The Producers (1968 film)

The Producers is a 1968 feature-length comedy film set in New York City, in which two con men (Bialystock and Bloom) attempt to cheat theatre 'angels' (investors) out of their investment money.

The film was adapted by its writer/director, Mel Brooks, into The Producers, a Broadway musical, in 2001. The Producers, a film based in turn on that musical, was released on December 25, 2005.

Cast

Max Bialystock	Zero Mostel
Leo Bloom	Gene Wilder
Franz Liebkind	Kenneth Mars
Hold me, Touch me	Estelle Winwood
Eva Braun	Renée Taylor
Roger De Bris	Christopher Hewett
Ulla	Lee Meredith
The drunk	William Hickey
Carmen Ghia	Andréas Voutsinas
Doc Goebbels	David Patch
Lorenzo St Dubois (L.S.D.)	Dick Shawn

Plot

Max Bialystock (Mostel) is a failed, aging Broadway producer who ekes out a living romancing rich old women in exchange for money for his "next play." He encounters the nebbish accountant Leo Bloom (Wilder) when the latter is sent to Bialystock's office to do his books; in the process of this, a chance comment by Bloom inspires a scheme to massively oversell shares in a Broadway production, then flee to Brazil with the money. They set out to purposely make a horrific flop, so that no one will ever audit its books, and thus avoid a payout. After an extensive search they find an unproduced play which Bialystock gleefully describes as "a love letter to Hitler," written by a deranged ex-Nazi named Franz Liebkind (Mars). They convince Liebkind to sign over the rights, then collect money from dozens of little old ladies - ultimately selling 25,000 percent of the play - and hire the monumentally untalented director Roger De Bris (Hewett) to stage the production. The part of Hitler goes to a brain-damaged but charismatic hippie named Lorenzo St. Dubois (Shawn), who wanders into the wrong theater by accident during the casting call.

The result of all of this is Springtime for Hitler, a cheerfully upbeat musical comedy detailing the dictator's life, which opens with a lavish production number celebrating Nazi Germany overrunning Europe. Unfortunately for the protagonists, their attempt to make an unwatchable play backfires as, after initial gobsmacked disbelief, the audience finds the inept production so funny that they misinterpret it as an over-the-top satire on Nazism and universally hail it as a hit. Liebkind, who really believed they were producing a tribute to Hitler, is insulted by the audience's laughter and barges onto the stage to interrupt the play, which only makes it funnier to the audience.

After Liebkind attempts to shoot the producers in their office, the three of them band together and, in desperation, blow up the theatre to end the production. They get caught in the explosion and are hauled off to jail. Found "incredibly guilty" in their criminal trial, they are sent to prison where they cast a new show, "Prisoners of Love," among their fellow convicts, running the exact same scam as before.

Awards

The Producers won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gene Wilder). The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Trivia

Max Bialystock is named after the Polish city of Białystok.
Leo Bloom is named for the subject of the novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom. Leo meets Max on June 16, the date that all of the action in Ulysses takes place.
Liebkinds' last name means literally dear child or good kid in German
At one point during his search for "the worst play ever written," Max reads a sentence about a man waking up one morning finding himself transformed into a giant cockroach. Max rejects the story, on the grounds that it is "too good." Despite the seemingly ridiculous content of the sentence, it is indeed "too good": it is the opening sentence to Franz Kafka's classic novel, The Metamorphosis.
Carmen Ghia is named for the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
The writer-director Mel Brooks dubbed the line "Don't be stupid, be a smarty/Come and join the Nazi Party" in the song Springtime For Hitler. (He does not actually appear in the film.) This line is also dubbed into each performance of the musical and in the movie version of the musical.
At its theatrical release in Sweden, the film was given the Swedish title Producenterna (The Producers), but it was not a success then. After it was re-released under the title Det Våras För Hitler (Springtime for Hitler), it did score with the Swedish audience. Because of this, all of Mel Brooks' films were given a title with Det våras för... (Springtime For...) in Sweden, up until Life Stinks. (For example, Blazing Saddles was retitled Det Våras För Sheriffen (Springtime For The Sheriff) and Spaceballs was retitled Det Våras För Rymden (Springtime For Space). After this, Mel Brooks himself has complained at the Swedish habit of always calling his films something with 'Springtime For...' and so, his last two films have been called Robin Hood: Karlar I Trikåer ( Men In Tights) and Dracula: Död Men Lycklig ( Dead and Loving It), although the latter is called Det Våras För Dracula on the Swedish DVD cover).
The foreman of the jury is Bill Macy, who would later star in the 1970s sitcom, Maude.
Dustin Hoffman was originally cast as Franz Liebkind, but bowed out to star in The Graduate.
The title of the U2 album Achtung Baby comes from a line in the movie.

Quotations

From Mel Brooks' interview: "I was never crazy about Hitler...If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win...That's what they do so well: they seduce people. But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can't win. You show how crazy they are."

External links

1968 films | Cult films | Films featuring a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominated performance | United States National Film Registry