The Producers
USA, 1968, G, 88 min. Director: Mel Brooks. Stars: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder.
Okay, so you may not have heard of it, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a film as funny as The Producers, Mel Brooks's movie-directing debut after his runaway TV success with Get Smart. Unlike most of his later output, The Producers is neither spoof nor pastiche: his script, in fact, beat 2001: A Space Odyssey for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar that year. And it's a corker. Mostel and a deliciously pathetic Wilder star as a down-on-his-luck Broadway producer and a wimpish accountant who put together a scheme to make a fortune by over-selling shares in a play that's guaranteed to fail on its first night. The lucky candidate is Springtime for Hitler, the insane meisterwork of a pigeon-fancying old Nazi who's kept a flame burning for his Fuhrer ("vot a painter!") all these years. And to really nail it they make it a musical, with a dazzling Busby Berkeley opening number that'll have you tapping your toes and humming along like a goose-stepping young Aryan at Nuremberg.
Brooks has matched The Producers since, but he's never bettered it; Mostel is fantastic, and Gene Wilder makes you see what all the fuss was originally about (The Woman in Red it ain't). It's the perfect end to the university year.
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1994 First published in a reviews booklet of the ANU Film Group. |
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