It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. (U.)
Directed by Stanley Kramer. 1963.
Starring Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas and Jonathan Winters. Out on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection. 163 mins/ 197 mins
The latest release from the Criterion Collection is one of cinema's greatest white elephants: an epic celebration of comedy, that is essentially humourless. In the 50s and 60s Stanley Kramer was the archetype of “liberal Hollywood,” making a series of worthy, Oscarpleading, issue pictures. In the early 60s he alighted upon a script by writing team, William and Tania Rose, (William had written British comedy classics The Ladykillers and Genevieve.) It envisioned a sprawling comic romp on the theme Greed Corrupts, and Kramer decided that he would follow up Judgment At Nuremberg with the ultimate celebration of American screen comedy since the silent era, where every role would be filled by a notable comedian. A man with no comedy background trying to do this was a recipe for disaster – the frantic and forced zaniness is there even in the title. If they are honest, I think even its most impassioned fans would accept that the film isn't as funny as it should be. And yet, and yet, when the review discs for this dropped through my letterbox I was more excited than for any other disc I have received this year, other than the 4 Marx Brothers Box Set. It's a glorious, glorious, glorious, glorious folly.
“Under a big W.”
The plot starts with four different motor vehicles arriving at the scene of a motor car accident on a desert road, and five people – Berle, Rooney, Hackett, Winters and Caesar – hearing a dying Jimmy Durante tell them that there is a small fortune in stolen money buried in a park on the coast of California. After some initial attempts to work together, the group breaks into rival factions, and more and more people get involved in the race across the state to get their first. It's a piece of grand scaled, slapstick devastation, involving planes and cars and dynamite and fisticuffs and just as much destruction as they can conjure up, while all the time detective Tracy is watching the mayhem, waiting to step in and finally crack the biggest case of his career.
The film is best at the beginning and the end when the performers are working together and firing off one another. When they split up into small groups and hit all these hindrances to stop them getting to the money, it begins to drag a little. The structure is that of a common nightmare, the one where, no matter how hard you try, you can never get anywhere. After a while the repetition of watching Caesar and his wife Edie Adams trying to escape the basement of the hardware store, or Silvers driving around lost in the desert, moves beyond comedy to pure frustration.
“Except you lady. May you just drop dead.”
For those of you out there who are ticking off your Ist and Ism bingo card, then you can mark this one off as thoroughly sexist. Ethel Merman's character is just pure battleaxe mother-in-law, totally and unreasonably aggressive at every opportunity. She is the funniest thing in the film – in madmadworld the oldest jokes are usually the funniest.
“Now I earnestly recommend that we forget your good ladies and press on with all possible dispatch.”
Unless you are a total Yankophile, the film is going to be a little distant, a little excluding, to British viewers. It is all about the American comedy tradition, of vaudeville and TV. American audiences will be enthralled trying to work out who all the performers are in bits parts but to a Brit most of them are as anonymous as the teamsheet of the Scottish football team. To my shame, I didn't even spot Buster Keaton who turns up for less than a minute. A certain anonymity extends to most of the name performers. I may know who Sid Caesar and Milton Burle are by reputation, but all their real greatness was reserved for the stage or TV and largely lost. Winters, I know only from his reputation as the man Robin Williams stole most his act from. You wish the film had given them more opportunity to leave a worthy big screen legacy. Of the big comedy names only Terry-Thomas and Phil Silvers, thanks to Bilko (and Carry On Follow That Camel) are performers whose work I am fully familiar with, and I would've hated this to be the only role they were known for.
“He just went sailing out there.”
For some reason I had it in my head that it was four hours long. In fact, the conventional version is two hours forty and this includes nearly seven minutes taken up with a blank screen overture and intermission. (Criterion also offer you the option of watching a restoration of the original full three and a quarter hour version, that had a half hour cut out of it three weeks after it was released, but for reasons we'll discuss later I think you should stick with the shorter version.)
Give or take Toni Erdmann, it is still the longest comedy ever made. And like critically adored Erdmann, it is film that is more effective as a portrait of the corrupting influence of capitalism than as a generator of laughter. And there's the irony – this is probably the most effective of all Kramer's message movie, because you do really get a sense of people losing their senses just to get a bit of money. The manic excess becomes tiring after a while but, by golly, does it get the point across.
It could also be argued that Kramer's epic celebration of comedy, does precisely the opposite: it makes comedy seem like a furious and never ending process of hollering for attention, a drudgery of repeatedly taking a hit and making a fall and getting back up to do it all again. It's just another wage slave treadmill to be endured. Kramer making a big comedy was a recipe for disaster, and a very effective one. It's isn't just a commemoration of a half century or more of the American comedy tradition, but an inspiration for the next half century. At the time it launched a surge of big budget, star packed, epic comedies such as The Great Race or Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and it's the spirit that was trying to be captured in 1941 and The Blues Brothers. It's the torch of anarchy, being passed on to the next generation.
Extras.
The second disc offers the full restored version, but in putting the lost half hour or so back into the picture they have had to use shots that are of markedly lower quality, often with part of the restored scene being in black and white. In other places the dialogue is replaced by subtitles, or the picture is replaced with a still photograph. Madmadworld is a beautifully shot film so this gets to be a bit irritating after a while. Around halfway through I switched back to the shorter version, because none of what had been added was particularly essential. There are no vital missing scenes, all you are seeing is evidence of some judicial pruning done to cut out any slack, and tighten up the movie.
The long version though is the only one which has the commentary by three MMMMW aficionados, Mark Evanier, Michael Schlesinger, and Paul Scrabo. It has a lot of useful information and insights.
The rest of the extras are mostly back slapping celebrations, apart from a two part, behind the scenes look at the official press junket for its original, slightly fractious, release in 1963.
Directed by Stanley Kramer. 1963.
Starring Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas and Jonathan Winters. Out on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection. 163 mins/ 197 mins
The latest release from the Criterion Collection is one of cinema's greatest white elephants: an epic celebration of comedy, that is essentially humourless. In the 50s and 60s Stanley Kramer was the archetype of “liberal Hollywood,” making a series of worthy, Oscarpleading, issue pictures. In the early 60s he alighted upon a script by writing team, William and Tania Rose, (William had written British comedy classics The Ladykillers and Genevieve.) It envisioned a sprawling comic romp on the theme Greed Corrupts, and Kramer decided that he would follow up Judgment At Nuremberg with the ultimate celebration of American screen comedy since the silent era, where every role would be filled by a notable comedian. A man with no comedy background trying to do this was a recipe for disaster – the frantic and forced zaniness is there even in the title. If they are honest, I think even its most impassioned fans would accept that the film isn't as funny as it should be. And yet, and yet, when the review discs for this dropped through my letterbox I was more excited than for any other disc I have received this year, other than the 4 Marx Brothers Box Set. It's a glorious, glorious, glorious, glorious folly.
“Under a big W.”
The plot starts with four different motor vehicles arriving at the scene of a motor car accident on a desert road, and five people – Berle, Rooney, Hackett, Winters and Caesar – hearing a dying Jimmy Durante tell them that there is a small fortune in stolen money buried in a park on the coast of California. After some initial attempts to work together, the group breaks into rival factions, and more and more people get involved in the race across the state to get their first. It's a piece of grand scaled, slapstick devastation, involving planes and cars and dynamite and fisticuffs and just as much destruction as they can conjure up, while all the time detective Tracy is watching the mayhem, waiting to step in and finally crack the biggest case of his career.
The film is best at the beginning and the end when the performers are working together and firing off one another. When they split up into small groups and hit all these hindrances to stop them getting to the money, it begins to drag a little. The structure is that of a common nightmare, the one where, no matter how hard you try, you can never get anywhere. After a while the repetition of watching Caesar and his wife Edie Adams trying to escape the basement of the hardware store, or Silvers driving around lost in the desert, moves beyond comedy to pure frustration.
“Except you lady. May you just drop dead.”
For those of you out there who are ticking off your Ist and Ism bingo card, then you can mark this one off as thoroughly sexist. Ethel Merman's character is just pure battleaxe mother-in-law, totally and unreasonably aggressive at every opportunity. She is the funniest thing in the film – in madmadworld the oldest jokes are usually the funniest.
“Now I earnestly recommend that we forget your good ladies and press on with all possible dispatch.”
Unless you are a total Yankophile, the film is going to be a little distant, a little excluding, to British viewers. It is all about the American comedy tradition, of vaudeville and TV. American audiences will be enthralled trying to work out who all the performers are in bits parts but to a Brit most of them are as anonymous as the teamsheet of the Scottish football team. To my shame, I didn't even spot Buster Keaton who turns up for less than a minute. A certain anonymity extends to most of the name performers. I may know who Sid Caesar and Milton Burle are by reputation, but all their real greatness was reserved for the stage or TV and largely lost. Winters, I know only from his reputation as the man Robin Williams stole most his act from. You wish the film had given them more opportunity to leave a worthy big screen legacy. Of the big comedy names only Terry-Thomas and Phil Silvers, thanks to Bilko (and Carry On Follow That Camel) are performers whose work I am fully familiar with, and I would've hated this to be the only role they were known for.
“He just went sailing out there.”
For some reason I had it in my head that it was four hours long. In fact, the conventional version is two hours forty and this includes nearly seven minutes taken up with a blank screen overture and intermission. (Criterion also offer you the option of watching a restoration of the original full three and a quarter hour version, that had a half hour cut out of it three weeks after it was released, but for reasons we'll discuss later I think you should stick with the shorter version.)
Give or take Toni Erdmann, it is still the longest comedy ever made. And like critically adored Erdmann, it is film that is more effective as a portrait of the corrupting influence of capitalism than as a generator of laughter. And there's the irony – this is probably the most effective of all Kramer's message movie, because you do really get a sense of people losing their senses just to get a bit of money. The manic excess becomes tiring after a while but, by golly, does it get the point across.
It could also be argued that Kramer's epic celebration of comedy, does precisely the opposite: it makes comedy seem like a furious and never ending process of hollering for attention, a drudgery of repeatedly taking a hit and making a fall and getting back up to do it all again. It's just another wage slave treadmill to be endured. Kramer making a big comedy was a recipe for disaster, and a very effective one. It's isn't just a commemoration of a half century or more of the American comedy tradition, but an inspiration for the next half century. At the time it launched a surge of big budget, star packed, epic comedies such as The Great Race or Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and it's the spirit that was trying to be captured in 1941 and The Blues Brothers. It's the torch of anarchy, being passed on to the next generation.
Extras.
The second disc offers the full restored version, but in putting the lost half hour or so back into the picture they have had to use shots that are of markedly lower quality, often with part of the restored scene being in black and white. In other places the dialogue is replaced by subtitles, or the picture is replaced with a still photograph. Madmadworld is a beautifully shot film so this gets to be a bit irritating after a while. Around halfway through I switched back to the shorter version, because none of what had been added was particularly essential. There are no vital missing scenes, all you are seeing is evidence of some judicial pruning done to cut out any slack, and tighten up the movie.
The long version though is the only one which has the commentary by three MMMMW aficionados, Mark Evanier, Michael Schlesinger, and Paul Scrabo. It has a lot of useful information and insights.
The rest of the extras are mostly back slapping celebrations, apart from a two part, behind the scenes look at the official press junket for its original, slightly fractious, release in 1963.
