Producers, The
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DVD Review
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Review
The Producers
This was Mel Brooks first foray as a director. He currently has twelve other movies under his belt as a director, his last directorship being in 1995. On top of directing he also appeared in a host of other movies in varying roles. On a director level the only other film that comes close to it in terms of quality is Blazing Saddles. Most of the others I have not watched in full, but a couple of them were familiar such as Spaceballs and Robin Hood – men in Tights, I remember these as being a bit silly. I was hoping that “The Producers” would be more like blazing saddles than either of the other offerings.
The story is about a down-on-his-luck theatrical producer Max Biyalistok (Zero Mostel). Max is forced to romance rich old ladies to finance his theatrical efforts. Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) is an accountant with interpersonal issues, when he reviews Max's accounts, the two of them hit upon a way to make a fortune by raising money for a play that will be a sure-fire-flop. They will raise money by oversubscribing the backing money, and then when the play goes wrong they will walk away with the left over cash. They produce a play, which is to be their gold mine? "Springtime for Hitler." However, their plans go wrong when the play becomes an unexpected hit.
In 1968 this movie must have been amazingly controversial, only some 23 years after World War 2 here was a new guy making comedy out of Hitler, one of the most evil men in history. Saying that the film must have been well received as it won an Oscar in 1969 for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen. And Mel Brooks states in one of the extras that the best way to insult or reject someone or something is to ridicule it, rather than get up on your soapbox and argue about how bad it is, and he is absolutely right.
But how well has the film aged? And how good is the DVD?
The DVD is an excellent transfer considering the age of the material, the scenes were clear and the colours vibrant, although still keeping a bit of that aged feel to the colour palette. There was a bit of grain at certain points but apart from that the transfer is a well done job.
All the actors were superb in their roles, especially Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel who play off each other as if they had been acting together for years, And we see a lot of them in the first 60 minutes of the film as we are taken from their introduction, to the coming up of the idea for a flop of a play. All the way through to raising the money to get the ball rolling.
For me the most enjoyable part of the movie was the play itself, especially the second act. The character LSD (Dick Shawn) really takes it out of Hitler and his goons and he has the audiences laughing in the aisles, which was more appealing to me (and the audience in the film) than the first act which had dancers in full German uniform and loads of Nazi paraphernalia, and the main song, which is “Springtime for Hitler”
One other point of interest that I noted was the occasional use of some unusual camera angles, back in 1968 I would have figured that people were very much set in their ways, however on a couple of occasions, they had made use of some different angles which was nice to see.
I like the fact that the movies moved along fairly quickly, it didn’t overstay its welcome on any scenes and although the play itself doesn’t come until almost the end of the film, I never felt that it dragged. However I didn’t really find the film funny, sometimes there were a couple of gags or actions that made me laugh, but on the whole I didn’t find it laugh out loud funny, although I suspect that back in 1968, this would have been spot on in the humour department, but times have changed and it doesn’t quite get there anymore. A lot of the humour seems to rely on facial expressions and acting crazy (see Franz Liebkind and you will see what I mean)
Overall I think it was a ground breaking and controversial film in its day, but you would really need to be a fan of this era of moviemaking and this genre in order to want it in your collection.
[3.5/5]
Picture & Audio
The transfer is more or less faultless, a few bits of grain here and there but nothing to shout about. Certainly a first rate job.
The spec says that the audio is in either Dolby Digital (1.0) Mono: English or English - Dolby Digital (5.1), but I could not find anyway of changing the sound type, however the sound was clear and sharp
Picture 4/5
Sound 3/5
Extras
'The Making of the Producers' featurette (1 hour) – this is broken down into 5 sections, and they do repeat themselves in places occasionally. But on the whole I found this really interesting; they had current day interviews with a lot of the people that took part in the film
Playhouse outtake – alternative scene towards the end of the film, personally I thin kit was better than the scene they used.
Sketch gallery – sketches of the scenes in the film, a one off interest unless you’re a big fan.
Trailer – the obligatory trailer[/p]
[3.5/5]
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