“What the country needs is money, and it’s up to you to get it for me!”
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Note: The film’s title most likely refers to the insanely fast running speed of Klopstokia’s Major Domo (Andy Clyde), but is still rather a strange choice. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“He didn’t get that nose from playing ping-pong.”
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transpires in a fantastical alter-universe: Fields is traveling with his niece, Gloria Jean, on an airplane, when suddenly he “leaps… to retrieve his whiskey bottle and falls thousands of feet before landing safely on Margaret Dumont’s mountaintop estate, where she lives with her pretty young daughter:
… a gorilla:
… and [a] Great Dane with fangs”:
… and later arrives at a Russian village in Mexico (!). Truly, the preposterous scenario proposed by Fields — which Pangborn, naturally, rejects as “impossible, incomprehensible, inconceivable; and besides that, it’s no good” — seems to be the loopy product of both Fields’s accumulated years of experience on wackily hybrid studio sets (viz. the film’s opening sequences), and his constant inebriation, which is referenced continually throughout both the meta-narrative and the fantasy film. In one classic scene, for instance, Fields enters “an ice-cream parlor, where, before blowing the head off his ice-cream soda, he turns to us to reveal that censors wouldn’t let him stage the scene in a saloon”. Within the fantasy film, numerous laughs are milked (sorry) when Fields shares a stiff drink of goat’s milk (!) with an engineer (Emmett Vogan):
Fields would find intoxicating substances under a rock if necessary, it seems. At any rate, your enjoyment of this film will ultimately depend upon how much you’re willing to forgo straightforward narrative in favor of something much more — dare I say, post-modern? Rewatching it again last night, after viewing and posting on numerous “pure” Fields films, I find myself enjoying it perhaps most of all, simply for its perversely illogical and “messy” status. Knowing in hindsight that this was to be Fields’s final starring role, it could be viewed as an especially apt “sayonara” — i.e., Fields’s attempt to throw everything plus the kitchen sink into his grand finale. At the same time, as Dave Kehr notes, the film “has an appealingly inward, mournful quality, as if it were a swan song that only its singer could hear. Unconcerned with reaching the audience, Fields seems to be muttering to himself through much of the movie, his barely audible remarks often achieving a strange poetry: ‘The chickens lay eggs in Kansas. The chickens have pretty legs in Kansas.'” Note: My single favorite moment (over in an instant): Franklin Pangborn, agitatedly trying to help Gloria Jean rehearse, is momentarily caught up in a male chorus line dancing through the studio.
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“I don’t believe that talk, Henry. I believe she is a good girl, no matter what anyone says.”
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Review: Note: Apparently Dempster’s best role was in Isn’t Life Wonderful? (1924), a highly regarded Griffith film which isn’t listed in Peary’s book, and which I haven’t seen. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“Detectives in glass houses shouldn’t wave clues.”
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Review: Note: Hitchcock filmed a silent version of this movie as well, which is available on the DVD release. Even the “talkie” edition, however, starts off (for the first 8 minutes) mostly like a silent film, with just a few noise effects added — so be patient. (I mention this because I wondered for a while whether I was watching the “right” version.) Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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(Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die) Links: |
“Professor Kelp’s just the kind of guy who might fool you.”
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He refers to the film in general as “wildly inventive”, calling out Lewis’s “innovative direction and… witty screenplay” (co-written with Bill Richmond), which is full of countless hilarious moments — including inventive sight gags (such as the surreal consequence of Kelp trying to lift weights in a gym):
… remarkably effective use of sound effects for humor (as when Kelp enters his class with a raging hangover, and over-reacts to every noise made by his students):
… and plenty of darkly humorous sequences with Buddy Love (which indicate that this film could in some ways be more accurately described as a “black comedy” than a straight “comedy”).
Indeed, Peary writes that “If The Nutty Professor is Lewis’s best film, and I believe it is, it is not so much because it is his funniest as because it is his most daring… in the sense that Lewis, who begs for love in all his other films, knew he was making a picture to which his greatest fans, children, would probably react negatively.” Love is a truly provocative character — someone so outrageously, obnoxiously arrogant (and cruel!) that one hesitates to laugh at him. (An exception is during the one Love scene played strictly for laughs: the truly chuckle-worthy sequence in which Love “gets into the… good graces of the dean [an excellent Del Moore] by complimenting him on his suit and flattering his acting ability, coaxing him into reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy while standing on top of a table and wearing the weird attire that Buddy hands him every time he tries to begin.”)
The rest of the time, however, one simply squirms uncomfortably at the notion that a half-rate, oily slickster like Love could genuinely charm an entire population of college students, and Stella Stevens in particular.
With that said, Stevens’ attraction to Love is decidedly complex: while Stevens (Peary argues this is her “best role in a comedy”) spends a bit too much time simply staring at Love or Kelp with either puzzled sympathy or annoyance, it’s clear that she’s genuinely trying to tease out the nature of her attraction to both men. She’s turned on by Kelp’s intelligence, but simultaneously drawn in — as if by hypnotic spell — to the web of Love’s allure, despite clearly recognizing the folly of her conflicted desire. Love himself has traditionally (and most facilely) been viewed as representing “Lewis’s ex-partner, the cocky, romantic-singing, and boozing Dean Martin” — but Peary (and others) note that Buddy is perhaps more accurately the “alter-ego of Jerry Lewis, the Lewis we see each year on the telethon: that conceited, sanctimonious, singing, angry older fellow who tries unsuccessfully at times to keep the funny-voiced ‘Kid’ bottled up inside him”. Check out Lewis’s 1969 interview with Dick Cavett (available on YouTube) for a classic representation of just this dynamic. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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(Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die) Links: |
“Now listen, and listen carefully — this kid can and will be whatever we want him to be.”
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The rest of the movie remains a mixed bag of random chuckles (Lewis is in classic klutzy form when visiting Hans Conried’s antiques-riddled home for a music lesson):
… occasional pathos (as during the oddly charming high school dance flashback sequence):
and rehashed cliches from earlier films — including obligatory romantic tension between nerdy Stanley and an impossibly sympathetic goddess (in this case, Ina Balin), who seems merely pleasantly bemused by his actions at all times.
Be forewarned about the irritatingly dated “final” comment made by Stanley, which is similar to Lewis’s own stated view of female comedians:
Note: This shouldn’t technically be considered a “Peter Lorre film” given that his role here (his last) is not only incredibly tiny, but Lorre seems utterly disinterested and bored the entire time. “We got the wrong guy”, his character mutters in one of his very few lines, and one can’t help sensing he’s referring to himself.
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“You may joke, my dear, but unfortunately, the legends about the castle are not to be taken lightly.”
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On the negative side, Lewis is even more neurotically annoying and clingy than usual.
Of primary interest is an early nightclub scene in which we get a glimpse of Lewis and Martin’s live “charisma” together (with assistance from Dorothy Malone as Martin’s girlfriend); it feels like an honest approximation of their esteemed on-stage career together. Note: This was Carmen Miranda’s final film (she died two years later); however, while her energetic performances are always welcome:
Lewis’s imitation of her (the ostensible reason for her presence here) is… depressingly unfunny. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“From the first day I got here, I’ve caused everybody nothing but trouble.”
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… fails at the seemingly simple task of bringing a few updated script pages to a room full of secretaries:
… and, when mistaken for an extra, completely ruins the scene he’s in by bursting into song.
From there, however, Morty’s travails become increasingly repetitive and/or pointless, with several (i.e., Morty’s botched trip to the car wash with his boss’s laryngitis-ridden wife) simply defying all intelligence.
Much like in Lewis’s directorial debut, The Bellboy, the point here seems to be simply to watch Lewis’s nebbishy alter-ego meandering through a series of mishaps within a defined space — but while The Bellboy‘s blessedly mute Stanley is just one among many pawns in an enjoyably wacky universe, Morty (as usual for most of Lewis’s protagonists) quickly becomes simply a tiresome nuisance. Worst of all, the film’s nominal plot device — Morty being sent out to spy on his fellow employees — is simply never attended to in the screenplay, until a final mawkish sequence (loved by many, but not me) in which Lewis confesses his frustrations to a puppet.
Worst of all is the incredibly self-serving denouement, which highlights Lewis’s arrogance as a performer more clearly than I’ve ever seen before. Yet there are at least a few sequences in The Errand Boy which make it worth your time to check out — most notably the justifiably lauded “board room” pantomime scene (available to view on YouTube). This scene alone shows evidence of Lewis’s intermittent genius. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“I wanted to become a detective, too. It only took brains, courage, and a gun — and I had a gun.”
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“People can do funny things for 30 million dollars — even brothers!”
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Unfortunately, apart from a few reasonably inspired comedic sequences, the bulk of the film is only mildly amusing, and Lewis’s impersonations truly come across more like caricatures than the real-life protagonists demanded by the plot (after all, thirty million dollars are at stake here!). The primary draw of the film is Donna Butterworth as Lewis’s young charge — she’s refreshingly natural, and holds her own admirably. Note: If you’re curious to see a list of films featuring actors playing multiple roles, click here (though this Wikipedia entry is by no means complete, given that I had to add Family Jewels myself). Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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