The Producers (1967)

 "Deutschland is happy and gay...."

I haven't blogged much in recent days because I'm cramming for a big interview on Wednesday morning for a potential promotion at work, after which normal blogging will resume. Tonight, however, is my night of rest, with good Cornish ale and entertainment of the strictly relaxing kind.

It's absurd that I should see this film for the first time at forty-four, but there are so many seminal films I still haven't seen, even having blogged more than 750 of them over the last ten years. It is, of course, no less brilliant for the fact that I haven't been living under a rock all my life and am very much aware not only of the concept (if not the precise accounting subterfuge) but of the signature song.

It's surprsing, I suppose, how long it takes to get to the theatrical performance, but this is a surprisingly linear film, plot-wise, setting up and executing the conceit with very little deviation. Yet it's very Mel Brooks somehow, even if his films don't usually show such focus. This very Jewish comedy about Nazis is full of grotesques, not least Max and Leo themselves. I knew that Gene Wilder was a good comedy actor but Zero Mostel, whom I've never previously seen in anything at all, acts him right off the set. We also have the parade of randy old ladies, the Nazi scriptwriter, and the camp director and his associate who perhaps show us how far we've come in LGBT+ representatives in cinema over the past half century.

This was 1967, though. I suppose it was somethging to have LGBT+ representation at all. And this film is a comedy triumph. Just the thing to prepare me for three whole evenings of soul-destroying interview prep...

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

"If the good Lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates...”


It’s an alarming thought that this film was made when Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a recent children’s novel. But 1971 was a long time ago, and inevitable comparisons with Tim Burton’s 2005 adaptation (not a remake; merely a different imagining of the same source material, so I haven’t broken my rule by blogging that film first) must reflect that.

This film may not have Burton’s remarkable visual style, striking though it is on its own terms. It cannot quite live up to the vivid and wonderfully surreal chocolatescapes of the novel; instead it has Gene Wilder, not an actor I have always admired, in the role he was born to play. He is extraordinary. His Willy Wonka is wry, highly intelligent, fatalistic about being surrounded by unkind, uncultured, venal fools. This is one of the most charismatic, and quotable, characters in the history of cinema.

There is much else to enjoy, though, such as Tim Brooke-Taylor’s comic cameo and, for us Doctor Who fans, recognising Bill from Day of the Daleks. The Oompa-Lookpa songs, while much truncated, are still entertaining, and most of the songs are not annoying. Most of them. There are lots of nice little comedy scenes surrounding the search for the golden ticket to raise a titter from the adults watching. The film is a triumph, hugely entertaining and, in spite of yielding to reality at times, surprisingly faithful to the book. If only there’d been a sequel with Vernicious Knids...

Young Frankenstein (1974)

"He would have an enormous Schwanstucker!"

Ok, so Gene Wilder excels, in the best performance I've ever seen by him, as Victor Frankenstein's grandson Frederick, who he plays in a delightful pastiche of Vincent Price. Gene Hackman is great too, and ends his scene with a splendid ad-lib. But the film is really about Marty Feldman, whom we must all worship. I mean, one of his ad-libs even caused Aerosmith to write their most well-known song. That's impressive.

The film- in monochrome, utilising the same sets, using deliberately similar opening titles- is a superb pastiche of James Whale's two Frankenstein films. The humour is classic early Mel Brooks, but the sense of a cast having fun, and the ad-libbing, make the film. Marty Feldman, though, shows again what paragon of comedy he is.

There aren't as many laughs per minute, perhaps, as later Mel Brooks films, but the jokes are funny, and just as gloriously Jewish. This is a pastiche specifically of the Universal Frankenstein films by James Whale, in monochrome, using similar opening titles and even using the same lab equipment, with riffs on several scenes. But this is a world where you can get on a train in New York and get off at a "Transylvania Station" where things are still very Mittel-Europe and Ceaucescu's regime is nowhere to be seen. It's the world of Mel Brooks at its very best.

Alice in Wonderland (1999 TV Film)

“Chop, Chop! Blood everywhere! Proud to be Queen!”

It’s both odd and refreshing to watch such a straight adaptation after Tim Burton’s Whimsical and action packed version. It’s such a wonderfully straight adaptation, even though this means it’s rather long. The whole look of the production has an ineffable late ‘90’sness that recalls many television films from the period. It has a gloss and a picture quality which, though they have dated slightly, look gorgeous.

The cast are as glittering as can be, so much so, in fact, that it was an agonising task narrowing down those cast members who would appear in the tags. Nevertheless, the stand out performance is from the young Tina Majorino, who gives us a likable and realistic Alice while maintaining a flawless British RP accent throughout. The other stand-out performances are from Miranda Richardson as the Queen of Hearts and Martin Short as the Mad Hatter.  This Queen of Hearts is gloriously eccentric and wonderfully homicidal, and perfectly cast, given her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder II fourteen years previously. This Mad Hatter is arguably the best version I have ever seen, at the same time utterly mad yet unthreatening and child friendly.

The special effects, courtesy of sparing use of CGI and the muppetry skills of the late Jim Henson’s Workshop, are superb and a huge contribution to the success of the film. Some of the choices made are intriguing. The caterpillar is made to look very SGT Pepper, while the Queen of Hearts, as my girlfriend noticed, is carrying what can only be described as “The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch”. It must be said, however, that the Griffin looks uncannily like a raggedy Big Bird.

Perhaps this could be said equally of the book, but, well, this is in no way druggie, is it? I know this is hardly the most original observation, but, well, a hookah smoking caterpillar (in no way a reference to opium); mushrooms that make you grow or shrink; and the general sense that the logic of stoned conversations applies here…Well!

The ending, with Alice having gained confidence from her experiences, is mainly fun because of the chance to see all the same actors out of character, per se. It has to be said, that the film is bloody long, but there is certainly value in a thorough version. The only moment where the film flags is the sequence with the Griffin and the Mock Turtle, where Gene Wilder somehow fails to capture his usual charisma. I admit, I’ve only seen two, but this is my favourite version of the story.