Silent Movie

If it was a medical condition, you’d call it John Carpenter Syndrome. A run of great movies – fucking great movies – almost back-to-back within a very specific timeframe. Then an incremental quality department decrease from the merely decent to the average to the mediocre culminating in the type of product we’d rather not talk about (in medical terms ‘Ghosts of Mars’ by proxy).

Let us consider Mel Brooks. 1968 – 1974, the classics: ‘The Producers’, ‘The Twelve Chairs’, ‘Blazing Saddles’, ‘Young Frankenstein’. Then we get the second tier movies: ‘Silent Movie’, ‘High Anxiety’, ‘History of the World Part 1’. Marking the drop from average to mediocre: ‘Spaceballs’. Finally, the unholy trinity of ‘Life Stinks’, ‘Robin Hood: Men in Tights’ and ‘Dracula: Dead and Loving It’.

The problem with the Mel Brooks filmography is that when he hit it out of the ballpark, he hit it so far that even a really good second tier Brooks film (such as, I would argue, ‘Silent Movie’) is put so deeply in the shade by ‘Blazing Saddles’ (a film I’ve probably seen three dozens times and which still makes me laugh out loud) or ‘Young Frankenstein’ that it’s all too easy to overlook its merits.

‘Silent Movie’, let’s face it, is often funny as hell. True, there are a couple of scenes that don’t work (the Hollywood star’s trailer with a broken spring, everyone sliding this way then that during a negotiation, unfolds laboriously) and Brooks tries to get too much mileage out of speeded-up footage, but the film hits more often than it misses.

In a narrative that would be unbelievably meta if the term had actually been invented back then, ‘Silent Movie’ is a silent movie about a director trying to make a silent movie. The director in question is Mel Funn (Brooks), a recovering alcoholic keen to re-establish his career. With his associates Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), Funn approaches the studio chief (Sid Caesar) at Big Picture Studios.

Unimpressed, but desperate for a project with which to fend off a hostile takeover bid by heartless conglomerate Engulf & Devour, he agrees on the condition that Funn gets the biggest names in Hollywood to star in it. This being 1976, Funn and his associates target Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft and Paul Newman. Meanwhile, the Engulf & Devour bigwigs set out to bring the production to a halt.

At its best, ‘Silent Movie’ has the sharply satirical edge that makes Brooks’ top flight works so effective, particularly in the portrayal of Engulf & Devour (a not-so-veiled reference to Gulf & Western). The boardroom meeting where executives are slapped at the CEO’s behest and prayers are offered to a huge illuminated dollar sign is one of the highlights – a scene that flips the big fungoo to corporate America.

As a satire of Hollywood, it’s not quite as excoriating as it could have been, although Reynolds, Caan, Bancroft and particularly Newman – sending up his love of motor racing in a wheelchair chase through a hospital (with all the bad taste slapstick comedy you’d imagine) – are good sports in being the butt of so many jokes. (Minnelli, however, just looks stoned.) A running gag that has Reynolds as a mirror-obsessed narcissist works well, as does a scene where Bancroft spoofs her Mrs Robinson persona, vamping it up to the nines and surrounded by gigolos in a nightclub.

It’s when Brooks leaps from the successful recruitment of the big names to the premiere without mining the potential comedic gold of the filmmaking process itself that it feels like not only has an opportunity has been squandered, but Brooks is holding back when you’re itching for the take-no-prisoners non-PC brilliance of ‘Blazing Saddles’ to erupt in all its piss-taking glory.

Still, the belly laughs are plentiful, some of the sight gags are priceless, Bernadette Peters (in what is essentially a reprise of Madeline Kahn’s turn in ‘Blazing Saddles’) rocks the hell out of her handful of scenes, and Marcel Marceau gets the Man of the Match award for his emphatic delivery of the film’s only line of dialogue.

High Anxiety

Dr Richard H Thorndyke (Mel Brooks) disembarks from his internal flight in a somewhat anxious state. A demented old lady and the sexual overtures of a flasher complicate his exit from the airport. His driver (“and sidekick”) Brophy (Ron Carey) greets him with by sticking a camera in his face and taking a montage of intrusive shots. Brophy’s hobby is photography; a vitally important plot point hinges on it. The ad hoc photoshoot completed, Brophy drives Thorndyke to The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous, where Thorndyke has just taken over as director – much to the chagrin of the oleaginous Dr Charles Montague (Harvey Korman). By the time Thorndyke learns that his predecessor met a grisly end, he is in a state of nervous agitation fit to rival that of any of his patients.

Thus begins ‘High Anxiety’, Mel Brooks’s loving homage to Hitchcock (the opening credits carry a dedication to Hitch). Mainly riffing on ‘North by Northwest’ and ‘Vertigo’, but with a couple of inspired nods to ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Birds’ (the latter arguably Brooks’s most lowbrow skit this side of the beanfeast in ‘Blazing Saddles’), the plot is so nonsensical as to make ‘North by Northwest’ look like a piece by Strindberg.

Thorndyke is crippled by a fear of heights (later revealed as actually being a fear of parents); Montague and the sinister Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman) plot mysteriously, as well as indulging in a bit of light BDSM (the nurse’s attire for these sessions? step forward, the obligatory Nazi uniform); there’s a case of mistaken identity that sees an innocent man go on the run; and a seductive blonde (Madeleine Kahn) is mixed up in it somehow. Just about all the Hitch tick-boxes are checked, right down to the slightly artificial cinematography and the Bernard Herrmanesque score. (Subject of the score, Brooks’s show-stopping performance of the title song is a splendid parody of Frank Sinatra.) If there is a problem – and, let’s face it, outside of ‘The Producers’, ‘Blazing Saddles’, ‘To Have and Have Not’ and ‘Young Frankenstein’, Brooks’s work is hit and miss and then some – it’s that Brooks clings too deferentially to the very material he’s spoofing. The broader moments, such as the two supposedly gliding camera movements that fail spectacularly and don’t just break the fourth wall but bulldozer it aside, are textbook examples of classic Brooks slapstick and seem all the funnier for not relying on audience familiarity with the minutiae of Hitchcock.

Elsewhere, though, the frame of reference is very specific, and Brooks wavers between parodying actual scenes (the chase up the stairwell to the top of the tower) and staging set-pieces in the manner of Hitchcock, but layering them with brash and heavy-handed stabs at humour (Thorndyke and his paramour evading cops at an airport by means of deliberately drawing attention to themselves; Montague terrifying a patient into regression). The tone wavers along with the approach and there are a few ploddingly unfunny moments between the belly laughs.

When ‘High Anxiety’ hits its marks, it’s manic, mirthful and memorable, energetically performed by a cast who are all on good form. Particularly Madeleine Kahn who is just the perfect choice to send up the angsty, icy Hitchcock blonde. Having said that, though, any film automatically becomes a more engaging prospect when Madeleine Kahn’s name pops up in the credits.

Robots

Three years ago, I wandered half-heartedly into a screening of 'Robots' with a friend of mine, our choice of film a second best after the preview screening of 'Constantine' that we'd got ourselves hyped over proved to be sold out.

Okay, we thought, so there's this young robot who leaves his parents and heads off for the big city, all full of dreams and ambitions, only to find that things aren't as he imagined them. But he has his friends. And he has integrity. And he has heart. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Lachrymose, morally trite kiddie-fare, right?

Au contraire. 'Robots' turned out to be the funniest, cleverest, most brilliantly realised (both narratively and visually) piece of animated film-making I'd seen since 'The Incredibles' (my immediate thought was that Blue Sky, the people behind 'Ice Age', looked set to give Pixar a run for their money). Of course, it wasn't too long before Pixar came out with 'Ratatouille' - up next in the 100 faves project - and reminded everyone who might have been remiss enough to have forgotten that they pretty define animated film-making.

But back to 'Robots' ...

The vocal cast is top-notch: Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Robin Williams, Jim Broadbent, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes and Paul Giametti. The look of the film is fabulous: a fully integrated world of delightful retro stylisations which subtley reference everything from 'Metropolis' to 'Forbidden Planet'. The in-jokes cover just as broad a spectrum, a spot-on '2001: A Space Odyssey' send-up rubbing shoulders with any number of 'Star Wars' homages (I seem to recall that the 'Episode III' trailer was shown with 'Robots').

The narrative clips along at a fast enough pace to prevent the under-fives from getting bored, but director Chris Wedge and his screenwriters invest time in the characters, a decision that pays dividends when the idealistic Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor) and his plucky band of friends are outnumbered by the villains at the end. The climactic fight (oh yes, it may be U-rated, but 'Robots' contains scenes of "ass-whupping") is a bravura set-piece, managing to generate real tension, while at the same time firing off throwaway gags in all directions: one minute it's 'Braveheart' revisited, the next there's a Britney Spears song and dance number ... then it's back to the dust-up.

An hour and a half after slumping sullenly into our seats, me and my friend came exited the cinema beaming, in agreement that 'Robots' was a delightful, hilarious discovery. A week later we got round to seeing 'Constantine'. Oh dear, oh dear. We exited that one wondering why it is that the imagination, wit and attention to detail which Hollywood lovingly applies to films made ostensibly for children is so often absent in the productions it tailors to an adult audience.

PERSONAL FAVES: Blazing Saddles

As with my article on 'The Train', posted i.m. Paul Scofield, I've abandoned the random selection process for this week's personal faves write-up in order to pay tribute to Harvey Korman who died five days ago at the age of 81. A veteran of film (his first appearance was in 'Living Venus' in 1961) and TV (a ten-year stint on 'The Carol Burnett Show'), his signature role will forever be Hedy Hedley Lamarr in Mel Brooks's madcap comedy classic 'Blazing Saddles'.

Now, there's two ways of writing about 'Blazing Saddles'. I can either ...

a) pen several hundred words of po-faced prose, for example: when Bart (Cleavon Little), a black man forced to suffer indignities as part of a railroad work gang, is arrested following a retributive attack on racist gang boss Taggart (Slim Pickens), he is saved from the hangman only by the intervention of corrupt politico Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman). Harbouring a fiscal interest in the planned railroad course, particularly in a profitable tract of land around the small township of Rock Ridge, Lamarr manoeuvres incompetent Governer William J Le Petomaine (Mel Brooks) into appointing Bart sheriff of Rock Ridge, a move calculated to offend the decidedly white and puritanical citizenry and provoke a wholesale exodus. When his plan backfires and Bart, with the aid of washed-up former gunslinger The Waco Kid (Gene Wilder), earns the grudging respect of the townsfolk, Lamarr calls upon voluptuous German torch singer Lili von Shtupp (Madeleine Kahn) to ensnare him ...

... or (less boringly) ...

b) quote twenty great lines at random and leave you to dig out your DVD copy, kick back with a beer and laugh yourselves hoarse all over again.

Let's go with (b).

1. Lamarr: My mind is aglow with whirling transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapour of invention.
Taggart: Ditto.
Lamarr: Ditto? Ditto, you provincial putz?

2. Reverend Johnson: Now, I don't have to tell you good folks what's been happening in our little town. Sheriff murdered, crops burned, stores looted, people stampeded and cattle raped. The time has come to act and act fast. I'm leaving!

3. Taggart: I hired you people to get a little track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots.

4. Lyle: Come on, boys, the way lollygagging around here with them picks 'n' shovels, you'd think it was a hundred and twenty degrees. Why, it can't be more than a hundred and fourteen!

5. Bart: Excuse me, sir, he specifically requested two "niggers". To tell a family secret, my grandma was Dutch.

6. Lili: What's your name, cowboy?
Tex: Tex, ma'am.
Lili: Well, Tex Ma'am, are you in show business?
Tex: No.
Lili: Then get your frickin' feet off the stage!

7. Bart: Since you are my guest and I am your host, what would you like to do?
The Waco Kid: I don't know. Play chess? Screw?
Bart: Let's play chess.

8. The Waco Kid: It got so that every praire punk who thought he could shoot a gun would ride into town to try out The Waco Kid. I must have killed more men than Cecil B DeMille. Then one day I was just walking down the street and I hear a voice behind me say "Reach for it, mister". I spun around and there I was, face to face with a six-year-old kid. I just threw down my guns and walked away. Little bastard shot me in the ass.

9. Gabby Johnson: The sheriff is a ni-[CLANG].

10. Taggart: I know how we can run everyone out of Rock Ridge.
Lamarr: How?
Taggart: We'll kill the first born male child in every household.
Lamarr: Too Jewish.

11. Lamarr: I want you to round up every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the west. Take this down. I want rustlers, cut-throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes. Mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits. Muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, asskickers, shitkickers and Methodists.
Taggart: Could you repeat that, sir?

12. Charlie: Hey Bart, is it me or is the world rising?
Bart: I don't know but whatever it is, I hate it! ... Say, Charlie, what is it when it's not exactly water and it ain't exactly earth?
Both: Quicksand!

13. Lamarr: Now go do - that voodoo - that you do - so well!

14. The Waco Kid: What did you expect? Welcome sonny, make yourself at home, marry my daughter? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers, these are people of the land, the common clay of the new west. You know: morons.

15. Lamarr: My mind is a raging torrent flooded with rivulets of thought, cascading into waterfalls of creative alternatives,
Taggart: Gol-darn it, Mr Lamarr, you use your tongue purdier than a twenty dollar whore.

16. Lili: It is twue how they they that you people are gifted? ... Oh, it's twue, it's twue, it's twue!

17. Lili: Would you like another schnitzengruben?
Bart: No, thank you. Fifteen is my limit on schnitzengruben.
Lili: Well, how about a little ...
Bart: Baby, I am not from Havana!

18. Bart: Hey, where the white women at?

19. Le Petomaine: Thank you, Hedy, thank you.
Lamarr: It's not Hedy, it's Hedley. Hedley Lamarr.
Le Petomaine: What the hell are you worried about. It's 1874, You'll be able to sue her.

20. Bart: My work here is done. I'm needed elsewhere. I'm needed wherever outlaws rule the west, wherever innocent women and children are afraid to walk the streets, wherever a man cannot live in simple dignity, wherever a people cry out for justice.
Townsfolk: Bullshit!
Bart: All right, you got. To speak the plain truth, it's getting pretty damn dull around here.

'Blazing Saddles' is quite simply one of the funniest movies ever made, with an inspired ending that's as demented as it is subversive. 'Young Frankenstein' and 'The Producers' are arguably cleverer, but 'Blazing Saddles' is a 90-minute overdose on laughing gas, and amongst a plethora of rip-tickling turns (Wilder, Little, Brooks and Kahn are all on top form), Harvey Korman all but steals the show.



(in memoriam Harvey Korman, 15 February 1927 - 29 May 2008)