The Twelve Chairs

Plot synopsis:
In the Soviet Union in 1927, a former Marshal of Nobility, Ippolit Matveyevich "Kisa" Vorobyaninov, works as the registrar of marriages and deaths in a sleepy provincial town. His mother-in-law reveals on her deathbed that her family jewelry was hidden from the Bolsheviks in one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set. Those chairs, along with all other personal property, were taken away by the Communists after the Russian Revolution. Vorobyaninov wants to find the treasure. The “smooth operator” and con-man Ostap Bender forces Kisa to become his partner, they set out to find the chairs. Bender's street smarts and charm are invaluable to the reticent Kisa, and Bender comes to dominate the enterprise.
The "conсessioners" find the chairs, which are to be sold at auction in Moscow. They fail to buy them; they learn afterwards that the chairs have been split up for resale individually. Roaming over all of Russia in their quest to recover the chairs, they have a series of comic adventures, including living in a students' dormitory with plywood walls, posing as bill painters on a riverboat to earn passage, bamboozling a village chess club with promises of an international tournament, and traveling on foot through the mountains of Georgia. Father Fyodor (who had known of treasure from the confession of Vorobyaninov's mother-in-law), their obsessed rival in the hunt for the treasure, follows a bad lead, runs out of money and loses his sanity. Ostap remains unflappable, and his mastery of human nature eliminates all obstacles, but Vorobyaninov steadily deteriorates.
They slowly acquire each of the chairs, but no treasure is found. Kisa and Ostap finally discover the location of the last chair. Vorobyaninov murders Ostap to keep all the loot for himself, but discovers that the jewels have already been found and used to build the new public recreation center in which the chair was found, a symbol of the new society. Vorobyaninov also loses his sanity.
The novel, though short, resonates with all the important events of the time. Numerous side characters, places and institutions are caught in a sharp light, sometimes of satire, sometimes of gentle irony: the operations of a Moscow newspaper, the 3% government bonds, New Economic Policy decadence and so on. The two main characters, among other things, are social types: the déclassé Bender is an individualist foreign to both the old, discredited hierarchy of birthright, epitomized by Vorobyaninov, and the new Communist order. A sort of Reynard the Fox specific to the time and setting, Bender claims to know “four hundred comparatively honest ways of relieving the people of their money,” and he has no future in the Soviet Union.

Tags: comedy

Review:
Ron Moody (Fagin in the musical OLIVER) is a minor Tsarist nobleman who discovers, when attending his mother-in-law on her death bed, that she hid her fortune in jewelry in one of the dining room chairs.
Moody discovers that his mother-in-law did confess this to one person besides him: the local Russian Orthodox Priest (Dom DeLuise).
As Mel Brooks films go, I rate it second only to Young Frankenstein.
Ron Moody is marvelous as a low IQ and totally inept former nobleman, now hiding out as a clerk in a government office, who learns that the family jewels had been sewn into one of the 12 dining room chairs.
He returns to his former residence, now an old folks home, and learns from former servant, now janitor, Mel Brooks that the chairs are gone, confiscated by the government.
A long time ago, Mel Brooks had a subtle side.Hard to believe, isn't it?
But not the way we're use to seeing Mel earn them.This, time, he gets them through character study, human nature, individuals' reactions to certain embarrassing situations and, of course, good old-fashioned greed.
This film, subtle as it is, makes me laugh.Of course, for purists, there's always good old DeLuise as another conniver searching for the same jewels.
Knowing that Mel Brooks usually makes the silliest movies possible, it's a surprise that he directed the lightweight comedy "The Twelve Chairs".
It portrays a former Czarist (Ron Moody, happy birthday!) and a young soldier (Frank Langella) looking for some jewels hidden in chairs in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
I haven't read the novel, but the movie is worth seeing, if only as a look at Brooks's early career.
Having read the original Russian novel and being a fan of Mel Brooks, I was curious how the two would come together.
The film disappoints on both counts - there's precious little of the original in it, and Brooks isn't at his best here either.
Moody is actually OK as Vorobyaninov, but the casting of Langella as Bender is just plain wrong, as he cannot possibly convey the depth and subtlety of the original character.
Fans of Mel Brooks' 'The Producers' will find particular delight in 'The Twelve Chairs'; the two are of a distinctly different style than the more biting parodies that make up his later works.'The Twelve Chairs' is not a new story, even by 1970 standards.
His adventures as he is sidetracked to Siberia by the self-described 'handsome young desperado' Ostap Bender (Frank Langella) are funny and completely in character.What makes 'The Twelve Chairs' different is its human side.
The former Russian nobleman I.M. Vorobyaninov is portrayed by Ron Moody perfectly: now reduced to a file clerk, he still lives in his pre-Revolutionary past, flatly refusing to beg when he and Bender are down to their last few rubles and still in pursuit of the chairs.
These elements make 'The Twelve Chairs' more like 'The Producers' than 'High Anxiety,' and a film worthy of a listing with Brooks' best..
THE TWELVE CHAIRS is a different kind of Mel Brooks comedy.
Its story, from a Russian novel by Ilf and Petrov, will seem very tasteful and human to those who are acquainted with Brooks' usual raunchiness.
Ron Moody and Frank Langella star, with Dom DeLuise and a special appearance by Mel Brooks as Tikon..
The Twelve Chairs Years after the Russian Revolution in 1917, the former aristocrat Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) is informed by his terminal mother-in- law that she has hidden her jewels in a the upholstery of chair from a set of twelve chairs.
Will Vorobyaninov and Ostap find the twelve chairs?"The Twelve Chairs" is a typical Mel Brooks' comedy with the usual type of humor with a satire to the Russian Revolution.
Fans of Mel Brooks will certainly like it, but who is not his fan may not find this comedy entertaining.
I rented this film because it was the only Mel Brooks movie I hadn't seen.
And it's not exactly like all other Mel Brooks movies.
If you like Mel Brooks I recommend this film to you.
Ron Moody (who is best remember as Fagin in 'Oliver' on film and on the West End and Broadway)is superb.
The script is loosely based on a novel in Russian which originally did not center on treasure hunt but rather on the picturesque characters surrounding the three losers who could not fit in the new life.I decided to watch this as the only Mel Brooks film never seen before.
The original material was not without flaws but it was mostly satire and drama, which was totally left out of this film.Seeing Dom DeLuise and Frank Langella 40 years younger was a surprise!
Brooks may be a good director, whatever, the facts are that American nation will never understand the classic Russian humor the way it's meant to be.The Russian 1971 version of 12 chairs together with "adventures of Shurik" is widely considered to be simply the best Russian comedy of all time.
The details differ significantly from Ilf & Petrov's novel; fewer people die, and certain issues aren't addressed (such as why Engineer Bruns had the chairs in Yalta; it looked at first like he was on vacation.) The characterisation was a little off; Ostap Bender was far less of a convincing drifter than would have been optimal (far too cleanshaven, and the actor was very obviously Acting, if you know what I mean), Father Fyodor shouldn't have been played by Dom Deluise, and otherwise many aspects were unsatisfying.
Brooks here shows none of the talent he would later display in films like "Blazing Saddles" or "Young Frankenstein." I really hated this film and can't imagine what parts anyone laughed at..
The Twelve Chairs is not one of Mel Brooks's funniest comedies, but then again it IS a Russian based comedy, where big laughs are as hard to find as a tropical climate.
This film does, however, display the director actually able to really tell a good story, and act as storyteller with characters in a plot to care about.
Perhaps if you're die-hard into Russian history it might serve more for the in-jokes and the well-captured reality of the times.The acting is good, and the main cast is well placed, even if too not the best work is turned in.
Frank Langella is definitely very good as the straight 'handsome desperado' character to Ron Moody's crazy old man, as he is an actor who maybe pulls out one good joke in the film.
At the end, I felt I hadn't seen the great sleeper of a career, but a fun enough romp that has good intentions for something different- and what's more 'different' than a comedy set in Russia..
This is the best Mel Brooks comedy, in my opinion.
To see this movie is to wonder where along the line Brooks lost the ability to weave the elements of hilarity, good story, and excellent acting into a tapestry that does not offend the viewer.
At one time this was the great lost Brooks film.
Regardless of one's personal opinion, The Twelve Chairs marks the transition to Brooks's most popular and successful period, and is of interest for that reason.I was also curious to see this one because it's based on Ilf and Petrov's hard-to-find book, considered a Soviet classic, and often mentioned in overviews of Russian literature.
(I should really know more about that aspect since my IMDb ID is a character from Pushkin.) I hadn't realized the book had inspired so many productions until I browsed the IMDb.So for a couple of different reasons, I've always wanted to see The Twelve Chairs, hoping it would be in the manic style of The Producers.
I hope so.The actors are really all pretty good, especially Frank Langella -- it's such a shame that they have so little in the way of a script to work with.These situations could be funnier in more talented hands.
OK perhaps I'm a bit biased as I saw the 12 Chairs as a kid at the Gateway Theater in Chicago, a favorite treat of ours to stay up extra late.I saw this film again not long after learning Russian and still love it!
Well, one theory is that Russia has been so unhappy, and has had such bad leaders, for so long, that the Russians have had to move on from that, and be happy any way.) Our family has spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe, and we all love this movie.
Mel Brooks directed four of the funniest movies ever made, and this is one of them.
This movie is by Mel Brooks and so of course it has very some funny moments.
His crazy movies such as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs have earned him his own sub-genre in the world of comedy films.
I purchased a boxed set of Mel Brooks' biggest hits because I'd somehow gone more than thirty years without watching BLAZING SADDLES and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, and among the titles I was unfamiliar with I found THE TWELVE CHAIRS.
This movie stands out from the rest because it wasn't the sort of Brooks film I'd come to expect.
It tells the tale of a former Russian aristocrat named Ippolit Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) whose family lost everything with the rise of the Soviet Union.
He's forced to team with a wandering conman named Ostap Bender (a young Frank Langella in his first big screen role) and the two of them race to find the chair before a corrupt priest (Dom DeLuise), who learned of the jewels from the dying mother during her final confession, can find them for his own selfish gains.
Hot on their trails is Dom DeLuise as Father Fyodor, who is the more traditionally cartoonish character we expect from a Brooks film.
Mel Brooks also pops into the film for a quick in-and-out cameo as Vorobyaninov's drunken, sycophantic former servant Tikon, giving him the chance to steal the spotlight for a moment with his larger-than-life style.
In 1920s Soviet Russia, a fallen aristocrat, a priest and a con artist search for a treasure of jewels hidden inside one of twelve dining chairs, lost during the revolution.I honestly don't even know if I heard of this movie before I picked up a copy of Mel Brooks' blu-ray box set.
Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."Wiser words were never spoken--or promoted from theory to application as well as in Mel Brooks' adaptation of Ilf and Petrov's Russian novel, "The Twelve Chairs."The confession of a dying woman--that she's hidden jewels in one of twelve chairs--finds its way into the ears of three very different, but equally greedy, men.
And lastly, there's Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise), who seems less a product of seminary school than clown college.As with many of Mel Brooks' films, there's the foreground comedy and the background comedy, working simultaneously to their mutual benefit.
Also, there's a hilarious theater troupe advertisement which reads, "Hamlet and the October Revolution by William Shakespeare and Ivan Poppov," in reference to Communism's "everything belongs to everybody" philosophy.While Langella is restricted to playing the straight man, both Moody and DeLuise are given total freedom to writhe, stretch their faces beyond the norm, and shout so much gibberish that by the end of the film, I think I began to understand.
Ippolit Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) is a poor Russian aristocrat who is told by his dying mother-in-law that she hid her jewels in one of her twelve chairs which are now gone.
I never saw other Mel Brooks movies but as Tikhon he is close to zero as an actor which is pretty much recommendation for his "talent".
It has it's funny moments, but Brooks spends a fair amount of time actually trying to remain faithful to the original 1928 Russian novel, which is to his credit.I just recently watched "12+1," aka "The Thirteen Chairs," which was a 1970 French/Italian co-production.
Other film versions have been made in Cuba, Germany, and Argentina.Brooks' version does have it's humorous moments, mostly when Dom DeLuise or Mel Brooks are on screen.
OK so the greatest comedy of all time may not actually be a perfect film, but it is the only truly dumb comedy that actually transcends the great Russian literature that inspired it.Brooks once said that he needed BIG thinking to inspire him and this movie is that rare thing a political comedy that actually works.It is also a buddy movie, road movie, theological treatise(GOD YOU'RE SO STRICT) and ultimately a love story that climaxes with the main protaganist faking a brain disorder.This film works on many levels and how many broad comedys truly do that, even Woody Allen repeatedly tried and failed.Hope for the best, expect the worst, enjoy this movie..
For a Mel Brooks movie, far from the best.
I am not familiar with either Mel Brooks or with the original book so I did not know what to expect.
The Twelve Chairs stands out as an odd fish among his work.Although it has some very funny moments it doesn't quite come off as well as The Producers or Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein.
Perhaps it was because Brooks was not creating his own original work, but was filming a play from another source, a novel The Twelve Chairs by Soviet Union authors Ilyiu and Petrova.Former aristocrat Ron Moody who was quite lucky to be alive after the Russian Revolution hears a death bed confession from his mother that the family fortune is in jewels that the Bolesheviks didn't get, but was hidden in one of twelve parlor chairs the family owned.
The Soviets confiscated the furniture and sold it to benefit the new government.Moody teams up with young gentleman thief Frank Langella to try and find the one chair with the loot.
They have a rival in fake Russian Orthodox priest Dom DeLuise also looking for the chair with the swag.Moody steals the show in this one, thinking about the lost life he once had and that the chair will gain it back for him in some measure, he becomes positively more manic as the film continues.
His performance is a whole lot like Zero Mostel's in The Producers.Still The Twelve Chairs is not what I've come to expect from Mel Brooks.
Ron Moody and Frank Langella are wonderful as the beggar duo and have some tender moments - especially for a Mel Brooks movie.
His slapstick comedy relief contrasts nicely the more philosophical nature of the film.Granted, it's not true to the original book, but remember that this is a Mel Brook's film!
I saw this in 1970 when it first came out and have remembered it, and love it, ever since.Ron Moody, Dom and Frank each gave top notch performances both in comedy and action.
It's nothing compared to other Mel Brooks's films.
The second film that Mel Brooks directed after " The Producers" (1968)and this is loved by some and scorned by others.
THE TWELVE CHAIRS (Mel Brooks, 1970) **1/2.
I had first watched this as a kid on Italian TV and it must have seemed very different to me than the typical Mel Brooks film (after all, THE TWELVE CHAIRS was only his second outing) but, back then, I wasn't familiar with THE PRODUCERS (1968) either; it was with his next effort, BLAZING SADDLES (1974), that Brooks really found a congenial formula, i.e. parody, which would occupy most of his subsequent career.This was adapted from a popular Russian source much filmed over the years all over the world: in Britain as KEEP YOUR SEATS, PLEASE (1937), with George Formby (which I have just acquired but, alas, don't have time to watch at present), in the Hollywood as IT'S IN THE BAG (1945), co-starring Jack Benny, the international production 12+1 (1969) featuring the last appearance of the ill-fated Sharon Tate and a starry cast (Vittorio Gassman, Orson Welles, Terry-Thomas, etc.) and there's even a Cuban version from 1962 by Tomas Gutierrez Alea (which has recently been released on R2 DVD but which I have yet to acquire).
Brooks' version, then, is the only one I know of to utilize the original Russian setting which, in spite of generally amusing (if overly familiar) situations, rather makes for a dreary-looking film.
His co-stars are a dashing Frank Langella (who, incidentally, I watched performing on a London stage in January 2007 and might well be up for an Academy Award next February in Ron Howard's film adaptation of that very play I saw him in, i.e. FROST/NIXON) as a wily schemer, who plays it straight but is equally effective, and Dom DeLuise as the greedy priest to whom Moody's relative has confessed before expiring; I suppose that his hysterical shtick and zany antics seemed funny at the time but it's rather overbearing to watch nowadays.
This is actually a serious movie with Brooks wackiness as a "topping." Because the plot is kind of wild it almost serves as a Mel Brooks type of story.
"Hope for the best, expect the worst." That pretty much sums up the movie, which will disappoint his fans who like "Blazing Saddles" and so forth.
Also, while adding a new character to the story was not necessarily a bad idea, Dom DeLuise's priest was, at times, over the top and didn't fit with the mood set by the rest of the film.
I loved his writing and directing, but his best films had him barely in them (such as "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein").Now I have criticized the film quite a bit--but there is a lot to like and I think it's one of Brooks' better films.
It was catchy, summed up the film well and I found myself humming it after the movie was over.Finally, I liked the relationship between Moody and Frank Langella--particularly at the end of the movie.
Going for a sentimental ending with some pathos was a great idea--and ending it like the novel would have been just awful.Overall, while I am sure many would disagree, I think that apart from "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein" this was Brooks' best film.