Shhhhhh!

SILENT MOVIE (1976)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Any movie that pays homage to silent film can't be bad. After all, silent films are a touchstone of American film history - without them, there would be no cinema. And so, as wildly uneven as some of the comic bits are in "Silent Movie," it is overall an amusing film and a genuine original.

The whole film plays exactly like a silent movie. There is some incidental music, as most silent films did have an orchestra playing (there are also plenty of sound effects). Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman are a bunch of guys who seem to be tooling around Hollywood without any real apparent purpose. They pick up a pregnant lady who causes their car to tilt on its rear wheels! It turns out Brooks is Mel Funn, an alcoholic movie director whose past consumption nearly ruined his career. His pals are helping him make this movie, a silent movie as it were, for a nearly bankrupt studio called Engulf and Devour. The head of the studio is Sid Caesar, but he hates the idea of a silent movie until Funn convinces him it can work if they cast movie stars.

So we get Paul Newman tooling around in a race car; Burt Reynolds taking a shower while other hands adorn his physique; James Caan, as he practices his boxing outside his trailer; Marcel Marceau, who speaks the only word in the entire film; Anne Bancroft; Liza Minnelli, as she is disturbed while eating at a cafeteria while the clan wears armor in disguise that causes the usual pratfalls, and so on.

"Silent Movie" has plenty of terrific gags but it did not leave me out of breath or delirious like Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" or "Blazing Saddles." There are some lulls (the introduction of Sid Caesar goes on forever) but there are just as many inspired moments. I love the moment where Marty Feldman has film reels wrapped around his body, and how they are unspooled so the film can be projected! I love the relentless battle with a Coke machine where coke bottles are thrown and explode on impact (Stephen King tried this gag somewhat to serious effect in his directorial debut, "Maximum Overdrive," and it didn't work). I also love a brief moment where an advertisement is shown for the skyline of New York City and we hear the instrumentals for "San Francisco" when, rather abruptly, it is interrupted for the more appropriate instrumentals of "I'll Take Manhattan." Then there is the fly in the soup for a patron that is none other than Henny Youngman. There is also a merry-go-round bit that shows how vulgar good old Mel can be.

As I said, there is a slight stretch of unevenness to it but "Silent Movie" is still funny, harmless and endearing enough for most anybody who loves the silent film era.