The Producers (1968)
Directed by Mel Brooks

Film Review

Today Mel Brooks' debut feature The Producers is considered one of the all-time comedy classics of American cinema but when it was first seen in 1968 it was generally ill-received, and was almost never released because the bosses at Executive Pictures feared it may cause offence.  Brooks' irreverent humour, which took a sledgehammer to some of Hollywood's most durable taboos (notably the depiction of Hitler as a comedy character), is relentless and this is by far his funniest film, rivalled only by his subsequent comedy masterpieces Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974).

The pairing of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder for the lead roles is as mad as it is inspired and the result has to be one of the most memorable comedy double acts in American cinema (Wilder was a last minute replacement for Dustin Hoffman, who was lured away to star in The Graduate).  A comedy heavyweight (in every sense of the term), Mostel is at the height of his powers, having recently triumphed on stage in Fiddler on the Roof - he is relentlessly over-the-top, and side-splittingly hilarious with it.  Wilder is equally on form as the hyper-neurotic accountant and is the perfect foil for Mostel's comic excesses, supported by Kenneth Mars as the maniac Nazi and Christopher Hewett as the camp director from Hell.  Brooks' comic screenwriting - which takes zaniness and political incorrectness to new, hitherto unimaginable heights - is rarely performed with as much verve and panache as it his here.  The highlight of the film is inevitably the play within the play - an uproarious musical celebrating the achievements of the Third Reich.  Even Hitler would have seen the funny side.

Despite the barrage of negative reviews and its limited distribution (the film was, bizarrely, banned in Germany), The Producers won Brooks an Oscar for its screenplay.  Its standing has risen considerably since its first release and the film is now almost universally acknowledged as a comedy classic.  It was made into a successful Broadway musical in 2001 and then sympathetically remade in 2005, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the lead roles.  Despite the muted reaction to his first feature, Mel Brooks was undeterred and went on to make another ten riotous comedy films, many of which are highly regarded despite their propensity for near-the-knuckle vulgarity and tendency to kick the stuffing out of American society's most sacred cows.  The Producers, however, is in a class of its own - the most outrageously funny satire of life on Broadway you will ever see, or will ever want to see.  All together now: "Springtime for Hitler and Germany, U-boats are sailing once more...

© James Travers 2012

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Next Mel Brooks film:
The Twelve Chairs (1970)

Film Synopsis

Theatre producer Max Bialystock was once the King of Broadway, but now he is reduced to catering to the whims of over-sexed little old ladies to finance his stage plays.  He is naturally aghast when his neurotic accountant Leo Bloom finds an error in his accounts.  It appears that on his last play Bialystock raised two thousand dollars more than he spent on the production; when the play failed to turn a profit, he pocketed the excess.  Bloom immediately hits on a sure-fire way to make a fortune.  All that Bialystock has to do is find a play that has no chance of being a success and then raise far more money (from his geriatric admirers) than he needs to stage the doomed play.  The scheme appears foolproof.  Bialystock finds what he considers to be the worst play ever written (a musical comedy about the Third Reich entitled Springtime For Hitler), he hires the worst director in the world and casts a spaced-out hippy for the role of Adolf Hitler.  The play, a monument to bad taste and mediocrity, can only fail.  Unfortunately, Bialystock's audience sees things differently...