![]() ![]() ![]() It is obvious that Bialystock and Bloom are Jewish, but they never refer to that. To make a movie about such a musical was also in bad taste, of course. To produce a musical named "Springtime for Hitler" was of course in the worst possible taste, as an escaping theater patron observes in the movie-to the delight of Bialystock and Bloom, who were counting on just that reaction. The other great supporting performance is by Dick Shawn as the actor who plays Hitler in a movie made at the height of the flower power period, he's a hippie constructed out of spare parts, with his finger cymbals, Campbell's soup can necklace and knee-high shag boots. Heterosexuality is represented by the pneumatic Lee Meredith, as Ulla, the buxom secretary, who types one letter at a time and then pauses for a smile of self-congratulation. At one point Max, Leo and Carmen crowd into a tiny elevator, and are expelled breathless and flustered. Mars was a bug-eyed fanatic, up on the roof with his pigeons, singing Nazi songs, later ordering an audience member to stop laughing because "I am the author! I outrank you!" To the Nazi jokes Brooks added gay jokes, with the flamboyant couple of Broadway director Roger De Bris ( Christopher Hewett) and his valet Carmen Giya (Andreas Voutsinas). The movie's supporting stars became briefly famous after the movie came out, although none found equally funny material again. Wilder delivers another classic line: "I'm wet! I'm hysterical, and I'm wet! I'm in pain, and I'm wet, and I'm still hysterical!" On the floor with Mostel looming over him, he screams, "Don't jump! Don't jump!" Mostel starts to hop in a frenzy, and Wilder escapes to a corner, hides behind a chair, and screams, "I'm hysterical! I'm hysterical!" Mostel pours a glass of water and throws it in his face. His performance in "The Producers" is a shade shy of a panic attack. Gene Wilder was a new face in 1968, introduced to audiences with a key supporting role in " Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), also as a character consumed by nervousness. Perhaps he never thinks at all, but only proceeds out of Darwinian urgency. What Mostel projects above all is utter confidence. Despite a comb-over that starts just above his collar line, he projects optimistic vanity, spitting on his hand to slick back his hair before Miss "Hold me! Touch me!" (Estelle Winwood) enters for her weekly visit. His performance here is a masterpiece of low comedy. Mostel was a serious actor, a blacklist target, an intellectual. Look at me now! I'm wearing a cardboard belt!" It is typical of this movie that after he says the line, he takes off the belt and rips it to shreds. "This used to hold a pearl as big as your eye. "See this?" he says to Bloom, holding up an empty setting. There is a scene where he scrubs his filthy office window with coffee, peers through the murk, sees a white Rolls-Royce and screams, "That's it, baby! When you've got it, flaunt it! Flaunt it!" You can taste his envy and greed. ![]() Like Falstaff, Zero Mostel's Max Bialystock is a man whose hungers are so vast they excuse his appetites. How did Mel Brooks, the writer and director, get away with this? By establishing the amoral desperation of both key characters at the outset, and by casting them with actors you couldn't help liking, even so. Their formula for failure is a musical named "Springtime for Hitler," with a dance line of jackbooted SS girls and lyrics like, "Don't be stupid, be a smarty! Come and join the Nazi Party!" Their neo-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind ( Kenneth Mars) roars up to opening night on a motorcycle, wears a Nazi helmet into the lobby, and tells them, "It's magic time!" Reaction shots during the first act show the audience paralyzed in slack-jawed horror. "Hello, boys!" says Max, plopping down next to his safe and patting the piles of money. The critic David Ehrenstein traces the first use of the phrase "creative accounting" to "The Producers," and Bialystock and Bloom make it into a fine art. This leads to their great inspiration: Max will venture into "little old lady-land" and raise thousands of dollars more than they need for a production that will be guaranteed to fail. You could make a lot of money by overfinancing turkeys, he muses, a glint in his eye: "The IRS isn't interested in flops." Bloom is sent to do his books, and finds that Bialystock raised $2,000 more than he lost on his last failure. ![]() Bialystock raises money for his productions by seducing checks out of little old ladies, who come to his office to fool around ("We'll play the innocent little milkmaid and the naughty stable boy!"). The movie stars Mostel and Wilder as Max Bialystock, a failing Broadway producer, and Leo Bloom, a nebbishy accountant. ![]()
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