Producers, The: Special Edition (2004 Momentum)

Introduction

Every so often you get a well-loved movie to review. The Producers has to be one of my favourite film comedies of all time. It is certainly Mel Brooks` finest screen comedy, outclassing Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, and completely blowing away his more recent output.

The Producers, for those who don`t know, is the story of a fading theatre impresario Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel), reduced to seducing money out of old ladies as backing for non-existent plays. One day, a meek-mannered and highly neurotic accountant called Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder in his first major role) arrives to do his books and in passing plants the seed of a money-making scheme in Bialystock`s mind. All he has to do is raise more capital than he spends on the most sure-fire floparoo play of all time and he can walk off with the money he doesn`t spend as there are no profits to share with his backers. (Note: this is nothing unusual in Hollywood accounting).

The play they select is "Springtime For Hitler", a love-letter to Adolf by one of his ardent ex-Nazis Franz Liebkind (a tour-de-force performance by long-time Brooks collaborator Kenneth Mars). Bringing on board oddball musical director Roger DeBris (Christopher Hewitt) and space-cadet leading man Lorenzo StDubois (LSD to his friends - the wonderful Dick Shawn), everything looks set for the biggest stage disaster of all time. Then everything goes right…

The content of this disc has been licensed by Momentum Pictures from MGM (who put out the R1 edition) and appears to be identical with its US counterpart (except probably for menus).

One thing that has particularly confused me over the years and the various prints of the film I`ve seen, has been the sabotage of the theatre by the three conspirators. The first time I saw this movie was a tv print on the BBC (which I have learnt from the IMDb is pretty much the most complete version of the movie). This DVD print, in common with older VHS releases I`ve seen and more recent outings on commercial tv, cuts abruptly from Liebkind lighting the dynamite fuse to the explosion, whereas the scene as I remembered it was considerably longer. This longer sequence is included on the disc as an extra, and is referred to in the making-of documentary as being cut for timing. I`m delighted to see the sequence included as an extra but I`d have liked to have seen it restored to its original position in the movie.

Video

The film has been transferred in very good condition as 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. The picture is stable, reasonably free of dirt and damage, and colours and detail are excellent. The print isn`t perfect - there are signs of negative wear, and there are a couple of unstable cuts that look like they might be print damage. I wonder how much of that might be as a result of the frequent changes in ownership through the film`s life.

Audio

The sound is advertised as Dolby 5.1 Digital, but in practice the sound is only 1.0 mono carried in a 5.1 matrix. This means that four speakers and the subwoofer are pretty much dormant throughout the movie and only the centre speaker does the work. The sound is brittle and lacks any great bass (typical of the late 1960s), but at least the dialogue - the most important part of this great comedy - is clear.

Features

The Making Of The Producers is the usual high standard, informative piece by MGM`s documentary team. However, it is split into acts which default back to a menu. There are two half-hour documentaries with a short intro, intermission and epilogue which add up to a good hour`s worth of fascinating insight into the movie. Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Lee Meredith and some of the surviving technical artists reminisce about the production. The intermission is the still dazzlingly beautiful Lee Meredith (Bialystock`s toy-cum-receptionist Ulla) doing some of her lines and having a little bop to some pop music.

Covered in the piece are Peter Sellers` and Dustin Hoffman`s near involvement in the movie, and Peter Sellers` single-handed rescue of the movie at its darkest hour.

Paul Mazursky, the screenwriter, contributes the story of Sellers` involvement and in an additional extra reads out the full-page advert the comedian took out in the trade papers to boost the movie.

There is an exquisite sketch gallery of the set designs for the movie, a trailer and the deleted theatre-sabotage sequence in its entirety, picking up from the quick-fuse gag to the explosion.

Conclusion

This is a Special Edition in every sense of the word. The Producers is easily Mel Brooks` finest writing and directorial hour-and-twenty-four-minutes. And it`s his big screen debut. Everything about the movie is a classic - Zero Mostel`s monstrous-yet-appealing performance as Bialystock; Gene Wilder`s neurotic Leo Bloom with his blue security blanket; Kenneth Mars` looney-tunes closet Nazi ("Hitler vas a better painter zan Churchill - He could do a whole apartment in von afternoon - two coats!!"); Dick Shawn as the spaced-out hippy version of Hitler. I have to echo Peter Sellers` fulsome praise of this movie. It is one of the best.