In 1970 Mel Brooks was something of a new kid on
the scene. His first movie, The Producers,
had been a big hit on Broadway and a successful movie so expectation was high.
His second movie The Twelve Chairs
proved he was both as funny and as talented as he seemed. Set in the
post-revolution USSR, the film plays on the historical realities of the newly
minted communist government as it obliterates the life known by the former
aristocratic class. Ron Moody plays Vorobyaninov, a once rich man who now works
as a clerk in a government office. We meet him as he visits his mother-in-law’s
death bed. She informs him that before the revolution she sewed a fortune of
jewels into the lining of a dining room chair. Unfortunately, she also tells
the town priest Father Fyodor, played with wicked glee by Dom DeLuise. Thus we
are off on a chase across the USSR to find the missing chair with the missing
fortune inside. This is the perfect setup for Mel Brooks to ply his madcap
trade of pratfalls, visual humor and Semitic in-jokes. And ply he does. Along
with Blazing Saddles, Brooks finds
his comedic stride most effectively in The
Twelve Chairs. However, he also is surprisingly effective in creating a
real relationship between the main characters, who, in spite of their
reprehensible greed, actually evoke something resembling pathos by the end of
the film.
Immediately upon learning of the chair,
Vorobyaninov is joined by handsome con-man Ostap Bender (Frank Langella) who
acts as the straight man throughout the movie as Dom DeLuise and Ron Moody
offer a master’s class on physical comedy. DeLuise is one of the great clowns
of modern film. His physical performance in The
Twelve Chairs ranks as one of the best of his career. His rubbery face, loose-limbed
movements, and schoolboy goofiness were never used to greater effect. Mel
Brooks also offers a brief but hilarious cameo as the drunken servant Tikhon. Ultimately
the film belongs to Ron Moody though. His outrage at his lowered social station
is palpable and it manifests in a series of physical and verbal tics and twitches
that anyone who has experienced loss can relate to. He also is a master of the
lost art of the slow burn. His rage and frustration grow and increase
throughout the film exploding as he repeatedly fails to get the right chair.
The Twelve Chairs succeeds wildly on this
slapstick level, but there is much more to this film. The most surprising
element is how effective Brooks is at creating scale and meaning. Filmed in
Yugoslavia, Brooks does an admirable job of capturing the post-Revolution
Russia, a country suspended between rural village life, old-world aristocratic
highs, and the coming bureaucratic lows of the USSR. Brooks succeeds in conveying
an epic feel to the landscape and the journey the main characters make across
this huge country in search of their chairs. Every one of Brooks’
strengths is on full display here. The journey for treasure feels like
Chaplin’s The Gold Rush while the
beautiful travelogue elements are obviously influenced by (or maybe making fun
of) Dr. Zhivago. Drawing those
comparisons may seem far-fetched, but I’m not sure Mel Brooks’ first five or so
films don’t represent the funniest body of work in the second half of the
century. His combination of Marx Brothers-like chaotic action and sound filmic
technique could be seen as a bridge between old and new Hollywood. There’s more
to this great comedy than initially meets the eye.
-
Paul
Epstein
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