Clever, bald, crazy, fast, funny and funny!

Rating: 7/10 (10 May 2011)

The Producers (1968)
I had forgotten how really funny parts of this movie are. It sometimes is too shouty for me, or a little just obvious in its step by stepping through disaster, but Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel are truly amazing, both outrageous and subtle, a stunning combination.
It might be hard to view the movie in the light of 1968. It has some of the 1960s mad-cap element, mixed with Jewish Broadway humor, with a dash of New Hollywood liberalism thrown in. Influences of late Billy Wilder and early Woody Allen can't be dismissed, but in a way this is Mel Brooks himself coming to his own. His background in Catskills resort stand-up is clear, but he interweaves a cogent plot in a way that we'll see many times later, almost with a Marx Brothers logic (or illogic?). No, call it logic. This movie depends on actually making absurd sense in the end.
Mostel of course had a whole incredible career of his own, including in Woody Allen's "The Front" in 1976. And Wilder has a kind of legendary fame for his leading role in "Willy Wonka" in 1971 (though his career had a small kick from the seminal "Bonnie and Clyde" in 1967).
In some ways the over the top (of course) idiosyncrasies of two side kicks help make the film the farce it is. Dick Shawn as a kind of drugged out Elvis imitator named L.S.D. (playing Hitler of course) is perfect, and so is Kenneth Mars as the German/Nazi/writer who had the whole idea of "Springtime for Hitler" in the first place. If you aren't laughing through some of these scenes you have a gene missing for this kind of New York hilarity.
The movie has taken on a different meaning now that the actually Broadway version (not a flop) was a fixture there for six (six!) years. The irony is plain, but the talent even more so. The movie is a funny take on the times (unlike the play, which is set in the 1950s) and so has a weird kind of authenticity to it. Not that you care one bit. It's just belly laughs all the way.