"
Blazing Saddles"*** 1\2 (out of ****)
Mel Brooks' lampoon of the American western, "Blazing Saddles" (1974) is probably best remembered as an outrageous, vulgar, low-brow, controversial comedy. Perhaps to some it is even the epitome of bad taste and insensitivity. And yet somehow I find it to be almost innocent by today's movie standards. That says a lot about how American comedy has changed since the release of Brooks' classic, fifty years ago.
Despite however "Blazing Saddles" influenced the future its comedy is very much rooted in the past, following in the anarchist tradition of the Ritz Brothers, Olsen & Johnson, and the Marx Brothers. The movie is a blizzard of puns, sexual innuendos, wise-cracks, visual gags, and political satire. It's approach to comedy is reminiscent of silent film comedy producer Mack Sennett and his Keystone Kops with its go for broke style. Luckily in Mel Brooks' autobiography, All About Me! - My Remarkable Life in Show Business he bears me out - "there was never a subject I thought was off-limits or untouchable. If we thought of something, if it even entered our minds, no matter how bizarre or how crazy or dirty or wild or savage or not socially acceptable...we would still do it." Of course the difference between the older comedies and Brooks' was its usage - no make that heavy usage - of four letter words and the "N" word.
"Blazing Saddles" was Brooks' third film as a director, coming after "The Producers" (1968) and "The Twelve Chairs" (1970). "The Producers" was an original concept created by Brooks based on a television producer he worked with in the 1950s, while writing for comedian Sid Caesar. "The Twelve Chairs" was based on a Russian novel of the same title written by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov which Brooks adapted by himself. But "Blazing Saddles" would be different. Brooks wasn't involved with "Saddles" initial development, which was a script written by Andrew Bergman called Tex X. Brooks was asked to read the script as a potential director for the project. Believing the material showed great promise, Brooks wanted to rework the script with Bergman's input and bring on three additional writers, Norman Steinberg, Alan Uger, and stand-up comedian Richard Pryor.
The very first scene in "Blazing Saddles" immediately sets the tone for the rest of the movie and establishes where the humor will stem from and how it will deal with race and racism. The railroad workers - comprised of minorities - are laying track in the hot sun. The white cowboys ride in to supervise their progress and start to needle the black characters. How 'bout singing a good ol' n#gger work song one of them declares. From there the black characters respond by singing a few lyrics of Cole Porter's I Get A Kick Out of You. Completely dismayed, the white characters demonstrate the kind of song they were hoping to hear and start singing the Camptown Races.
Within this scene we see a large part of the movie's humor will be anachronistic, juxtaposing the old west against "modern" times. Porter's tune wasn't exactly modern to 1970s audiences, being written in 1934, the movie will however use more modern day slang and fashion. This technique harkens back to Bob Hope comedies such as "Monsieur Beaucaire" (1946) and "Alias Jesse James" (1959), itself a comedy / western as well. The way the movie will find humor in its racial dynamic between the characters will be by flipping stereotypes with the black characters consistently outsmarting the dim-witted white characters.
This first scene also introduces us to the central motivating plot, the presence of quicksand is going to change plans for construction of the railroad. It is now going to have to travel through the town of Rock Ridge. The Attorney General, Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) sees a huge financial opportunity. The land will become very valuable with the incoming train. If Lamarr could get the land cheap, it would bring in quite a profit. One way to make this happen would be to drive the townspeople out.
What Lamarr ultimately settles on doing is have Governor William J. Lepetomane (Brooks) appoint the first ever black sheriff to the town of Rock Ridge, after Lamarr's henchmen tried to scare the people away by brute force. Once the people see they have a black sheriff they will leave the town in protest. In order to get the governor to sign on, Lamarr has to stroke his ego with whispers of greatness instore. The governor will go down in history for this action. It may even lead him to one day become President.
Already in Brooks' tale we see a story of racism, greed, and government corruption. In "Blazing Saddles" this just isn't a story of the old west but of America too. Brooks has taken the most American of genres, the western - with its themes of individualism and freedom - and uses it as a commentary on modern day society race relations. Remember it had been less than 10 years that both the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) were passed. In Brooks' autobiography he addresses this by writing, "If you want a comedy to last, there's a secret you must follow: You have to have an engine driving it. In Blazing Saddles, there's a very serious backstory. Racial prejudice is the engine that really drives the film and helps to make it work."
This however makes it sound as if "Blazing Saddles" has a serious streak to it. It doesn't! This is the same movie where a guy punches a horse - supposedly inspired by a real life incident involving Sid Caesar. Where an entire town has the same last name, Johnson. Where two men beat up a little old lady. Where a group of cowboys sit by a campfire eating beans and, well lets just say, let it rip. And where Count Basie and his orchestra play
April in Paris in the middle of the desert. In his
Chicago Sun-Times review Roger Ebert described the movie as, "a crazed grabbag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken."
The rest of the plot in "Blazing Saddles" involves a drunkard named the Wacko Kid (Gene Wilder). He had the fastest hands in the west until one day a kid caught him off guard and shot him in the ass! He's hidden in a whiskey bottle ever since. Being a social outcast he becomes friends with the sheriff, named Bart (Cleavon Little) serving as an unofficial deputy. Together the two try to thwart further plans by Lamarr to vacate the town. One challenge involves stopping a murderous menace named Mongo (Alex Karras). With a little looney tunes ingenuity, they are able to. Another of Lamarr's plans involves trying to seduce the sheriff with a Marlene Dietrich temptress named Lilly Von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn). In addition to the Dietrich reference the joke is the last name, which if spelled with one "p", is the slang word for sex.
Of course the Dietrich reference brings us to one of Brooks' specialties, parody. Brooks doesn't just go after obvious western movie clichés, he takes aim at everything. Lilly Von Shtupp is a direct shot at one of Dietrich's most iconic characters, Lola Lola from Josef von Sternberg's classic German film,
"The Blue Angel" (1930). But Brooks doesn't just stop at a visual reference, he goes even further. In an attempt to obliterate one of that film's most iconic moments - Dietrich singing
Falling in Love Again - Brooks wrote a song for the Von Shtupp character to sing, a song called
I'm Tired. All I can tell you is, I've never looked at Dietrich the same way since.
And Brooks and his gang of writers throw out all sorts of references to western actors like Richard Dix, Randolph Scott, and Gabby Hayes to mention of Laurel & Hardy and Olsen & Johnson. "Blazing Saddles" invokes "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) and "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" (1948) - "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!" Naturally the risk Brooks runs with all of this is, who is going to catch it? I'm the youngest person alive at 41 who knows this stuff. Brooks feels he has the answer when he wrote in his book, "Making a satiric comedy serves two audiences equally and simultaneously: the audience that gets every film reference and all of the subtext, and the other audience that has never seen or heard of any related film." He goes on to state "I try to lace my movies with cultural references, but I've always been careful that they're not weighed down by anything too arcane or inaccessible." It sounds good in theory but I wonder, given the lack of interest Gen Z shows in film history, will there come a time when what is in "Blazing Saddles" will be lost on an audience? I've left a lot out, barely scraping the surface.
For all the insanity shown on-screen in the movie most of the actors try to play this material straight. After recently watching the movie again, I believer no one plays it straighter than Gene Wilder. He may very well deliver the movie's best performance. He's required to say and do a lot of craziness but his face never lets on he is in on the joke. I can't quite say the same about Cleavon Little. He seems to be winking at the audience at times. With a comedy as outlandish as this, it doesn't hurt the movie but you see a contrast in style between Wilder and Little. The second best performance, in its commitment to madness is probably Kahn. She has a harder role than Wilder and Little because it is such a caricature. She could easily walk a fine line and fall on either side. I see Kahn playing the character as straight as she possibly could. Watch her I'm Tired performance. That could have been very broad.
By the time "Blazing Saddles" ends, it escalates into something I've never seen before, a complete and utter destruction of the fourth wall. I've seen comedies poke fun at being self-referential but not at this scale. Oliver Hardy and Edward Kennedy would give a slow burn in front of the camera. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby would talk to the audience sometimes. In Olsen & Johnson's
"Hellzapoppin'" (1941) a projectionist (played by Shemp Howard) messes up a reel of the movie but in "Blazing Saddles" they expose they are on the Warner Brothers studio lot! There's a chase scene via car! Characters go into a movie theater and watch "Blazing Saddles"! There is even a great pie fight in the studio's commissary.
Fifty years after the release of "Blazing Saddles" it's easy to see how the movie and Mel Brooks influenced the comedy landscape. Some would say Brooks contributed to the popularity of the movie parody genre with everyone's favorite example, "Airplane!" (1980). And there are those that may say movies like "Blazing Saddles" raised the ante, making it responsible for the eventual gross out bathroom humor of today.
But Brooks' movie is smarter than any gross out comedy made today. Despite all the controversy that has followed the movie - even back in 1974 - "Blazing Saddles" has a lot of heart. Its humor feels playfully innocent and not malicious. It has the audacity to have ideas and find humor in life and not simply play it safe and tow a political line. It dares us to laugh at ourselves. It is bold in that way. It proves humor can be found in any subject, even one as ugly as racism.
Still the movie is not for everyone. In Vincent Canby's New York Times review he mused "one remembers along with the good gags the film's desperate, bone-crushing efforts to be funny. One remembers exhaustion, perhaps because you kept wanting it to be funnier." My best response to that would be a few years ago I attended a screening of "Blazing Saddles" at the Chicago Theater with Mel Brooks in attendance. The theater was packed and the roar of laughter could be heard throughout the theater. In more recent times there was the chatter about the movie needing a trigger warning on HBO Max. That's politics and not a reflection of everyday John and Jane Doe. That decision was made in reaction to activists that had created a hostile environment against the arts.
Movie year 1974 was the year of Mel Brooks. Not only did Brooks score his first mainstream success but Brooks directed two of the top three highest grossing movies of the year! His "Blazing Saddles" was the second highest grossing movie of the year and his
"Young Frankenstein" (1974) was the third! "Blazing Saddles" scored three Academy Award nominations with the most prominent of those nominations being Kahn's for best supporting actress. One of the other nominations was for Brooks in the best song category for the movie's title song, which is sung over the credits by Frankie Laine.
I wouldn't go as far as to say "Blazing Saddles" is my favorite Brooks comedy but it is one of the funniest American comedies of all-time. It has a daring, unabashed spirit peppered with several memorable gags and quips. It is fast moving and unrelenting. If I were a movie critic back in 1974, it would have made my list as one of the best movies of the year!
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