Review: Silent Movie

Sometimes it’s hard to think about how great Mel Brooks was. And how productive he was in a short period of time. In the span of a decade, he co-wrote and directed six movies, created a short lived TV show (When Things Were Rotten). That’s in addition to a new 2000 Year Old Man recording and TV special – the fifth album that he and Carl Reiner had made together. Of those six films, it’s hard not to argue that three of them are among the very best film comedies ever made.

After Mel Brooks made two of the best films of 1974 – Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein – Brooks made Silent Movie, which was released in 1976. There were two risks in this film. One, it was a feature length silent movie. Which is a crazy concept, but if one can do whatever they want, well, swing for the fences. And Brooks did. He also took another risk. Brooks starred in the film himself.

He had acted before. The 200 Year Old Man bits were (and are) hysterical, but today we know Brooks in part as an award-winning actor. Besides his own films he’s acted in films like The Muppet Movie to To Be Or Not To Be to countless animated films to shows like Mad About You and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But before all that, he starred with Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman, Bernadette Peters and Sid Caesar, and a number of very big celebrity cameos.

What’s striking is how Brooks is, well, the Brooks we all know. Perhaps more impressively because he doesn’t have any spoken dialogue. But when people think of Mel Brooks, he’s right there. Of course by this time he was 50 years old and had been writing and performing for decades, so perhaps not a big shock, but it was startling.

Brooks stars as a washed up recovering alcoholic filmmaker who is trying to put together a new film - A silent film! Which will help to save the studio, which is being targeted by Wall Street vultures. (Who entertainingly pray to a dollar sign, among other amusing gags). That is a funny gag, but it’s also not a complex one. And that is part of the appeal of the film. It’s not complicated and it’s not deep, but it’s entertaining.

The movie lags at points but overall, it worked better than I thought it would. It worked much better than the award winning 2011 film The Artist. There are inter titles with lines of dialogue scattered throughout the movie, but for the most part, the film is made so that it’s easy to follow what’s happening, what the characters are doing. It’s often over the top, but never in a cheesy manner that pulled me out of the film.

There were only two moments that pulled me out of the film. In each scene, Brooks and his two colleagues (DeLuise and Feldman) are celebrating and over the top jumping up and down and hugging each other, and as they do, two old ladies walk by and shout something at the men. The title comes up: “Fags!”

I think it would be worth a new edition of the film which cuts those two titles. In part because, it’s obvious (and I say this as someone who cannot read lips) what they’re saying without the titles. We know. The audience back then knew. We don’t need the word cause it’s not funny. And it was especially disappointing because Brooks in Blazing Saddles was very smart about how language was used. Not so much here.

Silent Movie is funny. I recommend it to people. But we’re talking about Mel Brooks and saying that it’s funny feels like damning him with faint praise. Because it’s not a great film. It’s a good film. I think it’s something people will enjoy.

And while I wrote that the movie isn’t smart about language, it was in some ways. There’s only one word of spoken dialogue in the film. And it’s spoken by the legendary Marcel Marceau.

If Mel Brooks is thinking about a new project, my suggestion: make a musical of Silent Movie. I bet that would be something else. And no one else could do it.