The Producers (1967, Mel Brooks) (Patreon)

89/100

Umpteenth viewing, last seen 2002. As always, I watched much of it in a state that can only be called convulsive awe, unable to believe that Gene Wilder—who at the time had appeared in exactly one film (Bonnie and Clyde, which I'd bet was still awaiting release when he was shooting this) and lacked any sort of established comic persona with which audiences were familiar—had the insane self-confidence to push Leo Bloom into such manic heights of neurotic anxiety. Mostel was the big star, hot off of Fiddler (on Broadway; movie was still years away), and he's not exactly a shrinking violet here...yet he still frequently winds up playing Wilder's straight man, even occasionally breaking the fourth wall to give can-you-believe-this-guy? looks direct to camera. And that's just the first act, in a film with perhaps the most clear-cut three-act structure of all time: (1) concocting the scheme; (2) finding and crafting the "worst play ever"; (3) opening night. Act two sees Max and Leo jointly shift into the straight-man role, so that ringers like Dick Shawn and Kenneth Mars can do their thing; you either find them hilarious or you don't, and I still do. (Favorite bit this time: Franz at the premiere, telling Max and Leo "Tonight: Broadway. Tomorrow: [makes furtive, non-committal hand gesture signifying a globe]." And while one must suspend disbelief that theatergoers who voluntarily bought tickets to see a show called Springtime for Hitler would react in shock and horror to the opening musical number (and then instantly re-assess the play as a hip comedy when LSD shows up), the sheer epic tastelessness of that production remains legendary. I first saw The Producers as a teenager (terrifying-to-me thought: it would have been less old then than, say, Bad Santa is now), and it's one of those formative experiences that never lose their grip, while also having avoided that sad fate in which a classic comedy's best jokes gradually get diluted via constant quoting. Much easier to do Michael Palin blustering "Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who" than Wilder full-on shrieking when his blue blanket is taken away. 

Loving this movie does require me to forgive some rather glaring flaws, which I'm mostly willing to do. Most notably, it's downright hideous to look at—quite possibly the nadir of Hollywood's awkward aesthetic transition in the mid-'60s, though it's also just a matter of Brooks having zero natural facility with the camera. Blazing Saddles and especially Young Frankenstein benefit enormously from aping Golden Age styles; here, he's trying to make a "modern" comedy, and the result is just ghastly, right from those freeze-frame opening credits that for some reason surround one vertical sliver of image with giant boxes of white. (Exception: the Lincoln Center fountain shot, which is perfectly composed.) There's also the small matter of women existing in the film solely as either horny old ladies or horny young "secretaries," though I can't not laugh at the single stereotypically groovy record that Ulla* plays when instructed to work, and at Lee Meredith's goofy-sexy dance, which is like a go-go version of the Peanuts gang's loops in A Charlie Brown Christmas. I'm torn on Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia—there's no getting around the film's homophobia, equating queerness with abnormality and potential disaster (these guys are the next step after a literal Nazi), but Christopher Hewitt and Andreas Voutsinas never treat their characters with disdain, affording them some innate dignity. I've seen worse from that era, certainly. But maybe I'm just rationalizing. Bottom line: The Producers cracks me up, has been doing so for going on four decades, doesn't seem likely to ever stop. The way Franz's landlady pronounces "birds," not as the standard Brooklynese "boids," but as something more like "biyds." The jury foreman's beautifully dumbfounded "We find the defendants incredibly guilty." And always, always Wilder, making a three-course meal out of a bit as simple as Leo repeatedly responding to his name with "No Leo." "Leo—" "No Leo." "Leo—" "No Leo." "Leo—" "No Leo." Who's his heir? Nobody that I can think of. 

* Having spent a while going through New York Times movie ads from the '60s, I finally understand why Ulla is Swedish. In my mind, it was always just "Europe's racier," but Sweden specifically (along with Denmark, to a lesser extent) was synonymous with sex to American moviegoers at that time.