SILENT MOVIE 1976

Were I to try to pinpoint the origin of my lifelong indifference to silent films, my best guess would be my traumatized reaction to the opening sequence of that '60s TV show Silents Please, when I was just an impressionable tyke. Silents Please was a half-hour TV program highlighting films and stars of the silent era. It ran in reruns on Sunday afternoons but never, it seems, at scheduled times I could avoid. It always popped up as a time-filler following a football game or (most terrifyingly) at night when I least expected it.

I don’t recall ever seeing an entire episode all the way through, for each episode began with a startling command from an unseen announcer intoning "Silents Please!" (a pun I didn’t appreciate then and don’t appreciate now), which was my cue to high-tail it out of the living room before the unspooling of the opening montage of silent movie clips which featured a quick “reveal” of Lon Chaney in full The Phantom of the Opera drag. It scared the hell out of me. The nightmares it inspired kept even comic silent movies off my radar for much of my childhood, an antipathy that stayed with me well into maturity.

The Three Silent Stooges
Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), and Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman)

In later years, when I was going to film school, my wholesale disinterest in classic films of the silent era made me a majority of one among my peers. I saw and studied a great many silent movies in Film History class, but in the end, I remained impressed, yet unmoved. I appreciated what they were able to achieve with no dialogue and such low-tech equipment, but I never responded to the films themselves, finding the silence to be distancing, not engaging.

It was during these college years that Mel Brooks released Silent Movie, a contemporary silent film fashioned as a Hollywood spoof and affectionate homage to the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Mack Sennett, and Hal Roach. Child of '70s cinema that I am, naturally this was the first silent film I remember ever taking a liking to. 

Touted as the first feature-length silent film to be made in over forty years, 20^th Century Fox released Silent Movie at the height of Mel Brook’s popularity. Following the blockbuster success of Brooks’ western spoof Blazing Saddles, and his horror spoof Young Frankenstein, former television gag writer Mel Brooks, was hailed by critics and audiences alike as the king of motion picture comedy. Rather remarkably, both films (directed and co-written by Brooks) came out in the same year. At the close of 1974, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein occupied the  #1 and #4 slots, respectively, on the list of the year's top boxoffice moneymakers.
Prior to his late-blooming emergence as the comic voice of the '70s, my only familiarity with Brooks was as the writer/director of one of my favorite comedies - The Producers (1967); the co-creator of one of my favorite TV shows - Get Smart; and for that 2000 Year Old Man skit he performed with Carl Reiner that I never really thought was all that funny. Anyhow, by the mid-'70s, EVERYBODY was talking about Mel Brooks, and at 50 years of age, he was suddenly a hit with the hip, college crowd. Naturally, with such a high degree of success, Brooks could virtually write his own ticket when it came to his next film. Sort of.

When Brooks announced his follow-up project was to be a silent film, the natural assumption was that it was to be a film in the vein of its predecessors—a period-accurate recreation of a 1920s-era silent film with doses of irreverent, slightly raunchy, contemporary comedy. Perhaps because director Peter Bogdanovich had already begun production on his own comic film set in the early days of silent movies (Nickelodeon - 1976), Brooks opted to make a contemporary silent film set in the Hollywood of 1976. Its objective: to poke fun at the motion picture industry and gently spoof the comedies of yesteryear. 

Vilma Kaplan: A Bundle of Lust
Bernadette Peters, in what could be called the Madeline Kahn role, as the seductress
hired by Engulf & Devour to corrupt Mel Funn

Since Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein had each successfully launched two of the most valuable players in the Mel Brooks repertory off into careers of their own (Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn), their inability to participate in Brooks' follow-up project was a hurdle audiences were eager to see if Brooks (casting himself in his first lead role) could surmount.

Silent Movie’s premise casts Mel Brooks as Mel Funn, a once brilliant movie director whose career has hit the skids due to alcoholism. Hoping to make a comeback, Funn pitches his idea of making a modern-day silent movie to the head of Big Pictures Studio (Sid Caesar). After initially rejecting the suggestion, the failing studio, desperate for a hit to avoid a takeover by NY conglomerate Engulf & Devour, relents after Mel promises he can fill his movie with big-name stars. Funn, with the help of his two associates Bell & Eggs (DeLuise & Feldman), thus embarks on a slapstick quest to secure the biggest names in Hollywood for new his silent movie.

Art Imitates Life
Silent Movie actually spoofs Mel Brooks' real-life efforts to get a studio
 interested in his making this silent movie

As a follow-up to the phenomenon that was Young Frankenstein, the level of anticipation and expectation surrounding the release of Silent Movie was both its blessing and its curse. Folks expecting the envelope-pushing effrontery of Blazing Saddles or the technically impeccable lunatic genius of Young Frankenstein were forced to content themselves with a genial, sometimes hilarious, mostly hit-and-miss, comedy that delivered a good time, but not really much else.
There were gentle jibes at silent movies (verbose exchanges translated in terse title cards); satirical jabs at the movie business (a sign on an executive's door reads "Current Studio Chief"); and sight gags galore. But it was all rather safe and old-fashioned. In fact, none of the jokes would have looked out of place on a typical episode of Get Smart, and that had gone off the air in 1970.

When Mel falls off the wagon, his friends embark on a search for him accompanied by the usual cliche dissolves of neon-lit nightspot signs. Only this time capped with a Brooks-ian touch of the unexpected

People went to see Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles multiple times, wanting to relive favorite comic moments or catch bits of business missed the first time out. Conversely, Silent Movie was a pretty straightforward affair. All the laughs are accessible, obvious, and intentionally broad. Much in the same way that suspense in a horror film can be sustained even after multiple viewings, while “gotcha” scare moments in horror are effective only once; Silent Movie’s funny but unsubtle slapstick and vaudeville-level mugging didn’t invite a lot of repeat business. 

While failing to live up to the success of its predecessors, Silent Movie was nevertheless a sizable hit, ranking #11 on boxoffice charts at the close of the year. Citing the silent movie angle as more gimmick than legitimate satirical target, critical and popular opinion varied as to the relative merit of the enterprise as a whole. Most willing to forgive the film's elemental inconsequence in favor of applauding what clearly was a labor of love for Brooks; an affectionate valentine to the comics and style of comedy that inspired him in his youth.

Sid Caesar as The Studio Chief
Mel Brooks got his start as one of the staff writers for Caesar's 1950s
variety program Your Show of Shows

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I’m from the generation raised on Laugh-In style blackout comedy. I remember when it was business as usual for corny variety shows to encourage their movie star guests to “let their hair down” in groan-inducing, out-of-character skits and musical numbers. I grew up at a time when stand-up comics all had pseudo-ethnic, faux chummy/hilarious names like Shecky, Totie, Marty, Sandy, and Morty.

In short, I came from the era that produced Mel Brooks.

Hilarious in 1976, but meh in 2015
Now that ALL major movie studios are owned by conglomerates, this jab at the 1967 acquisition of Paramount by Gulf & Western Industries barely rates a smile 

Because my personal comedy tastes run towards the cornball and old-fashioned, I was perhaps less disappointed than many when Silent Movie came out and proved to be a film so tame it could have been made before The Producers. But even I had hoped for something more, even while acknowledging that Brooks’ experiment with the genre was largely successful and good for a few laughs. Not particularly memorable, retold over the water cooler at work, laughs...but laughs.

With its excellent wall-to-wall score (John Morris) of jaunty, amusingly responsive music;  hyperactive grab bag of exaggerated sound effects; and its non-stop barrage of sight gags, blackout skits, and slapstick physical comedy; Silent Movie is as much a send-up of those old Warner Bros. cartoons as it is a take-off on silent-era comedies. 

"Poverty Sucks!" - "Yea for the Rich!"
Ron Carey as Devour / Harold Gould as Engulf

PERFORMANCES

With Silent Movie, Mel Brooks’ usually behind-the-scenes talents (with the occasional voiceover or cameo) are for the first time placed front and center, and, at least for me, the movie suffers for it. Brooks is an undeniably funny writer, gagman, and skit performer; but he’s no actor. And I don't think I ever grasped or appreciated how significant a role a good comic actor plays in making a motion picture work (Gene Wilder is the all-time best) until I watched what happened when a talented Catskills standup comic cast himself as a leading man. 

As an actor, Brooks is very much in line with the borscht belt comic Ernie Bernie (Sid Gould) from That Girl, or the woefully schticky comic played by Johnny Haymer in Annie Hall. They do bits of familiar comedy business and make with the funny faces, but they don't know how to bring a character to life. Brooks is the worst thing in the film. As cute as he is, every moment he's on is like when you're at an office party and the boss comes in trying to show you what an average Joe he is. Brooks plays his material almost like he's patting himself on the back for coming up with it.

Mel Brooks is too likable to actually spoil the film for me, but his lack of...what is it, lunacy? abandon?...seems to have the effect of muting the talents of Feldman and DeLuise. As much as I admire Mel Brooks as a comedy genius, I can honestly say Mel Brooks' films only began to suffer after Mel Brooks began starring in them.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The star cameos in Silent Movie are a great deal of fun and a major part of the attraction when the film was released (remember, this was the era of the disaster film, star casting was all the rage). Back in the 1970s, it was exhilarating to see these celebrities poking fun at their images. Now, I watch these sequences filled with a great deal of nostalgia. Not just because so many of its performers are no longer with us, but because the film is brimming with familiar faces. Comics, character actors, and TV personalities whose faces you recognize, but whose names you often don't know.

Ranking of celebrity cameos. Favorite to least-favorite:

1. Surrounded by gigolos, Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Mel Brooks for any youngsters out there) looks to be having a great deal of fun playing herself as a haughty movie star (she was the original choice to star in Mommie Dearest, and would have been great). Not only does she get to dance, but she dazzles us with her ability to cross her eyes...one at a time! 

2. Oddly enough, Burt Reynold's egotistical movie star bit plays much funnier now than it did in 1976. Back in the '70s, Burt was something of a male Jayne Mansfield and seemed to be on everything from Hollywood Squares to Johnny  Carson, nonstop. In each instance overworking the "egotistical star" bit to death. Fresh off the flop Lucky Lady with Liza Minnelli, Reynolds was nevertheless a really hot property at the time, with two other films in release in 1976 and Smokey and the Bandit just a year away.

3. Liza Minnelli, the star I most wanted to see in a Mel Brooks movie, is pretty much wasted in a segment requiring her to do little but react to the slapstick antics of Brooks, Feldman, and DeLuise (or their stunt doubles). Decked out in a costume from her Vincente Minnelli-directed flop-to-be A Matter of Time and rebounding from the debacle that was Lucky Lady, the Cabaret star wouldn't appear in another hit movie until 1981s Arthur. And she was only the co-star in that one!

4. What's Marty Feldman looking at there? Tough guy James Caan plays off his macho but dumb image in a brief physical comedy sequence involving an off-balance dressing room trailer. The sequence is cute, but doesn't have much impact.

5. A wheelchair-bound Paul Newman, looking ridiculously gorgeous at 50, spoofs his love of auto racing by leading Mel and his associates on a high-speed chase. Once again, an amusing sequence, but so reliant on stunt doubles, Newman winds up making a cameo in his cameo.

6. The use of legendary French mime Marcel Marceau in a silent movie is inspired and provided the film with one of its biggest laughs. But I'm afraid his brief sequence (whimsically involving walking against the wind to answer a phone) only reminds me of how simultaneously terrifying and annoying mimes can be.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS 

I don’t pretend to know how or why comedy works, but I know that a great many fondly remembered sequences from comedies work well for me precisely because they are silent. I’m no fan of Jerry Lewis, but his 1960 directing debut, The Bellboy, is a favorite because he keeps his mouth shut in it for all but the last scene. And while no one should be deprived of hearing Peter Sellers saying, “Birdie num num” in an Indian accent, Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968) is at its most uproarious when it’s silent.

Another Brooks-ian Sight Gag

When it comes to updates of the silent movie, Mel Brook’s Silent Movie doesn’t come anywhere near approaching the comic eloquence and grace of Michel Hazanvicius’ Oscar-winning silent film The Artist (2011); but Brooks gets points for being the first out of the gate and for succeeding in achieving what I honestly think were his modest goals. He made a funny little movie that said “Thank you” to the silent comics and filmmakers who inspired him to become a comedy legend himself. 

As for me, know I’ve grown fonder of silent movies over the years (Metropolis-1927, is a favorite), but I’ve still yet to garner the courage to watch  Lon Cheney's The Phantom of the Opera.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

I worked at a Honda dealership for a time in 1979, and Mel Brooks came in to the service department to pick up his car. I remember asking a co-worker for permission to temporarily hijack his job (escort the customer to his car) so I could talk to Brooks for a while and get his autograph.

BONUS MATERIAL
Here's the intro to the TV program, Silents Please.  I guess I scared easily as a kid.

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2015

GAMES 1967

Sometimes being a movie star just means having enough “brand name recognition” to bring to each movie a kind of distinct, firmly established name-association (a personality cachet, if you will) fully-formed and locked in place from a previous film. 

For example: to a large segment of the population Mia Farrow was and always will be Rosemary Woodhouse of Rosemary’s Baby. The films See No Evil (1971), The Haunting of Julia (1977) and the 2006 remake of The Omen all banked on the public associating Farrow with the macabre and horrific. None perhaps so blatantly or swiftly as Joseph Losey’s difficult-to-market 1968 psychological thriller Secret Ceremony, which was released only four months after Rosemary’s Baby opened. Although the film starred Hollywood heavyweights Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mitchum in their only screen pairing, ads emphasized what was then the film’s one sure-fire property: Mia  Farrow - “More haunted than in Rosemary’s Baby!” the posters screamed.  

Satan Place
 Occult rituals are just one of many perverse diversions in Games

After the success of Halloween (1978) critics began hailing director John Carpenter as a worthy successor to Alfred Hitchcock. Hoping to further encourage such comparisons, Carpenter cast perennially Hitchcock-associated actress Janet Leigh in a thoroughly arbitrary role in his 1980 film The Fog. Janet Leigh, who should be commended for not having turned the entirety of her latter years into one long series of stunt-casting parts cashing in on her iconic Psycho role, did allow her image to be exploited just one more time - in the 1998 Halloween sequel, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (check out IMDB’s Trivia section for details) although it must be said these nothing roles at least afforded her the opportunity to appear onscreen with real-life daughter Jamie Lee Curtis.

Desensitization
A well-appointed game room features violent Roy Lichtenstein pop-art and a pinball machine that awards points for driving fatalities

In 1968, if American audiences knew much about French film star Simone Signoret at all (and they didn't) it was on the strength of three films: her Oscar- winning role in Room at the Top (1959); her Oscar-nominated turn in Stanley Kramer’s prestige flop, Ship of Fools; and… most popularly and most likely, the highly acclaimed and influential thriller Diabolique (1955). Internet sources maintain that the starring role of Lisa Schindler, the mysterious visitor in Games, was originally written for Marlene Dietrich, and when producers balked, the role was offered to Jeanne Moreau, who also declined. All of which may well be true. But after looking at this clever thriller full of twists and mysterious turns, the overwhelming evidence leans towards my belief that Games was conceived and written expressly to capitalize on and exploit the American public’s familiarity with Signoret’s starring role in Clouzot’s bloodcurdling French chiller.

Simone Signoret as Lisa Schindler

Katharine Ross as Jennifer Montgomery

James Caan as Paul Montgomery

Like most good thrillers, the premise of Games is marvelously simple. A well-to-do but eccentric young couple  who like to engage in elaborate games and practical jokes (Caan and Ross) meets their match when a mysterious French stranger (guess who) enters their lives. The couple, both blasé dilettantes dabbling in chic nihilism, prove no match for the genuine article.

Brando-ish 70's TV stalwart, Don Stroud (who five years later would appear as a nude centerfold in Playgirl magazine) plays Norman, the oversexed box boy. Another player in Games 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Compensating perhaps for all those years of hyperactivity in my youth, I’ve discovered of late that I’m remarkably adroit at being sedentary. It's a revelation to me that in my dotage I find I no longer go in search of thrills, but prefer instead for my thrills come to me. Ill-disposed as I am to amusement park rides, fast cars, or any activity calling for the deployment of adrenaline, I have become a huge fan of armchair adventure. I love mysteries, suspense thrillers, horror films (horror as in dread, not gore) and movie plotting that stays one step ahead of me. Even when a film has plot twists which can be figured out if one really puts their mind to it (as some claim to be the case with Games), I so enjoy the big “reveal” in these kinds of movies that I've learned over the years how not to spoil my own fun. I employ a subtle form of self-hypnosis, allow the plot to unfold before me and just let myself surrender to the director’s pace, trying not to put the pieces of the puzzle together unless the film leads me there first.

Identity and Illusion

Games is almost theatrical in its construct, as it’s sparsely populated (four principal characters) and takes place primarily in a single location (the tony townhouse of Paul and Jennifer Montgomery). Tension is derived from the uneasiness of having a cast of characters, none of whom we’re told very much about but all overtly fond of playing mind-games, interacting in both real and contrived situations. As it becomes increasingly difficult to ascertain whether a game has begun, ended, or is underway, it soon dawns that the film itself is but another of the games. One that we in the audience (like several of the characters in the movie) weren't aware we were playing.

PERFORMANCES

Regrettably, for all the fun to be had in watching Games (like the 1972 film adaptation of Anthony Schaeffer’s Sleuth, its pleasures don’t diminish even after its surprises are revealed) I can’t say it’s a film one is likely to remember for the performances. In just a few short years the producers of Games probably wouldn't have been able to afford either Katharine Ross or James Caan, but at this point in their young careers the future superstars are shown visibly trying to find their footing in this stylish thriller. Though falling short of making me really feel for the plight of the caracters, I've no real complaint with the beautiful Katharine Ross who is always an appealingly natural presence and is, I think,  actually better here than she is in The Graduate. She definitely comes off much better than Caan, who seems a tad stiff trying to play an urbane sophisticate who's still a little rough around the edges. 

Simone Signoret claimed responsibility for bringing Katharine Ross to the attention of director Mike Nichols when he was casting The Graduate

The ever-watchable Simone Signoret has had many finer moments on the screen and has certainly been photographed to better advantage than she is here, but for me, she is a dynamic screen presence and gives the film the garvitas it most certainly needs. Acting-wise, little is demanded of her save to appear mysterious and give off an air of European ambiguity in the face of Yankee frankness; but she's one of those less-is-more actressess who don't require showy display. She's fine as she is merely exuding style and a kind of debauched regalness.

Something Wicked This Way Comes?
Oddly unsettling artwork (Roy Lichtenstein?) dominates this shot and adds a sense of apprehension and danger to the scene

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Paul and Jennifer Montgomery are the idle wealthy. A little too much money and too much time on their hands extends to their eccentric collection of modern art. The pieces, whimsical and absurd works displayed throughout their spacious New York townhouse, create the effect that we are watching events play out on an oversized game board or inside a pinball machine.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
The first time I saw Games was when it aired on NBC-TV back in the early '70s. I recall I'd found it to be very much the unsettling suspenser, keeping me on the edge of my seat as the swift turns of plot not only taking me by surprise but scaring the hell out of me. No longer a kid and revisiting it on DVD some 30 years later, I was prepared for it to be a nice, tame nostalgia trip with maybe the distraction of camp taking the place of the suspense.
Not the case. The years may have shaved a little of the originality off its plot, but the effectiveness of the film itself - the sustaining of mood, the building of suspense, the unforeseen twists - it all worked for me just as persuasively as when I first saw it in my youth. In fact, much of the film played better in some instances; particularly in my taking note of all the foreshadowing in events, and the allusions made to the articficiality and contrivance of pop-culture,  pop-art,and pop-amorality.

Although the term hipster didn't exist in 1967 in the context it's used today, James Caan and Katharine Ross play a 60s version of just the kind of obnoxiously trendy urban couple you might find yourself rooting for something bad to happen to.

Games is no classic, and to some it will look a great deal like a well-made '70s TV movie. But as suspense thrillers go (and when was the last time a good one of those appeared on the horizon?), I have to say, flaws and all, Games comes out looking like a winner.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2013