370. The Producers (1967)

Starring: Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel, Dick Shawn

Director: Mel Brooks

Running Time: 88 mins

The Producers is an American film that follows the attempts of two men who decide to produce a sure-fire flop of a Broadway musical to benefit their own financial gain, with various mishaps of course happening along the way.

I was surprised by how brilliantly funny this film was. Normally, I feel relatively cynical about watching comedies from the 60s or before, because the humour is normally very dated, but here, it was not at all, with the completely farcical element lending an hilarious atmosphere to the film.

The whole idea of this story was totally ridiculous. Despite seeming as if the concept of making a flop to profit more had been explained, it still appeared completely preposterous to me, however that note just added even more to the farce and therefore overall hilarity of the story.

The characters were also all fantastic. Bringing together an ensemble of artificial, hyperbolic and seemingly incompatible personalities ended in a triumph for the story, as the clashing of interests between various characters resulted in great amounts of sparring and consequently comical scenes.

I will say that the performances by Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel were great, as they managed to capture the differing ideologies of their respective characters spectacularly, making the film overall more convincing.

The play: Springtime For Hitler, and all of the Nazi humour was so tasteless and politically incorrect that it left me shocked, yet still thoroughly entertained, with some of the scenes involving this theme being incredibly unpredictable, but overall hilarious, and because of that, I’ll give this a 7.9.