick to continue the work of previous generations of Frankensteins, even though he's also considered himself a serious doctor. She lures Frederick into the laboratory, where he finds all the equipment now covered in cobwebs. But finding Victor's private journal, he's suddenly curious as to whether Victor's procedures actually work. He and Igor obtain a corpse but need a preserved brain. There's the brain of a prominent local scientist, but Igor has an accident and winds up bringing back an "abnormal" brain instead.

Dr. Frankenstein is able to reanimate the corpse, but the living corpse, once again dubbed Frankenstein's monster (Peter Boyle), has some serious problems. He can't speak, and has a pretty severe fear of fire. He also doesn't want to be chained up, leading to unintentional violence. The townsfolk, led by police inspector Kemp (Kenneth Mars), remember Victor's work, and they understandably don't want another monster running loose. To complicate matters for Frederick, he falls in love with Inga despite being engaged to Elizabeth, who sends a telegram to inform Frederick she's coming to Transylvania.

Young Frankenstein is a Mel Brooks movie, and how much you like it is going to depend upon how much you like Mel Brooks' style of humor. For me, I find that when it works, it works really well, but when it doesn't, it can be extremely irritating. As such, I found Young Frankenstein rather uneven. The bits that were more directly parodying Universal's horror movies of the 1930s worked well, such as the monster's scene with the little girl, and another scene with a blind hermit (Gene Hackman). Others, like a running gag about mention of Frau Blücher's name being accompanied by horses whinnying, fell flat. I prefer some of the other movies from Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, but also understand that a lot of people are going to love Young Frankenstein.

Silent Movie

TCM has another night of Mel Brooks, just like they did a month or two ago. The only difference is that while that feature looked at the films Brooks produced, tonight's lineup has a bunch of movies he starred in and/or directed. This includes what I think is the TCM premiere of Silent Movie, at 9:45 PM.

Brooks plays Mel Funn, a down-on-his-luck movie director in modern Hollywood. He needs a hit, and has a radical idea: make a silent movie. So he goes with his two assistants Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Bell (Dom DeLuise) to see the studio bosses. Nobody really wants to take a chance on this, of course. It seems a daft idea, and not only because it's coming from a washed up guy like Mel Funn. But, there's one studio head (Sid Caesar) whose studio is in trouble, and he agrees to it on condition that Funn can get stars contracted to do it.

And so, Funn and his assistants go off and try to get those stars under contract, while our Studio Chief tries to keep the big non-Hollywood business from taking over the studio. The outside business, however, wants to take over the stuido, so that have every interest in making sure that Funn doesn't make the movie, and if he does, that it not be a success. This being a Mel Brooks comedy, however, you know that there's likely to be a happy ending....

The one thing Silent Movie decidedly is not is a silent movie in the traditional sense. Oh, there's no spoken dialog with one exception that's the ponchline to a joke, but the movie doesn't feel like any of the old silent movies, mostly because it's not supposed to be. Mel Brooks had previously done spoofs of the horror genre with Young Frankenstein and westerns with Blazing Saddles before turning his sights on silent films. Silent Movie is first and foremost a parody of the silent genre with its broad slapstick humor, overwrought gestures, and melodrama, with the added conceit that they weren't going to have spoken dialog but use intertitles instead.

Mel Brooks is one of those moviemakers where whether you like his movies is going to come down to whether you like his style, much more than other actors or directors. Silent Movie, like Brooks' other parodies, is filled with sight gags and homages to movies and stars of the past. But as with many of his other movies, the material often seems overcooked, as though he's hitting us over the head with his jokes. We get it already, Mel. Silent Movie has good sequences of course, many of them having to do with the various stars Funn is trying to get to star in his movie. In the end, though, I think I'd recommend something like The Producers to somebody who doesn't know much of the Mel Brooks style. Those who like Brooks already will probably very much enjoy Silent Movie, however.

Brooksfilms

Robert Osborne has been sitting down with several Hollywood veterans over the past month or so: we've had Shirley Jones presenting a night of her movies, as well as Robert Wagner and Mitzi Gaynor. Next up is director/producer Mel Brooks, who will be on TCM for the next two nights to discuss six of the movies produced by Brooksfilms, the production company he created.

Brooksfilms was created in part to make The Elephant Man, which Brooks was producing, but was not involved with directing or acting. Since Brooks was primarily known for comedy, and especially the parodies he did, he didn't want his name that prominently displayed for a serious drama such as The Elephant Man, or everybody might think it was a comedy. The next two nights will show a relatively broad range of the movies Brooksfilims produced, which includes a comedy in which he stars.

Tonight kicks off at 8:00 PM with Fatso, directed by his wife Anne Bancroft. Dom Deluise plays a fat man who loves food. But when a cousin of his and sister Anne Bancroft dies, she begins to fear her brother is going to eat himself into an early grave, too. But it's only the possibility of love that gets Deluise to think about finally trying to drop those pounds.

At 10:00 PM is 84 Charing Cross Road in which Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins become pen-friends across the Atlantic Ocean.

Then at midnight is the body-snatching horror film The Doctor and the Devils.

Prime time tomorrow kicks off at 8:00 PM with the aforementioned The Elephant Man, based on the story of the disfigured Victorian-era man Joseph Merrick (named changed to John for the movie), who wound up as a freak show exhibit.

Second on Tuesday is My Favorite Year at 10:15 PM, in which Peter O'Toole plays an actor known for his drinking and escapades, who has to be kept sober for a TV appearance.

Finally at midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday is the Mel Brooks version of To Be or Not to Be, which I don't like nearly as much as the Carole Lombard/Jack Benny version.

Dvenadtsat' stulyev

Over the summer, TCM finally showed The Twelve Chairs. It's on again tomorrow morning at 8:15 AM, so now would be a good time to do a full-length post on the movie.

Based on a novel by Soviet humorists Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, The Twelve Chairs is set in the Soviet Union of the late 1920s, after the Revolution and upheaval of the Civil War, but before the Stalinist repression really took off. All of the old nobles have been dispossessed, such as Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) and his mother, who is on her deathbed. He learns, however, that before the Soviets were able to confiscate everything, she hid a box of her jewelry in the upholstery of one of the chairs of the family dining room set, hence the twelve chairs of the title. Find that dining room set and that chair, and you'll be rich. Or at least, that's the theory. Needless to say, it's not going to work like that in practice. Or at least, it's not going to be so easy to find that chair.

There are a couple of complicating matters. One is that the set was split up, so Vorobyaninov is going to have to go all over the Soviet Union to find the right chair. The other thing is that he's not the only personj in on the search. Vorobyaninov meets Ostap Bender (Frank Langella), who survived the revolution and civil war on his wits as the Soviet version of a con man in a system which even more than capitalism frowns upon such conmen. He's got wits and Vorobyaninov doesn't, so Bender gets Vorobyaninov to let him in on the search for the chair. The bigger problem, though, is Orthodox priest Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise). He heard about the jewels in a deathbed confession from Vorobyaninov's mother, and with organized religion officially on the way out in the USSR, why not fall in to a life of greed? Thankfully for Vorobyaninov, Bender and his quick wits send Fyodor all the way to Siberia, where the dining room set was not delieverd, to look for it.

Vorobyaninov and Bender go on their own search for the chairs, first to Moscow where they find some of them, but none of those contain the jewels. This perhaps shouldn't be a surprise, since there might not be so much of a movie if they found the jewels early on. (Well, there would be a radically different movie.) Eventually, the search takes the two men to a theatre troupe performing on a barge on the Volga; to the Crimea, and eventually back to Moscow, with Fyodor showing up from time to time trying to find the jewels himself.

The Twelve Chairs was directed by Mel Brooks, which might be a warning, since Brooks' style can be at times a very acquired taste, especially with the later parodies. This is earlier Brooks, though, so the things about his movies that aren't quite my thing don't show up here quite as much as they do later in the 1970s. Plus, there's a real plot here of the search for hidden treasure, and not something designed for the purpose of shoehorning in all the parodic elements. There were a few things I found grating, though, such as Bender's teaching Vorobyaninov to beg by faking epileptic seizures, which reminded me of one of the hysterical fit/argument scenes from early in The Producers.

Even with the caveat that this is a Mel Brooks movie, it's still pretty good, mostly because the plot is such a staple that it can be translated almost anywhere and in any culture. The main actors are all good enough not to detract from the story, and the resolution of where the jewels are is handled in a way that makes eminent sense. If I were going to recommend a Mel Brooks movie, I think I would have people start off with The Producers, but The Twelve Chairs also isn't a bad movie to show to people who may not be such big fans of Brooks' type of comedy. TCM's shop lists this movie as being on a box set of eight of Brooks' movies.