Often Hilarious Mel Brooks Comedy.

Rating: 7/10 (12 October 2009)

It's the first movie that Mel Brooks directed and it's a qualified success. There are at least as many belly laughs as in most of his later works. And the production gets bonus points for being sui generis. It's not a satire of Westerns or historical epics or silent movies. It's an original story. Generic conventions provide a kind of springboard from which to launch a spectacular send up. It's almost too easy.
Want to satirize a traditional Western? Have the African-American laborers break into an a capella version of a Cole Porter standard. Throw in other anachronisms and allusions to contemporary issues. Funny but easy.
Brooks the writer didn't have any such facile tactics at his command here because the plot was built of more or less novel elements from the ground up.
Zero Mostel is a selfish and materialistic Broadway producer, down on his luck, who enlists the help of the shy and chronically anxious accountant Gene Wilder to bilk money out of rich little old ladies. The idea is to sell each of their ancient backers a large percentage of the profit from a play, but to make the play a total failure and keep the extra money for themselves. Why would the Internal Revenue Service be interested in the books of a play that folded on Night One? So they buy a thoroughly rotten play from a Nazi writer, played by Kenneth Mars, a musical celebration of the Third Reich that glorifies Hitler. Of course, there is always the risk of being caught and sent to jail. If, for instance, the play should be a hit they would have no way of paying off their investors.
Mostel: "Bloom, how much of the play can we sell?" Wilder: "Max, you can't sell more than a hundred percent of anything." Mostel: "And how much of 'Springtime for Hitler' did we sell?" Wilder: "Twenty-five thousand percent." The movie has yocks galore. Both Mostel and Wilder have immensely expressive face. In a bar, they are joined for one scene by the marvelous Bill Hickey.
But Mostel sometimes goes too far. He shouts, screams, makes gargoyle faces, jumps up and down, and the effort shows. And Wilder is forced to do much the same, weeping, shivering, ululating, shrieking gibberish. Kenneth Mars rarely reaches such a pitch of hysteria but he's consistently high on the scale from beginning to end. Dick Shawn plays Hitler and the audience, having second thoughts while walking out, finds him side splitting. I didn't. The best thing about Shawn's overdone performance is his singing the lyrics of Mel Brooks' song, "Flower Power" -- "Then he flush her down the sewer with the yukkk runnin' through her...."
Some of the jokes, too, are dated. In 1968, commercial films were in a transitional state and, despite his brazenness, Brooks shades his gags on the cautious side. LSD is alluded to, there is no marijuana, and homosexuality is implied rather than openly exploited.
But when the performances and dialog aren't over the top, they're absurdly funny. Mostel falling asleep on the doorstep while waiting for one of his paranoid patronesses to undo the dozens of locks on her apartment door. And the expressions on Mostel's and Wilder's faces in the theater when they realize the audience is applauding rapturously are unforgettable.