Silent Movie

I suppose if anything epitomizes the style of Mel Brooks it is audacity, obscenity and a forthright quality that others seem either reluctant to use or often overplay with disastrous results. Brooks will do anything for a laugh. Anything. He is, for all intents and purposes, incapable of embarrassment. He's a rabble-rouser. His movies abide in a world in which everything is likely, especially the outrageous, and Silent Movie, where Brooks makes a bountiful aesthetic gamble and pulls it off, makes me laugh abundantly. On the Brooks calibration of amusement, I laughed not too radically more or less than at Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles or The Producers. It just doesn't have the subversive and ironic panache of those classic films.

Brooks' fifth film as director, Silent Movie is streamlined fun. It's obvious in almost every shot that the filmmakers had a party making it. It's set in Hollywood, where Big Pictures Studio lurches on the brink of Chapter 11 and a merger with the mammoth Engulf and Devour syndicate, a daintily disguised reference to Gulf+Western's Paramount takeover. Enter Mel Funn (guess who), a has-been director whose career was stopped cold by drunkenness, who pledges to salvage the studio by persuading Hollywood's biggest stars to make a silent movie. This is a scenario that results in countless inside jokes, but the thing about Brooks's inside jokes is that their outsides are funny as well.

The wild bunch of Mel, Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman embark to charm the superstars, resulting in the shower of one, who counts his hands, confused, and discovers he has eight; and swooping another out of a nightclub audience. There are several "actual" stars in the movie, but the fun is in not knowing who's next. Everything transpires surrounded by a glossary of sight gags, classic and original. There are bits that don't work and durations of up to a minute, I guess, when we don't laugh, but a minute can feel pretty long. Perhaps it is Brooks' desire to control all that displaces an objective view of what will work.

Nevertheless, in a movie overflowing with skillful Chaplin-, Keaton- and Laurel and Hardy-inspired set pieces, these parts are the chef d'oeuvre: Right before seeing the Studio Chief, Mel and his friends cross their fingers for good luck, and Mel can't uncross his. He shakes hands with the Chief, and the Chief's fingers are crossed rather than Mel's. The Chief then passes this crossed state to his secretary's fingers the same way. Another running gag is obvious discrepancy between the title cards and what the characters are really saying. The spoken lines are inaudible, as it is indeed a silent movie, but they can be clearly lipread. At one point Brooks asserts misgivings about DeLuise's idea of a silent movie by shouting "That's crazy!" as well as an agitated mouthful, but the screen says "Maybe you're right." In another scene, Marty hits on a nurse but gets slapped. When he gets back in the car, Mel obviously mouths a curse word, although the screen says "You bad boy!" And then there's the scene where Feldman and DeLuise haphazardly unplug and plug in his heart monitor various times, winding up changing the screen to a ping pong game and playing while the Chief flatlines and recovers over and over. Brooks stands outside the majority of Jewish comics and filmmakers in his lack of self-derision and in the success of his main characters, but still, humor is his own defense mechanism against the world, and he goes for broke.

This Brooks film is more appealing to lovers of classic comedy than modern audiences with their short attention spans. Some will have issues with the silence and having to read title cards. The story is somewhat irrelevant to the gags, and some of those gags get repetitive, but having Brooks paired with his old boss Sid Caesar is fun to see. Guys will no doubt love looking at Bernadette Peters. Light viewing.

Of course, only Mel Brooks could have the idea to make a silent movie in today's Hollywood. And silent it is-this isn't one of those films like "City Lights","Modern Times","Bean" or "Playtime" that uses background noises and dialogue. No, aside from the brilliant John Morris score, the film is completely silent. Being that this is a Mel Brooks comedy, this COULD be considered a downside. It is filled with sight gags, from a pregnant woman upsetting the balance of the back of the car; the reaction of the executives to Vilma Kaplan, the sultry spy; the video pong-game on the life support machine; and of course, the fly in the soup. Unfortunately, there are stretches where the action moves very slowly, without sufficient explanation. Also, the music score occasionally has very unpleasant, loud drum crashes to indicate when there is action, and these can be an unpleasant contrast to the surprisingly quietly recorded music score. If you want to hear the music score, you'd best buy the soundtrack, where it is clear of the drum/cymbal crashes. The soundtrack mixes bits and pieces of "The Emperor's Waltz"(Strauss) and "Jalousie"(Bloom-Gade) as well as "Babalu"(Lecuona-Russell). The cast includes six main guest stars, as well as character actors like Chuck McCann, Jack Riley, Howard Hesseman and Fritz Feld. On top of this, Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers, Henny Youngman, and even Barry Levinson (DINER,HOMICIDE:LIFE ON THE STREETS) as a movie executive. All in all, it makes for genial entertainment and if nothing else should be seen to gain an appreciation of silent comedy. As a movie, it gets a 8/10. For a Mel Brooks film, it gets 7/10 on the Laff scale.

A team of movie makers, Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) march into a film studio to speak to the chief (Sid Caesar).They've got a marvelous movie idea, that can't fail.They want to make the first silent movie in 40 years.So soon they're into the making process.They have to get the biggest stars there are in the show business.They're after Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli, James Caan, Anne Bancroft (Mel's wife) and Marcel Marceau, the mime.The crook of the story, Engulf (Harold Gould) does everything to stop the movie from being made.Mel Brooks made this extremely funny comedy in 1976.He made it completely silent, except for one little word said by the French mime. The comical work of Mel, Marty and Dom is something you don't have words for.They're not the only people in this film who deserve praises.Caesar and Gould are excellent and so are those who appear as themselves.Then I must mention people like Bernadette Peters, Carol DeLuise (Dom's wife) and Charlie Callas.Film maker Barry Levinson can also be seen there. This movie seems in some points like a real silent movie made in the 20's.Except this one comes with color.Mel and the gang do it as good as did comics like Chaplin,Keaton and Lloyd.The use of music by John Morris is marvelous.There is a huge amount of funny scenes offered in this flick.I almost laughed my lungs out when the trio tried to get in Liza Minnelli's table dressed in armors.That scene is one of many, which makes you howl from laughter and wake your neighbors. Thank God somebody had the courage to do a silent movie after all those years.That man was Mel Brooks.There is a talented young man who will go places.And remember; Silent Movie doesn't mean silent laughter.

If you're a Mel Brooks fan, you've probably heard of SILENT MOVIE--and my advice is to see it if you haven't yet.

It's one of his more brilliant and inventive ideas and it gets the wacky screen treatment you expect from Brooks. Naturally, it's not really silent. There is a very well-timed background score (no, not a tinkling piano) and all of the thuds are vigorously heard on the soundtrack. But there's no dialog--you read the silly captions that replace the sound of voices, just as folks did way back when.

Sid Ceasar is a film producer that Mel has to convince to let him do a "silent movie". He agrees provided Mel hires well-known movie stars to give it box-office insurance. That's the gist of the plot which then has MEL BROOKS and DOM DeLUISE scouting around Hollywood for stars like Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli, James Caan and Anne Bancroft to star in the film.

It's full of the usual sight gags, the falls on banana peels, through trap doors, everything that happened in a Keystone Kops comedy. Maybe not the funniest Brooks caper but still loads of fun to watch with a brisk running time of 87 minutes.