For a long time I wanted to see something from the films of Mel Brooks, about whom I have read more than once, but I have not seen a film made by him as a director, so I began with his first film, which was released in 1967 under the title “The Producers”, although its original title was “Spring for the Fuhrer” or “Spring for Hitler”,
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For a long time I wanted to see something from the films of Mel Brooks, about whom I have read more than once, but I have not seen a film made by him as a director, so I began with his first film, which was released in 1967 under the title “The Producers”, although its original title was “Spring for the Fuhrer” or “Spring for Hitler”, but under this title it was refused to release. The film tells the story of two producers, one of whom was actually an accountant, who decided to put on Broadway the most failed performance, because, the accountant Leo Bloom (Jean Wilder), who conducted an audit of the producer Max Bialistok (Zero Mostel), who had long been dragging a miserable existence, suddenly flashed the idea that the producer could profit no less from bankruptcy than from a successful performance. Max immediately grabbed the idea, attracted Leo to it, and they got down to business. They spent a lot of effort to find the worst play, which will certainly fail at the first performance, the worst director and actor for the title role. Finally, they found a play by a completely crazy German author Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), no less crazy director Roger de Bris (Christopher Hewitt) and an actor nicknamed LSD (Dick Shawn) for the role of Hitler, Max quickly collected a large amount of money from his old philanthropists, whom he “charmed”, and they paid him for this “for a new performance”. And so the performance began and at first everything went as they planned - the people were outraged by the theme and the main character and some even began to leave, Max and Leo quickly went to celebrate this event, but how they were mistaken, suddenly it turned out that the audience at some point decided that all this was an evil satire (and the production looked like this because of the lead actor), the audience began to laugh, and not resent, and the performance suddenly found success. The author, a former Hitlerite, was very angry, he did not see the image he created, it certainly should not have been satire, but should have been the exaltation of the Fuehrer, he wanted to show what a wonderful man he really was. Leo and Max are terrified, too, because instead of 100%, they sold 25,000% of their shares and had nothing to return, even if the production was successful, they hoped that after the failure they would be declared bankrupt and then bribes would be smooth. And then they decide on a crazy act, as a result of which not only will they suffer themselves, but also will end up in prison. But even there they will continue their activities. The film was really good, the actors were selected, and the satire actually turned out very evil, and not only at Hitler, but at all the other participants in the events. Based on the film, a musical was staged, and then a remake was shot, but it was not successful. And the film itself at first caused very contradictory reviews - from complete delight to complete failure, but over time everything changed, critics consider it one of the best films. In 1996, the film was recognized by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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