Mel Brooks, at his best,was the most robust comedy director in American cinema, perhaps with the exception of Frank Tashlin. A small Jew boy from Brooklyn, a relatively poor White neighbourhood of New York city, he was regularly bullied by others twice his size at school. He devised ways of survival, and one amongst them was comedy. Brooks honed his comedy skills at the summer holiday camps in Catskill mountains in the New York State, entertaining disparate audiences for a pittance. The broad, energetic comedy for which he became famous in later life, probably has its origins in the years of
his apprenticeship.
The three films on which his fame rests are — The Producers (1968), based on a Broadway play, Silent Movie (1976), and Young Frankenstein (1974). These three films contain the myriad comedic inventions of his fertile mind, and, are unrivalled in the comedies that came out of Hollywood in the last 50 years. There is both a zaniness and a wackiness about these works, that remind us of the great silent comedies of the 1920s, as do their touching flirtation with absurdity. He is the antithesis of the intellectual, often pretentious and boring Woody Allen, the darling of the American film intellingensia. Brooks, unlike Allen, has never been a consistent director.
There were many genuinely funny moments in Blazing Saddles (1974), a parody of the traditional Western, but the overall impression was marred by his predilection for the scatological joke. Despite this failing, Blazing Saddles , is terrific in parts, especially in its sly take on racism. A Negro railroad worker, expected to sing a spiritual, suddenly bursts into a ballad about romance and champagne. Erroll Morris’ truly well sung title song, is of course a red herring, and the director ought to be complimented for his wit.
Other films of Brooks, that carried sparks of his wit intermittently are, High Anxiety (1977), a takeoff on Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers, and Life Stinks (1991), a possible answer to Preston Sturges’ satire from the late 1930s, Sullivan’s Travels . Brooks’ films relied on high-octane energy and homegrown wit, unlike Woody Allen’s, which were self-referential, pseudo-existential and short of comic ideas that could be shared with a wide audience. With age, one may conjecture, Brooks ran out of energy and the hit or miss quality of his later films like History of The World The Part I (1981) and, Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993) prove it. To put it simply, they lacked the zing of his early work. The writing was indifferent and the acting strangely listless, including Brook’s own performances in them.
His films were avowedly anti-intellectual from the start. His attitude to cinema, and the arts in general, can be seen in his animated first film, not unintentionally titled, The Critic (1963) which he wrote and Ernest Pintoff directed. In it, the audience tries to understand incomprehensible onscreen footage ‘helped’ by a commentary written by Brooks! A deliberate low-brow attitude meant that he would have to create something continuously entertaining and intelligent. The Producers , starring the mercurial Zero Mostel, is about a producer who dupes rich old ladies into investing money in a play entitled, Springtime for Hitler , that he hopes will be a resounding flop and enable him to make off with the capital. The play, unfortunately, is an unexpected hit, despite a cast of incompetent semi-lunatics. Of course he gets caught in the end but not before raising many laughs. The final scene is of Mostel and his cohorts, doing the same play in prison and the assistant warden asking them for tickets for the show.
Silent Movie , was an endearing anomaly, it was literally silent but for one word, “non”, uttered by the great French mime Marcel Marceau, when he declines to play a certain role offered to him in the impending production which is going to be silent. The whole endeavour is undertaken by one Mel Funk (Brooks) a star director fallen on bad days, in order to save an old film studio that is about to be taken over by a new company called, Engulf And Devour! Brooks uses old silent cinema techniques like title cards — his are really witty and droll. The comedy in the film is really visual, and there are many memorable sight gags including Funk trying to sober up by drinking innumerable cups of coffee in order to direct his film; there are 300 cups, laid out symmetrically in the frame!
Young Frankenstein , is a hilarious parody of the Frankenstein legend. It has genial buffoonery not seen at all these days. The hunchback played by Marty Feldman, has a hump that keeps shifting for no earthly reason. By far the funniest scene in the film, is that of Frankenstein reading The Wall Street Journal in his pajamas, in bed. This film, shot in black and white, was a tribute to the old Hollywood horror films of the 1930s. The only difference is that it is an outrageous farce, a form of comedy of which Mel Brooks was a master when he was in the mood.
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