***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn, Christopher Hewitt, Andreas Voutsinas, William Hickey and Lee Meredith
Directed & written by Mel Brooks
1968
88 min PG
The driving force behind the scoundrels of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” is not greed, but sadness. If humor is based on cruelty and comedians are desperate to make others laugh to fill their own sad hearts, then it should come as no surprise that great comedies are built on great melancholy. The hero of “The Producers” is an aging theatrical producer who has fallen from great heights (or at least imagines that he has). Even his name—Bialystock!—demands attention, and worse than his poverty is his anonymity. His partner-in-crime, the meek young Bloom, is terrified of the world and seeks solace in his baby blanket and in the orderliness of accounting. He is secretly embittered toward and envious of everyone who has while he has not, and it takes a man like Bialystock, who used to have everything, to unleash Bloom’s timid id. Even Liebkin, the movie’s mad Nazi playwright, is driven by his heartbreak over the fall of the Third Reich and his desire to exonerate his beloved Fuhrer, although calling him sympathetic is something of a stretch.
Bialystock and Bloom are played to zany perfection by that bacchanal giant Zero Mostel and the always sad-eyed Gene Wilder. The first is blustery, booming, larger than life, and sporting the sorriest comb-over in the history of the movies. Bialystock always sounds like he’s quoting something even when he’s not, and his phony puppy dog eyes thinly veil a scoundrel’s heart. Bloom is scared of his own shadow and coughs when he wants someone’s attention. When this fails him in his opening scene, he actually says the word “cough.” The scheme they hatch is to raise a million dollars to make a $50,000 play and keep the remainder. If the play is a flop, Bloom explains, then no one will ever check the books. So they keep their eyes peeled for the worst script, the worst director, and the worst cast, and what they find is a pack of weirdos.
The play is “Springtime for Hitler,” the work of Leibkin (Kenneth Mars), a deranged helmet-wearing pigeon-keeper with a grudge against Churchill. Bialystock predicts the show will not only flop on opening night but will close by the script’s fourth page. In a film of great leads balanced by terrific supporting performances, Mars’ Nazi is a grimacing, spitting, over-the-top joy. (The part was, amazingly, intended for diminutive actor Dustin Hoffmann, who ended up in some movie called “The Graduate” or something instead.) The worst director is Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewitt), a drag queen who is thrilled by what he calls all the historical tidbits in the script (“I never knew the Third Reich meant Germany!”). It’s his decision, and supported by his boyfriend Carmen Giya (Andreas Voutsinas) to pump up the show with a few songs and kicks. Hired to play Hitler is a drug-addict (Dick Shawn) that showed up for the wrong audition. His personality is somewhere on the spectrum between hippie and beatnik, and he consistently fails to realize that Hitler never thought of anything as “groovy.” Bialystock’s navigation of the world of Broadway has the feel of authenticity, although I have no way of knowing.
That “Springtime for Hitler” ends up being interpreted as a mockery of Nazism and is a huge hit should not come as a surprise. Our producers’ entire enterprise has the spirit of something neither man really expects to see succeed. But they are so despondent that they build themselves a pleasant little fantasy just to feel on top for a while. Bialystock renovates his rundown office and hires a bimbo secretary (Lee Meredith), while wet-blanket Bloom is happy for the first time in his life.
To imply that there is something of a romance between Bloom and Bialystock is not beyond the pale. When the bimbo jiggles in front of them Bloom makes it a point to put his hands on Bialystock’s shoulders. The director and his boyfriend make Bloom distinctly uncomfortable, his apology and reconciliation with Bialystock after a squabble involves a lot of eye contact, and his courtroom defense of the older man is touching. Even the DVD “making of” documentary refers to Bialystock’s attempts to coerce Bloom into the scheme as a “seduction.” Perhaps the funniest hint is in the one and only deleted scene available on the DVD. It comes from Leibkin as he explains the working of an electric detonator: “with people, the male goes with the female, but with electricity, the male goes with the male.” His open-mouthed, supremely suggestive wink is just priceless.
That “The Producers” has been turned into a real-life Broadway musical should not come as a surprise either. John Morris’ score for the film is Broadway all the way and every note and kick in “Springtime for Hitler” is gloriously over-the-top. Everyone in the film seems ready to break into song and everyone has the kind of quickly summarized motivations that match the surreal world of the musical. Brooks’ portrayal of the drag-queen director and his black-clad little buddy—who looks surprisingly like a Klingon from the old “Trek” series—may not play the same now as it did then, but I imagine the recent musical makes them eccentric first and gay second.
Brooks is a clean, uncluttered director, although current audiences may find “The Producers” a little on the slow side as far as comedies go (the movie’s opening scene runs almost 25 minutes). Some of its humor might come across as funnier in principle than in execution—more likely to cause grins and smiling sighs than belly laughs—but this, I suspect, is a testament to how much of “The Producers’” innovation has been copied. Like “The French Connection,” “The Producers” was so successful in its day that its moves have been copied and copied and copied, until the jaded viewer might mistakenly think the progenitor has lost some of its bite.
But there are two attractions to “The Producers” that will probably never date. The movie plays, albeit indirectly, off that indignation we feel when we see previews for mediocre movies (like “Half Past Dead” and “Cradle 2 The Grave”) that will only play in first-run theaters for a couple of weeks. It is that indignation that sparks us to wonder, does someone out there get more money when movies are bad than when they’re good? The other great message to be found in the trials of Bialystock and Bloom is the empathy we feel for two men who have given up on succeeding, and who want to turn failing, with which they are so much more intimate anyway, into their ultimate triumph.
Finished March 8, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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