This tape opens with a trailer for a new series of Short Stories, a Channel 4 documentary strand.
Then, a trailer for thirtysomething, or ‘The Whining Yuppies Show’.
Then, straight into the main feature, Mel Brooks’ remake of To Be or Not To Be. Brooks has a lot of chutzpah, taking a classic Ernst Lubitsch comedy, about the holocaust, no less, and remaking it. I think he more or less succeeds – he has more songs, for one thing.
The biggest problem this film has is that we all know the extent of the horror of the holocaust. Lubitsch and his writers made the film in 1942 where, perhaps, the full extent of what was happening in the concentration camps wasn’t known (or well known) so the lightness and farce play as quite innocent. Brooks and his writers (Thomas Meehan & Ronny Graham) and director Alan Johnson can’t claim the same innocence, so the film has to play with the audience having full knowledge of what really happened. I’m sure some viewers would feel it’s not a suitable subject for humour, but Brooks has spent much of his career laughing at the nazis, so thematically, it’s his film through and through.
The great TV critic Clive James thought the nazis were beyond satire and ridicule, that poking fun in some way mitigates their great evil. I don’t feel that strongly, but I’m of a slightly younger generation to James, so the war was already quite distant when I was growing up.
Back to the film, then. Brooks plays Frederick Bronski, the self-important actor-manager of the Bronski Theatre Company in Warsaw. The film opens with Brooks and Ann Bancroft (his wife, and his screen wife) performing ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ in Polish.
The scene following the song and dance is performed entirely in Polish, with no subtitles. Then, a voice from the sky announces “Ladies and Gentlemen, in the interests of clarity and sanity, the rest of this movie will not be in Polish”
Perhaps it’s because Brooks is not directing, but this feels more subtle than Brooks’ own efforts can sometimes be. The comedy is still broad, but the effect of the outbreak of war on the characters is depicted honestly. Bronski has his house commandeered as Gestapo headquarters, and although there are still gags, you still feel the human cost.
In the end, I think it works. There’s still farce, and yes, some of the nazis are played for laughs (or at least ridicule) but the film also has moments of genuine tension and pathos, as when the theatre company have to escape during a special performance for Hitler and his soldiers, along with several Jewish families who had been hiding at the theatre. Disguised as clowns, they all process through the theatre, but one older woman is frozen with fear at the sight of all these soldiers. There’s a genuine sense of threat here, even among the vaudeville, and the scene is perfectly capped by the gay dresser, who had also evaded the nazis, going up to the couple, in character as a clown, shouting ‘Juden’ and slapping yellow stars on them both. This gets a huge laugh from the soldiers, and the people escape.
Being able to ride this line between comedy and pathos is not easy, and it’s to the film’s credit that it manages it almost all the time. But let’s gloss over the little dog chasing the aeroplane.
And at the end, the whole cast gets a proper theatrical curtain call, including the nazis, a wound tight Christopher Lloyd and a buffoonish Charles Durning.
Teeny nerdy point: Mell Brooks and Anne Bancroft’s son Max has a small role as the son of a Jewish family taken in by the Bronskis. If his name is familiar, Max Brooks wrote the book World War Z on which the movie of the same name was loosely based.
After the movie, another trailer for thirtysomething. Then, a (presumably live) trailer for After Dark, with Tony Wilson and an Easter themed discussion.
Then there’s a trailer for Live and Let Die, the ITV Easter Monday film. Of course.
Following some ads, there’s a trailer for A Handful of Dust.
Then, we have the previously advertised episode of After Dark.
The recording stops during this fascinating discussion.
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