On Screen
ASAHINA, ROHERT
On Screen SUFFERING IN SILENCE BY ROBERT ASAHINA -I have never been an admirer of Mel Brooks, although I enjoyed Young Frankenstein when it came out a little over a year ago. To be sure, his...
...This apparently has not occurred to Brooks...
...Brooks' rabid partisans will no doubt dispute this, having convinced themselves of the director's comic "genius...
...As Pauline Kael has aptly noted, his films embody the spirit of gagwriting, not screenwriting...
...For a funnyman, Brooks has a lamentably poor sense of timing, a handicap that hampers his verbal comedy, and is almost fatal to the visual gags...
...Funn...
...It is never clear why this comedy about the making of the movie should itself be silent...
...if the popularity of these films reveals anything, it is that many people take absolutely nothing seriously...
...When they call on James Caan, he invites them to lunch in his house trailer, warning that one of the vehicle's springs is broken...
...Brooks assumes everybody is contemptuously silly...
...We are left confused and puzzled throughout about his intentions...
...he never misses a chance to stick his finger in your eye—twice in a row, if possible...
...it can be illogical and even artificial...
...Moreover, when it is as mechanically contrived as it is in this instance, it is completely predictable...
...In another sequence Funn carefully mouths, "You stupid son-of-a-bitch...
...The setups here are so patently engineered, they telegraph rather than lead into the sequences that follow...
...Yet it distresses me that so many intelligent viewers find his films sidesplitting...
...Instead, Vilma's ever more explicit displays convey no sense of her increasing desperation...
...The only thing we are spared is the nervous sweating of the comedians at all those misses...
...Rickles' humor is grounded in the conviction that everybody is contemptuously stupid...
...And I suspect audiences do not recognize his misanthropy for what it is because he is so unremittingly cheerful...
...A series of sight gags in the swaying interior come next, then Bell sprinkles pepper on a bun—a completely arbitrary gesture serving only to "cause" the sneeze that finishes the sequence in the expected fashion...
...Similarly, through a hospital window we see some sprightly activities by senior citizens under a sign saying "Geriatric Lounge—No One Under 75 Admitted...
...But nothing follows from this empty joke—except a catalogue of the various blunders that can be committed in the name of comedy, silent or otherwise...
...Still, since my quarrel is with his style of verbal bombardment, I was prepared to be open-minded about Silent Movie, Brooks' attempt to write and direct a comedy without dialogue...
...What all this suggests is a complete inability to appreciate the cinematic constraints on comedy...
...Bernadette Peters plays Ms...
...in case we missed it the first time around, Brooks repeats the scene shortly thereafter...
...The new effort tells the story of Mel Funn (yes, played by Brooks), a has-been director ruined by drink, who plans to make a silent film?in contemporary Hollywood—as part of his return to show business...
...But that is precisely why we choose to preserve some privacy, some dignity...
...Like all of Brooks' works (with the possible exception of Young Frankenstein), this one is guilty of obviousness...
...Since they have taken the time to dress in heavy suits of armor, we are, again not surprisingly, exposed to awkward attempts at sitting down, considerable clanking about, broken dishes, and smashed tables and chairs...
...if we are all in the same position, no one can mock others without demeaning himself...
...The difference does not endear either to me...
...It succeeded in spite of, not because of the editing, which almost destroyed the sequence by awkwardly cutting back and forth between the stage and the audience...
...That is not to say that the humor is excessively broad?though it happens to be—but rather that it is at the level of a dull five-year-old...
...Egg and Bell try to recruit several Hollywood stars (who play themselves in cameo roles) for their film...
...In one potentially funny sequence involving a car chase, Funn, Egg and Bell are rushing to the theater with the unfinished film, while Vilma is trying to distract the impatient audience waiting for the movie premiere...
...Unfortunately, the production fails on much the same grounds as his talking pictures...
...But Brooks provides no shadings...
...Apparently part of the hilarity of a Mel Brooks movie is generated by the viewers willfully living up to some preconceived idea of a festive occasion...
...the car chase is literally stalled at several points and fails to build any feeling of comic frustration and urgency...
...Funn, Egg and Bell drive past a Szechwan restaurant, and through a picture window they see steam rising from the mouths of customers...
...The relentless pounding of Silent Movie is further heightened by the mechanical setups Brooks ineptly employs...
...Brooks seems to think the humor of this conceit is self-evident, and that it provides a sufficient mainspring for everything he is going to show us...
...Spending a whole column attacking Brooks may appear to be a case of overkill...
...That Brooks could not find a more natural device to lead into the climactic sneeze exposes the paucity of his comic imagination...
...But it cannot be utterly arbitrary...
...For Brooks' anarchic, machine-gun spray of gags reduces everything to its lowest common denominator and then ridicules it...
...What people find funny tells a lot about what they take seriously...
...Vilma Kaplan, touted as a "bundle of lust," who seduces Funn on behalf of Engulf and Devour, a conglomerate intent on taking over Big Pictures Studio...
...This kind of blatant gag can only succeed when contrasted to more subtle humor...
...but since everyone else in the picture seems equally crude, the point of Peters caricature is lost...
...It would be easy to blame the editors of Silent Movie for this, however I suspect the fault lies with Brooks...
...In Silent Movie there is even greater need for careful editing...
...the title says, "You bad boy...
...We are then immediately shown the same scene through a second window, so the joke is hammered home with elephantine skill...
...totally insensitive to the rhythm of movie comedy, he botched what should have been an effective sequence...
...That is what troubles me about hearing otherwise sensitive people laugh at his Silent Movie...
...Yet there is no apparent reason for the sequence: We never learn why they put on the armor in the first place...
...There is a thin line separating Brooks from Don Rickles, whose nastiness is merely the flip side of the filmmaker's anarchy...
...Thus only audiences equally anarchic could find his films funny: His comic nihilism feeds the nihilism of his audiences...
...Humor can indeed be founded on a non sequitur...
...They do not work as cinematic comedies because they are essentially extended strings of raucous and vulgar one-liners, better suited to the nightclub floor than to the moviehouse...
...Sure enough, in the next scene they do just that: Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) flips Marty Egg (Marty Feldman) in a back handspring...
...More often, in fact, it is aimed at deflating empty pretension, attacking class differences, exposing hypocrisy—in other words, it is culturally motivated...
...When the three go after Liza Minnelli, they corner her at lunch in the studio commissary...
...In The Producers, for instance, the "Springtime for Hitler" episode combined outrageous sight gags with a hilarious musical number...
...This is the reason toilet humor figures so prominently in his comic scheme?we are all equally vulnerable on the seat...
...To be sure, his oeuvre has included some hilarious moments—the "Springtime for Hitler" sequence in The Producers, for example—but these were practically buried beneath an indiscriminate flurry of flat jokes...
...Intercutting in the best Keystone Cops tradition would have been effective...
...Justifying such unnatural contrivances by appealing to a sense of the ridiculous simply won't do...
...When I saw the film, some people in the audience were giggling nervously in anticipation even before it began...
...Silent Movie simply isn't very funny...
...The constant maniacal activity seriously undercuts the acting...
...Brooks' purpose is to communicate sheer anarchy...
...The role calls for her to indulge in a gross parody of a Mae West-style performer...
...Comedy, of course, is not something that occurs only in a socially or politically neutral context...
...For instance, after Funn finally convinces the head of Big Picture Studios (Sid Caesar) to produce his silent movie, the title reads: "Wait'll I tell the guys?they'll flip...
Vol. 59 • August 1976 • No. 16
