1967 comedy, dir. Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder:
IMDb /
allmovie. How to make a
fortune on Broadway? Oversell the shares, keep the money and put on a
show that flops. Unless it doesn't…
I have a soft spot for Zero Mostel; I think I must have seen A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, made the year before
this, when I was young. But now whenever I see one of hie performances
it comes over as clowning and crass. I probably shouldn't watch
Forum again.
And a whole lot of the Jewish humour here makes me feel awkward:
these are Jewish people telling jokes about themselves, but for me as
a non-Jew to join in the laughter feels like indulging in stereotype.
Perhaps I am over-sensitive, but that's my gut feeling.
If you can let go of this reserve and go with it there are some fine
moments, particularly for me the gradual corruption of Bloom until
he's ready to fit into Bialystok's world; almost enough fine moments
to overcome the way all women are victims of our heroes or sex objects
for their enjoyment, or the comic stereotypes of homosexuality and
cross-dressing. The ethos is one of "normal" heterosexual men, after
all, and anything outside that sphere is a threat—to be fought, if
you're a big tough man, or to be parodied and laughed at, if you're
the class clown.
And then the holdover Nazi playwright is more of the same, tee he here
is a weirdo to be laughed at. Is it a warning about what happens when
people forget what Nazism was actually about and just use it as
historical colour? Maybeso; I like to imagine that Corporal Brooks of
the 1104th Engineer Combat Battalion might have had something like
this in mind when he was clearing booby-trapped buildings on the
Allied advance into Germany. But the only people who suffer here are
our principals. and even they don't seem to have learned anything by
the end.
I'm not going to say that this is a bad film, but I am almost wholly
unequipped to appreciate it. Maybe you will do better.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.