BARRY LYNDON 1975

I remember very well all the excitement surrounding the 1975 release of Barry Lyndon; director Stanley Kubrick’s highly anticipated follow-up to A Clockwork Orange. Four years had elapsed since Kubrick’s stylized vision of an all-too-imaginable future opened to controversy and equal parts critical acclaim/antipathy, and Barry Lyndon ‒ shrouded in secrecy, costing $11 million, two-years-in-the-making, 3-hours long, and starring the eyebrow-raising choice of actor Ryan O’Neal in the lead ‒ augured no less.

Arriving on a wave of publicity crested by a lengthy Time magazine cover story declaring it “Kubrick’s Grandest Gamble,” Barry Lyndon was hyped as a painstakingly detailed 18^th-century epic adapted from the little-known 19^th-century novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair). Shot in Ireland, England, and Germany over the course of a 300-day shooting schedule, next to nothing was known of the film’s storyline, save for it being a kind of inverse Pilgrim’s Progress chronicling the rise and fall of a handsome Irish rake. What was instead proffered at the forefront of all publicity, eclipsing references to either the actors’ performances or the general dramatic appeal of the story itself, was the fact that it was a Stanley Kubrick film.

Like Hitchcock, Kubrick and his reputation as an innovative perfectionist were the real stars of the film. In fact, the single most-discussed element about Barry Lyndon beyond the cult of worship surrounding Kubrick himself was the film’s sumptuous cinematography. Much was made of how Kubrick & Co. eschewed the traditional use of artificial lighting to create a period-perfect look through the near-exclusive application of candles and natural light. Advance word was that it was Kubrick’s masterpiece; an epic historical spectacle with art house aesthetics.

Ryan O'Neal as Redmond Barry

Marisa Berenson as Lady Lyndon

Murray Melvin as Reverend Samuel Runt

Patrick Magee as The Chevalier du Balibari

Leon Vitali as Lord Bullingdon 

Barry Lyndon opened on Christmas Day at San Francisco’s Northpoint Theater, advance buzz suggesting an event more than a motion picture. With all this buildup, you’d think I’d be chomping at the bit to see Barry Lyndon when it opened.

Not exactly.

While I loved Barry Lyndon’s Saul Bass-designed poster art (below) and was impressed by what little I’d seen in the way of movie stills, none of that translated into an interest in actually seeing the film itself.

Part of this is attributable to my not being much of a Kubrick enthusiast at the time. As a film buff, I knew I was “supposed” to like him, but being that in 1971 I was too young to see A Clockwork Orange, and only had an edited, commercial-interrupted TV broadcast of Lolita and a scratchy college campus print of 2001: A Space Odyssey to base an opinion on; I can’t say Kubrick was a director who loomed very large for me as a teen.

But the main reason for my disinterest was my (then) overall aversion to epic costume dramas in general. Sure, the Julie Christie factor was enough to entice me into seeing Far From The Madding Crowd and Doctor Zhivago, but for the most part, I was of the opinion that any movie asking me to sit still longer than two and a half hours had better be a musical. Barry Lyndon looked to me like it was either going to be a somber, picturesque snooze like Lawrence of Arabia, or (based on how often the words “scoundrel” and “rascal” popped up in reviews) one of those tediously bawdy romps like Tom Jones or Lock Up Your Daughters. No thanks.

Barry Lyndon's lush spectacle is the deceptively sentimental backdrop for a tale whose events
and characters are themselves a subversive commentary on classic romantic tradition

So I didn’t see Barry Lyndon when it premiered that December, and I’m not sure I’d have seen it at all were not for my older sister who was attending an art school at the time where it was something of an art history mandate for students to check out Barry Lyndon for its cinematography redolent of the paintings of 18th-century artists like John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough. 

Like everyone else, my sister raved about the film’s visual splendor, but her going back to see Barry Lyndon two more times persuasively backed up her assertion of it being an irresistibly entertaining film, as well; something I’d yet to come across in any of the reviews I’d read. Hailing it as the perfect costume picture for people who didn’t like costume pictures (that would be me), she sold me on the film by alluding to Kubrick’s success - intentional or not - in fashioning an epic heroic romantic drama devoid of either a hero or romance. A film whose lush spectacle is the deceptively sentimental backdrop for a tale whose events and characters are a subversive commentary on classic Romance tradition.

I saw Barry Lyndon the next day.

That was 40 years ago. And since then I’ve seen all but three of Stanley Kubrick’s movies (Fear & Desire, Killer’s Kiss, & Paths of Glory), but my opinion of Barry Lyndon then hasn’t changed: it’s my absolute favorite of all his films.

Nominated for 7 Oscars, Barry Lyndon won 4
Cinematography, Costume, Art Direction, and Musical Score 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Film critic Andrew Sarris once described the stylization in Stanley Kubrick’s films as being a form of emotional evasion. I don’t think that was meant as a compliment, but as it pertains to Barry Lyndon, it defines why this film strikes such a chord with me.

Barry Lyndon begins in 1750 and tells the episodic story of a young, naïve Irish lad (O’Neal) of modest gentry status who aspires to aristocracy. As self-deluding as Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, as social-climbing as Dreiser's Clyde Griffiths; Redmond fancies himself a well-bred man of courage and honor out to claim his rightful position in the world. That his quest calls upon him to summarily assume the roles of gambler, cheat, deserter, spy, and adulterer, proves of little consequence.

Attempting to live his life as though he were the hero of a romantic novel, Redmond’s lack of self-awareness blinds him to the flaws in his character which, while successful in getting him where he wants, unfailingly stand in the way of getting him what he wants. 

The loss of father figures is a recurring motif in Barry Lyndon.
Here, Redmond comforts longtime friend and protector, Captain Grogan (Godfrey Quigley)

The combined effect of Kubrick’s distancing camera and Michael Hordern’s subjective, coolly disdainful narration is that the chronicling of Redmond Barry’s ascendancy and decline becomes a doleful implosion of romantic myth. Dramatic irony replaces clichéd sentimentality, and the result is a film both moving and reflective. What looks at first glance like emotional evasion might well be a director not finding it necessary to tell the viewer what they should be feeling.

Marie Kean as Barry's headstrong mother

PERFORMANCES

I think Ryan O’Neal gives his best comedy performance in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon (1973) and the best dramatic performance of his career in Barry Lyndon. To my mind, he’s really quite marvelous and I can’t imagine anyone else in the role. (Robert Redford was considered and turned it down. Sparing us from having to put up with a Barry Lyndon sporting the same layered Malibu beach boy shag haircut he’s had in every film he’s ever made.) 

Barry Lyndon rests on our being able to see both the good and bad in Redmond, never being sure from scene to scene if he’s truly as dishonorable or as virtuous as he appears. I'm not sure how he pulled it off, but O’Neal captures Redmond’s idealism, cowardice, cruelty, heart, with a depth that brings home the ultimate tragedy of the story. 

Marisa Berenson, cast once again as a woman pursued by a fortune-hunter (Cabaret), has a role that's largely silent, yet her performance I find to be the film's most poignant. A former model, Berenson benefits from precisely the same subtle projection that makes models in fashion magazines appear to convey exactly what the observer seeks to find in their sphinxlike countenances. Certainly, I'm moved by the "corruption of beauty" nuances at the core of her character arc, but I think there's a great deal more to Berenson's performance than being heart-stoppingly beautiful in her period finery.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Certain critical buzzwords and phrases always raise red flags for me. Whenever I read that a stage performer “puts on a good show,” I take that to mean a meager talent is attempting to mask their shortcomings behind the bells and whistles of production values. Any fashion trend signified as “fun!” is sure to be ghastly. So, similarly, whenever movie critics go on and on about how beautifully a film is shot, I can’t help but assume there’s precious little else about it to recommend.

In promoting Barry Lyndon stateside, Warner Bros, hamstrung both by the film’s largely unknown (at least in the U.S.) cast of British character actors, and perhaps an inability to extol the acting virtues of Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson convincingly built its entire marketing around the beauty of film's cinematography and the technical artistry in its recreation of a bygone era.  

Like many, I took this to suggest Barry Lyndon had nothing to offer beyond its visual grandeur, when in fact it's merely an indication of the limitations inherent in marketing a film that fails to fit into a set genre category.

Barry Lyndon is without a doubt one of the most beautiful films ever made, and in 1975 on the big screen, it fairly took my breath away. But over the years I’ve come to better appreciate the film's visual magnificence as something more than just ornamental show. Its images have a poetic quality about them that has taken on a melancholy richness in this day of CGI fabrication. 

When I watch Barry Lyndon today, I’m aware of witnessing the recreation of a time and era that couldn’t be achieved today without digital manipulation. I actually respond emotionally to the fact that what I’m seeing has been painstakingly rendered in the real world. People, not computer-generated clones, occupy the crowded battle scenes; the stately landscapes vistas are actual locations; the immense interiors are authentic.

Even Barry Lyndon’s deliberate pacing and long-held static shots, once a source of much criticism, feel positively rapturous in today’s climate of I-don’t know-what-the-hell-I’m-looking-at rapid-fire editing.

Better still, Barry Lyndon's beautiful facade masks many somber truths. There is nothing heroic in death; war is absurd; pain endures, and what happens to us can't help but change us. And not always for the better.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Barry Lyndon didn't do very well during its initial release, but as so often happens when a talented director passes on and film fans are left to contemplate the meager talents still drawing breath; Barry Lyndon has been reappraised, reassessed, and hailed by many as an overlooked masterpiece.
When those who once dismissed it as boring and sluggish now sing its praises, I try not to look too smug while suppressing a desire to jog their memories with a well-timed, "I told you so!".

I won't say it's a romp, a crowd-pleaser, or a movie that'll tug at your heartstrings, but for those open to an epic scaled to human dimensions, Barry Lyndon contains a great deal of humor (mostly ironic), action, and compelling drama. I particularly like the cast of supporting players, some familiar, many more, less so, but even the briefest roles are brought to vivid, dimensional life. In many ways Barry Lyndon is like Ken Russell with self-control: a feast for the eyes, heaven to listen to (the classical music score is gorgeous), and a roster of brilliant supporting actors with fascinating faces.

I'd be reluctant to label Stanley Kubrick a genius, but there's no doubt in my mind he was a true artist.


BONUS MATERIAL

Stanley Kubrick's long out of circulation first film, Fear & Desire (1953) is 

available in its entirety on YouTube HERE 

"Borey Lyndon"
Kubrick's masterpiece gets the Mad Magazine treatment

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2015

HOT SPELL 1958

What would Hollywood do without the South as the all-purpose, go-to metaphor for all things hot, steamy, and neurotic during the sexually and emotionally repressed America of the 1950s?Hollywood, pandering to post-war propaganda intended to reassure the nation of a return to prosperity and stability, consistently promoted the image of the Midwest and middle-class suburbs as exemplars of familial “normalcy.” To this end, metropolitan cities were represented as cold and impersonal sin-bins, rife with crime and corruption; while the South – where mossy oak trees and people’s accents drooped in languid surrender to the oppressive heat – was a veritable pressure cooker of stifled passions. No wonder the Southern Gothic (a film genre dear to my heart) came to embody the existential frustration, spiritual discontent, and sexual dissatisfaction of an entire nation.

Between 1958 and 1959, Hollywood released no fewer than six southern-fried movie melodramas: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Long Hot Summer, God’s Little Acre, Suddenly Last Summer, The Sound and the Fury, and the focus of this essay, author Lonnie Coleman’s (Beulah Land) little-known but no-less overheated domestic drama, Hot Spell. 

Hot Spell is based on Coleman’s unproduced 1951 play Next of Kin (which was subsequently turned into a novel when the film was released). It's directed by Daniel Mann (Come Back, Little Sheba) from a screenplay by James Poe (Summer & Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Considering its cast and pedigree, I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard of this film, let alone seen it, until relatively recently. 

Hot Spell’s theatrical roots are manifest in the size of its cast (it’s basically a four-character story), the talkiness of its script, and the simplicity of its plot. In the sweltering heat of the eternal summer that is the mainstay of all good Southern Gothics (where a glass of sweet tea is never far from reach), long-suppressed tensions threaten to rupture the gossamer-thin fabric of delusion holding a small New Orleans family together. As frustrations rise to the surface, carefully constructed illusions begin to crack and blister like paint in the scorching sun.

Shirley Booth as Alma Duval

Anthony Quinn as John Henry "Jack" Duval

Shirley MacLaine as Virginia Duval

Earl Holliman as John Henry "Buddy" Duval, Jr.

Clint Kimbrough as Billy Duval

When the film opens, matronly housewife Alma Duval (Booth) is all aflutter over the 45^th birthday party she’s planning for husband Jack (Quinn); a seductively "wild" Cajun whose restless nature she's found – after 25 years of marriage – impossible to fully domesticate. As we observe her nervous attempts to orchestrate (manipulate?) every conceivable variable to assure a favorable outcome for her efforts, Alma’s fervent preparations betray an air of desperation more than celebration.

Armed with the birthday presents she herself purchased for her adult children to give to their father, Alma visits each at their workplace, dispensing behavioral directives and cheery dialogue prompts with every pre-wrapped gift. Perhaps too metaphorically (not for a fan of heavy-handed '50s Freudianism like myself), each child embodies contrasting, narratively-pertinent character traits, and have jobs reflective of their personalities.

Eldest son Buddy (Holliman), all self-seriousness and ambition, works at the family employment agency. Recently out of the army, Buddy is headstrong and restless to make a way for himself in the world. Daddy’s-girl and middle-child Virginia (MacLaine), works at the local 5¢ &10¢ and spends her time lost in fanciful daydreams about her new summer suitor, a pragmatic pre-med student (Warren Stevens). Surrounded all day by valentines, flowers, and perfumes, Virginia is a dreamy romantic. Youngest son, Billy (Kimbrough), is a bookish, sensitive type (coded: gay) who works in a library, and too-keenly feels the tension behind all that remains unspoken in the Duval household. His survival tactic is to escape; first into books, then by going so far as to enlist in the Air Force.

Alma, who refuses to see her offspring as anything but children, charges into these workplace sanctuaries, as heedless of their discomfort as their in-vain efforts to dissuade her from making a big deal out of an event they all know their vain father hardly looks upon as cause for celebration (no one, least of all Jack himself, even remembers the birthday).  It’s Alma’s wish (passive-aggressive insistence, actually) that everyone live the same lie she clings to: to ignore the open-secret of Jack’s mid-life crisis affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and just carry on as  if they are still (if indeed they ever were) one big, happy family.

An absorbing drama that benefits significantly from the top-notch performances of its cast, Hot Spell, with its over-familiar central conflict, falls prey to a fate similar to that which befell The Stripper (1963), the screen adaptation of William Inge’s A Loss of Roses; which is to say Hot Spell, in lacking a certain psychological profundity and depth of characterization, feels more like a Playhouse 90 television production than a feature film. But in spite of much of it feeling as though it were culled from earlier, similar sources (most in the Shirley Booth oeuvre) Hot Spell does provide a fairly moving examination of the what the inexorable passing of time portends to a family fighting hard to evade the inevitabilities of growing up, growing older, and growing apart.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The fact that I come from a large Catholic family that never spoke about our emotions (until the 70s when my mother went through EST, after which we spoke of little else) is perhaps the main reasons I love movies like Hot Spell. Call it fantasy projection, but domestic dramas wherein suppressed hostilities and resentments erupt into biliously confrontational exchanges that ultimately prove to be liberatingly cathartic are a favorite of mine. Double if it takes place in the South of the '50s and '60s.

While no one in Hot Spell adopts a Southern accent, and it doesn’t take place in Kansas, the film nevertheless has the stamp of Tennessee Williams and William Inge all over it. 

The Two Shirleys
MacLaine and Booth appeared in The Matchmaker this same year

As is the custom of the genre, Hot Spell is centered around a social event. An event or occasion necessitating the close-knit interaction of characters (usually under circumstances forcing a display of false emotion or sentiment). Hot Spell’s pivotal birthday party, the catalyst for the film’s domestic upheaval, is largely ironic in function, being that a celebration of growing older is particularly ill-suited for Jack and Alma Duval; a couple deeply invested in living in the past.

In a deluded effort to reclaim his lost, wild youth, Jack imbues a thoroughly common extramarital physical attraction with all the romantic gravitas of true love reborn. Alma, no less delusional, lives in an aspic world frozen in time. Feeling acutely the impending loss of her family, Alma pins all her hopes on a longed-for return to the town of New Paris – a state of mind as much as geographical location – idealized in her memory as the place where everyone was happiest.

Come Back, Little New Paris

Caught in the middle: the children (their main offense being their failure to remain so), nurtured as infants to fill a void, weaned in adulthood to be the guardians of their parent’s illusions. There’s more than enough culpability, regret, and incriminations to go around as the Duvals of New Orleans endeavor to weather their personal hot spell of discontent.

Running at a brisk 86 minutes, Hot Spell may be Southern Gothic-lite, but it’s like a Greatest Hits collection of all I hold near about that obsolete film genre.  

Running Wild
Anthony Quinn was already a two-time Oscar winner when he appeared in Hot Spell.
Here with actress Valerie Allen as Ruby, Quinn's restless character longs for a new life in
Florida, "Land of Eternal Youth"

PERFORMANCES

For those keeping score, this was Booth’s second onscreen swipe at playing a dowdy, once-beautiful housewife delusionally fixated on the past. Perhaps it was an intentional move on Booth’s part to revisit a character almost identical to the one she played in 1952s Come Back, Little Sheba (and won an Oscar for), but the effect created is déjà vu to distraction.

Shirley Booth is a remarkable actress and her performance here ranks among her best. She IS the entire film, as far as I’m concerned, and the nuances of vulnerability she brings to the role (along with a hint of the subtle manipulative strength unique to the very weak) is a tour de force. She single-handedly keeps the film from sinking into a mire of clichés. But I’d be lying if I said that much of it feels like I’d seen it all before. It’s like later career Maggie Smith; she’ always excellent, but she’s always the same. 

Oscar-winner Eileen Heckart (The Bad Seed) steals every scene as Alma's best friend, Fan. The hilarious sequence where she gives Alma lessons in being a Modern Woman is a worth-the-price-of-admission classic.

Fan: "Well what's he gonna say the first time you fish out a cigarette and light up?"
Alma; "He's gonna say, 'Alma, have you gone crazy?'"
Fan: "Yeah, well when he does you just take a drag on the cigarette, blow the smoke in his face and say, 'What's it to ya, lover?'"

1958 was a banner year for Shirley MacLaine, appearing in Hot Spell, Some Came Running (for which she won an Oscar nomination), and the delightful The Matchmaker. As the lovesick daughter, MacLaine isn’t called upon to do anything here that Elinor Donahue didn’t do on TV every week in Father Knows Best, but her easygoing, natural appeal is a major asset to a film as dramatically stagy as Hot Spell. 

Things heat up between Virginia and Wyatt (Warren Stevens) 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the same breast-fixated/blonde bombshell era that produced Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, also found room to appreciate the matronly charms of actresses like Shirley Booth and Geraldine Page. These actresses may not have been the pin-up type, but they played middle-aged women who were still afforded passions, sex drives, and depth. While most of Hollywood was falling over itself looking for the next fetishized male fantasy sex symbol, gay writers like Inge, Williams, and Coleman were creating dimensional roles for real women. 

The often unglamorous women Shirley Booth portrayed were nevertheless
granted a sexuality and impassioned emotional life

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Wasn’t it Margo Channing who said, “I detest cheap sentiment”? Well, normally I do, too, but something about Hot Spell always gets the waterworks going come fade-out. That something is Shirley Booth and the breadth of emotions she brings to her almost stock character. It’s a memorable (albeit familiar) performance in a movie that’s far more enjoyable than it should be. A credit to the cast, to be sure.

I don’t know if Hot Spell is available on DVD yet, but it crops up on TCM from time to time and is definitely worth a watch. It’s not likely to make anyone forget Come Back Little Sheba or invite comparisons to O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, but it is a fine example of a once-popular dramatic genre, that (based on recent posts for The Stripper, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean) I can’t seem to get enough of. 

"I guess the hot spell's over."

BONUS MATERIAL

 Hot Spell: Margaret Whiting sings this promotional song for the film. Written by Burt Bacharach /Mack David.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

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