The Producers [Blu-ray]

Director: Mel Brooks Mel Brooks

Overview

Theatrical producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) was once the toast of Broadway. Now he lives in his seedy office, cadging cash contributions from wealthy old ladies in exchange for sexual favors. Even worse, he's reduced to wearing a cardboard belt. Max's new accountant, Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), the soul of honesty, suggests that Max produce a hit to try to recoup his losses, but Max knows that it's too late for that. Offhandedly, Leo muses that, if Max found investors for a flop, he could legally keep all the extra money. Suddenly, Max's eyes light up -- and in that moment, Leo Bloom is gloriously corruptible. "I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!" cries Leo as Max embraces him. Together, Max and Leo conspire to select the worst play, the worst playwright, the worst director, and the worst actor to collaborate on their guaranteed flop. That play is Springtime for Hitler, "a delightful romp...with Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun." The playwright is Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), an unreconstructed Nazi who, in drunken delirium, insists that Hitler was a better painter than Churchill -- "He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon, two coats!" The director is pompous transvestite Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett), who is preparing to go to a costume party garbed as Marie Antoinette when Max and Leo come calling ("Max, Max, he's wearing a dress"). And the star, selected after extensive auditions, is hippie-freak Lorenzo St. DuBois (Dick Shawn) -- "L.S.D." for short. At the end of several weeks, Max has sold 25,000 percent of the show; and, as a finishing touch, Max bribes the opening-night critics for a favorable review, knowing full well that such a gesture is the kiss of death. The curtains part, and Springtime for Hitler opens with perhaps the most tasteless production number in the history of films. At the end of this extravaganza, the audience sits in dumbfounded silence. Gleefully, Max and Leo repair to a corner bar to celebrate their failure. But then.... The first directorial effort of Mel Brooks, The Producers didn't do so well on its first release, but since that time it has taken its place as one of the all-time great movie comedies.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/13/2021
UPC:	0738329242343
Original Release:	1968
Rating:	PG
Source:	Kl Studio Classics
Language:	English
Time:	1:28:00

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Zero Mostel	Max Bialystock
Gene Wilder	Leo Bloom
Kenneth Mars	Franz Liebkind
Dick Shawn	LSD
Christopher Hewett	Roger DeBris
Estelle Winwood	Hold Me, Touch Me
Lee Meredith	Ulla
Renee Taylor	Eva Braun
William Hickey	The Drunk
David Patch	Doc Goebbels
John Zoller	Critic
Madelyn Cates	Woman at Window
Frank Campanella	Bartender
Arthur Rubin	Auditioning Hitler
Zale Kessler	Auditioning Hitler
Bernie Allen	Auditioning Hitler
Rusty Blitz	Auditioning Hitler
Anthony Gardell	Auditioning Hitler
Mary Love	Old Lady
Amelie Barleon	Old Lady
Nell Harrison	Old Lady
Elsie Kirk	Old Lady
Barney Martin	German Officer in Play
Diana Eden	Showgirl
Tucker Smith	Lead Dancer
David Evans	Lead Dancer
Josip Elic	Violinist
Andréas Voutsinas	Carmen Ghia
Anne Ives	une vieille dame
Shimen Ruskin	le propriétaire
Michael Davis	Production Tenor
Mel Brooks	Actor
Frank Shaw	Actor
Margery Beddow	Dancer
John Morris	Composer

Technical Credits

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks	Director,Screenwriter
Sidney Glazier	Producer
Joseph E. Levine	Executive Producer
Willard W. Goodman	Sound Effects
Alan Heim	Sound Effects
Jack Grossberg	Producer
Alfa-Betty Olsen	Casting

Editorial Reviews

The Producers, Mel Brooks's wildly hilarious directorial debut and the source for his Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, soars with savage satire and one of the most perfect pairings in movie history: Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. Mostel portrays a grandiose but washed-up Broadway producer who teams up with Wilder's timid accountant to produce the worst show ever written, as part of a scheme to defraud investors. The chemistry between the two leads bubbles with animosity, affection, and mutually enabling dementia. Mostel reaches unimaginable heights of wide-eyed mania in scenes where he seduces a bevy of adoring octogenarians in order to bilk them out of their money. And in his first great role, the inimitable Wilder incorporates both his perpetual smirk and his patented hysterical rants into a multilayered portrayal of a of a man who is at first cajoled and bullied into -- but finally embraces -- a crazy dream. To top it all off is the play itself, "Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden," which stars Dick Shawn as a hepcat Hitler who grooves his way through the Great War. An over-the-top exercise in bad taste, it combines tap-dancing and goose-stepping with shameless glee. But let the viewer beware: the title song, "Springtime for Hitler," is a genuinely catchy tune that, once heard, is difficult to shake. This legendary comedy classic simply has to be seen to be believed.

Barnes & Noble - Gregory Baird

The Producers received two Oscar nominations: one went to Gene Wilder for Best Supporting Actor and the second went to Mel Brooks, who won for Best Original Screenplay in his hilarious feature-film debut. With an opening number that ranks among comic cinema's greatest, and boasting zesty tongue-in-cheek performances by Zero Mostel, Wilder, and Dick Shawn, The Producers is a delightful parody of the old Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney "let's put on a show in the old barn" comedies. The film also is a not-so-subtly veiled assault on the dubious ethics at work in the business side of the Hollywood movie industry. It's filled with some of the funniest dialogue in the entire Mel Brooks' canon, combined with some of the most outrageous musical numbers -- made all the more effective due to their compositional authenticity -- in film history, including the immortal production of "Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva." Who else but Mel Brooks would have the audacity to turn Hitler into the object of his comedy? The movie does not depend upon the rapid anarchic pacing of a Marx Brothers' film to grab the audience. Brooks almost purposefully slows the story down so we can enjoy the comic repartee between the wonderfully cast Mostel and Wilder. The Producers is one of those rare comedies that actually manages to be greater than the sum of its many very funny comedic parts.

All Movie Guide - Dan Jardine

This is one of the funniest movies ever made.

Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert