Today is the release date for the new Blu-ray edition of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the 1966 film adaptation of the musical written by Burt Shevelove, Larry Gelbart and Stephen Sondheim. If you don't have time to read this whole review of the movie, I can give you a quick summary…
- If you never saw a good production of the stage play, you'll probably love it. It has Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton and other talented people. It has low comedy and lots of sexy women wearing very little clothing. It has action and broad comedy and a frenetic pace.
- If you have seen a good production of the stage play, you'll probably dislike it. Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Burt Shevelove, Larry Gelbart and Stephen Sondheim certainly did. Mr. Gelbart described his first viewing thusly: "It was like being run over by a truck that stopped and backed up so it could run over you again." Phil Silvers thought it was a good film but not as good as it would have been if they'd followed the play more closely. Mr. Keaton died before this, his final film was released so we can only guess what he would have thought of it…though given that he'd just come off Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, he probably would still have regarded it as a step up.
So what do some of us think is wrong with it? Well, it's not the casting…though some problems were created by putting Phil Silvers in the role of Lycus. That's a small role in the original play and Silvers was at the time, probably the biggest star in the movie. He was especially big in the international market so his part had to be enlarged. That's not as easy as it sounds.
The plot of Forum is like a Rubik's Cube. You move one piece and everything else moves with it. I've seen some productions where they tried to hack it down by a half-hour or so and that's not easy. Something in one scene affects something in another. When they expanded the role of Lycus (somewhat pointlessly in a story sense) and added a big, pointless chariot race at the end, a lot of other stuff had to be cut. Among the cuts were quite a few of Stephen Sondheim's songs.
So one problem is that they took the storyline — this wonderful, intricate farce — and chopped out an awful lot of it and rejuggled what was left to try and have it still make sense. It does…but the stage version made more sense and was funnier. Another problem is that…well, any time you're throwing away Sondheim tunes, something is wrong.
Mostel complained about Too Much Spectacle. On the stage, it was a simple production with a complex plot. On stage, it was one set and pretty much one set of costumes. He thought too much of the comedy got lost in the movie by trying to re-create Ancient Rome with gladiators and chariots and lavish sets and big crowd scenes.
My complaints mostly have to do with the plot reconfigurations, the jettisoned songs and — most of all — the editing. Director Richard Lester had a unique style of constructing jokes via the editing — something that was considered a modern, hip approach at the time. I question whether a very classic, old-style comedy combining Roman farce and 1930's burlesque set in an ancient era was best served by a modern, hip approach. To me, it makes the film one continual, distracting anachronism.
Worse, it cedes control of the comedy from the comedians to the editor. The timing on the screen is not that of Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton and a fine comic actor named Michael Hordern (and a young, just-starting-out juvenile named Michael Crawford). It's the timing of Richard Lester, reconstructing their performances (and rewriting the Shevelove-Gelbart dialogue) by cutting between lines and words and forever calling more attention to the cutting than to what the actors are saying. In a way, it reminds me of what Russ Meyer did on some of his films, casting untalented actors because of their physical appearance, then creating their performances in the editing room with cutting tricks. Lester did not have untalented actors whose delivery needed tricks.
So do I dislike this movie? I'm in Group 2 above…but still, there are moments. I can sometimes put myself in the frame of mind of Group 1 and forget about what the movie should have been and enjoy some of it for what it is. Mostel, Silvers, Gilford and Keaton are four of the most gifted comic actors who ever lived and it's hard to resist a movie with them in it…so I'm ordering the Blu-ray. You can, too.
It apparently has no special features but the box does display the little-seen Jack Davis poster art. Like so many comedy movies of the era, someone hired Jack and asked for something like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and he delivered. He always did.
