39. The Producers

I always enjoy a narrative setup where a charlatan seduces a generally upstanding person (often wealthy, but not necessarily) into pursuing a big score. See also, GLOW, The Greatest Showman, and Ed Wood.

The whole notion of intentionally creating a flop in order to defraud the show’s investors is clever, and the path toward their goal seems assured. From the moment they decide to produce Springtime for Hitler, a musical tribute to Nazi Germany, it seems like nothing could possibly go right.

Until the audience decides it’s a parody/satire, and that it’s intended to be hilariously bad. It’s a perfect comedic setup and payoff. It also has some phenomenal comedic performances from Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel.

I know there’s criticism about comedies that “you couldn’t make today” (and I’m not going to address that broader discussion here)… but there’s one part of this film that I don’t believe would work today. It feels like producing Springtime for Hitler would become a “culture war” flashpoint with people attacking and defending their idea of the show starting well before it debuts. In the film, the author of the show is furious about what they’ve done to his earnest ode to Hitler. In a modern version, it’s not hard to imagine a wave of “go woke and go broke” mockery along with a wider range of dangerous threats by neo-nazi groups.

That’s not to say that the original isn’t still effective and funny. It’s a time capsule of the cultural climate and a sense of where the boundaries were for comedy at that time.