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21 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Brooks' overlooked gem, 30 November 2004

Author: jrs-8 from Chicago

When one speaks of Mel Brooks the talk immediately goes to either "Blazing Saddles" or "Young Frankenstein" or "The Producers." How often do you hear mention of "Silent Movie?" After watching this film again just yesterday I can say that this film is also a masterpiece and ranks on the same lines of the previous films.

"Silent Movie" is deceptively simple in plot. A washed up movie director (Brooks) comes up with an idea to make a silent movie to help save the studio that once employed him. Once given the okay by studio chief Sid Caesar, Brooks and his sidekicks Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise set out to find five superstars to help make the movie a hit. And that's all there is to it - plot wise. What Brooks does is fill every single scene with great ideas. Shots that have absolutely nothing to do with the story are thrown in to get a laugh. Brooks hits the bullseye most of the time. I don't think I went more then a minute without laughing throughout.

Another master stroke is John Morris' rousing score that fills the movie from beginning to end. Without it the movie would have failed. And, yes, it truly is a silent movie save for one spoken word which most people probably are aware of anyway. It's another classic Mel Brooks moment.

"Silent Movie" followed "Young Frankenstein" which followed "Blazing Saddles." It's safe to say Brooks was at his peak during this period. His quality of films began to dip after "Silent Movie" starting with the amusing but overblown "High Anxiety." But we still have this time period to savor when Brooks may have been the best (if not then equal to Woody Allen) comedy director of his time.

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14 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Silent clowns, loud laughter, 14 February 2005

Author: Petri Pelkonen (petri_pelkonen@hotmail.com) from Finland

A team of movie makers, Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) march into a film studio to speak to the chief (Sid Caesar).They've got a marvelous movie idea, that can't fail.They want to make the first silent movie in 40 years.So soon they're into the making process.They have to get the biggest stars there are in the show business.They're after Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli, James Caan, Anne Bancroft (Mel's wife) and Marcel Marceau, the mime.The crook of the story, Engulf (Harold Gould) does everything to stop the movie from being made.Mel Brooks made this extremely funny comedy in 1976.He made it completely silent, except for one little word said by the French mime. The comical work of Mel, Marty and Dom is something you don't have words for.They're not the only people in this film who deserve praises.Caesar and Gould are excellent and so are those who appear as themselves.Then I must mention people like Bernadette Peters, Carol DeLuise (Dom's wife) and Charlie Callas.Film maker Barry Levinson can also be seen there. This movie seems in some points like a real silent movie made in the 20's.Except this one comes with color.Mel and the gang do it as good as did comics like Chaplin,Keaton and Lloyd.The use of music by John Morris is marvelous.There is a huge amount of funny scenes offered in this flick.I almost laughed my lungs out when the trio tried to get in Liza Minnelli's table dressed in armors.That scene is one of many, which makes you howl from laughter and wake your neighbors. Thank God somebody had the courage to do a silent movie after all those years.That man was Mel Brooks.There is a talented young man who will go places.And remember; Silent Movie doesn't mean silent laughter.

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16 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
The producers, 20 November 2004

Author: jotix100 from New York

Mel Brooks' comedies are made for the pure pleasure of having a good time and to enjoy what the master has decided give us in the way of sheer comic relief. His movies are a riot of visual and witty gags; they are completely insane. Granted, his humor is not for everybody, but those of us that appreciate this great man's talent, truly have a ball watching this picture about the lunacy in the movie industry, again and again.

Mr. Brooks and his sidekicks, Dom DeLouise and Marty Feldman do amazing things. Basically it's all visual, since there's no sound for the viewer to react to what one sees on the screen.

The guest cast is incredible as well. Anne Bancroft, Bernadette Peters, Paul Newman, James Caan, Burt Reynolds, Sid Caesar, and the rest appear to be having the time of their lives as Mr. Brooks pull the strings so we can have a great time.

This is a great film to watch with friends; the more, the merrier!

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16 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Irony and Self-Reference, 29 March 2005

Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

Mel Brooks plays a has-been director named Mel Funn in this spoof of Hollywood and silent movies. The film is set in some alternate universe era that is an amalgamation of 1930s through 1970s Hollywood. In the film's world, it's the age of the "talkies", which have apparently been around for some time. Funn's latest script, what he's banking on as his comeback, is retro--he's written a silent movie. Naturally, he's having problems selling his script. Shortly after the film begins, Funn, who is making the rounds with his two questionable companions, Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), shops his script to one last big studio head, played by Sid Caesar. Caesar's studio is about to go under if they can't produce a blockbuster. He initially tries to throw Funn out, but when Funn promises he can get big stars for his film, Caesar gives him a chance. If he can get the stars, he's got a deal. Silent Movie is primarily the story of Funn, Eggs and Bell trying to get stars to do their film.

Of course the irony of Silent Movie is that it's a silent movie about how silent movies would be ridiculous to produce in a later age in Hollywood. The Mel Brooks film itself is ridiculous film in many ways, not the least of which is that it is silent. Brooks also embraces another fading convention--humor based on slapstick and vaudeville.

To a large extent, Silent Movie exists to enable a series of gags, mostly centered on various extended cameos. Often the gags are like a classic comedy compilation--we get Sid Caesar doing his "facial tick schtick", Charlie Callas doing some "blind man" slapstick, Henny Youngman with a fly in his soup, and so on. Marty Feldman's "Eggs" might cause us to ask where the ham is--these classic routines are it.

There are also longer scenes with potential "stars" of the film. These include Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Bernadette Peters, Liza Minelli, Paul Newman, Anne Bancroft, and Marcel Marceau. Sometimes they spoof themselves, sometimes they play roles in new gags, and sometimes they come pretty close to their actual public personae.

Maybe Twentieth Century Fox told Brooks in reality that if he wanted to do a silent film spoof, they'd only bankroll it if he had a lot of stars attached. So he got them, working them into the film without really working them into the fabric of the film (they're present as cameos, not as stars). But there's also a conceit in Silent Movie, as a fiction, that we're not watching the actual film but a film about getting ready to make a film, maybe echoing what happened in "real life" in preparing to make the film. If you want complex self-referential layers, focused on blurring the distinctions between art and reality, Silent Movie definitely provides that. In many respects, the layering is similar to the more recent Incident at Loch Ness (2004).

Maybe such depth is surprising given that the surface aim of Silent Movie is to provide absurdities so you can laugh. The contrast to those easier to decipher surface qualities underscores interesting facts both about the public perception of Mel Brooks and the history of his career. Brooks has often been perceived as aiming for a kind of modernization of the Three Stooges. While his films have qualities that allow for that comparison, it is far from telling the whole story.

Brooks' films (as director) at least through 1981's History of the World, Part I all have a strong postmodernism beneath the veneer. He's not just making us laugh through slapstick and clever, pun-filled dialogue, he's also saying a lot of very intelligent things about the medium of film, as well as the relationship between films and reality, and between films and the audience. A lot of his humor rests on toying with the typical filmic or narrative conventions. For example, he routinely breaks through the "fourth wall" and he routinely breaks the implicit genre contracts he makes. It's just as intellectual as anything Monty Python did--at least until 1987's Spaceballs, which can be seen as the turning point from Brooks' earlier works of genius to a much more straightforward way of storytelling. It's not that Spaceballs and what followed weren't good, but they do not have the same sense of postmodernist play to them as is present in Silent Movie.

In addition to all of the fiction/reality layering, the film breaks the "genre" contracts of silent films in that once in awhile a character says something and we hear their voice on the soundtrack. The music is also frequently synced to the action (this wasn't possible with actual silent films--the technical "solution" that allowed synced music also allowed synced dialogue), and occasionally there is foley (sound effects that are supposed to be the sound of character actions, like walking) synced on the audio track as well. It underscores that this is a faux silent movie, despite the many other apparent cues of authenticity. This is a relatively minor example of postmodernism in the film, perhaps, but nevertheless illustrative of Brooks' goals and interesting to note while watching.

As interesting as all of that is, Silent Movie isn't a complete success. Sometimes it's just a bit too hokey or uneventful for its own good. But it's still an important entry in Brooks' early oeuvre, which is his most significant period in my view.

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12 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
What Can Words Say?, 4 May 2001

Author: EmperorNortonII from San Francisco, California

It's been decades since silent movies were regularly made. Mel Brooks took a bold step in conceiving a modern silent for his classic "Silent Movie." He seems to understand the classic slapstick of the old silents, and it shows in his movie. And who can forget Marcel Marceau's line, "Non!" (especially since it's the only line of dialogue)?

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
This is a silent review, 22 November 2008

Author: notevenwordshere from United States

In the land of Mel Brooks, Blazing Saddles is often deemed king. Equal successes like Young Frankenstein and The Producers are the king's notorious sons, while Spaceballs is his court jester. And I think it's safe to say Robin Hood: Men in Tights and History of the World Part I would be the beheaded wives unable to bear him children.

But, to stretch this metaphor so thin you can see the blood running through the blue veins of its translucent skin, there's the wise old man, an adviser -- he is, in fact, the king's ailing father. Such is Silent Movie, and such is its role in the kingdom.

Making a silent film in 1976 was a gutsy move, which Brooks parodies by making the plot of Silent Movie about a director trying to make a silent picture. With only one word of dialogue -- spoken, ironically, by Marcel Marceau -- the film relies heavily on the forgotten arts of vaudeville and slapstick. Brooks is not foreign to these tricks; in fact, they have always been the primary source of laughter in all his movies. Sight gags and outrageous behavior are his fodder, and he uses them abundantly here: the Coke machine battle; the board room's reaction to Vilma Kaplan's picture; the heart monitor/Pong machine; and more.

Silent Movie is full of laughs, far more than any director has the right to expect. The reason is because Mel Brooks (who is teamed up here with the very funny duo of Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman) will try anything for a laugh, no matter how silly. Even if we're not laughing, we're chuckling; and if we're not chuckling, we're smiling at the audacity.

To return brazenly to that thin metaphor I hatched earlier would be a kind of critical suicide. Yet I might as well. Blazing Saddles may be king, and Silent Movie may be the wise adviser. And Young Frankenstein and The Producers may be princes. But royalty usually serves a god. That god is Mel Brooks -- and with every movie of his that I see, I realize just how much I love going to his church.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Incredible that he got it made - but not a patch on the real thing., 27 June 2004
Author: Ben_Cheshire from Oz

Brooks gets a silent movie made! Surely he deserves some kind of award for this - sure, he got away with it by the similarities between this project and his previous ones: it would be a spoof, a send up of silents, like he'd previously sent up the western, classic horror and the movie business in general. The other way he got it made serves as dramatic irony in the movie itself: "Silent Movie" is about Mel Funn, a movie director who ruined his career with drink, and his misfit friends Dom Deluise and Young Frankenstein's Marty Feldman who try to both resurrect Funn's career and save the studio from being taken over by the evil Engulf and Devour Corporation by putting on a silent movie. The only way Funn gets his studio boss (Sid Ceasar) to agree to the project, is if the picture is loaded with stars! So the primary plot of the movie is Funn and his friends chasing stars around town trying to get them to sign. It is ironic because each time a major star like Liza Minelli or Paul Newman appears for a token cameo, this star by their presence helps Brooks convince his boss to do the picture. Stars are really all that's needed to get a picture green-lit. If you've got Jack Nicholson or Tom Cruise saying they want to do your picture: it doesn't matter WHAT the script is like - it'll happen! There are other ways it'll happen, i'm sure, but the big star is sure-fire.

On to quality control: Brooks ends up with something that's fun, but just not as clever or complex as the thing its trying to send up. Physical comedy is actually a terribly tricky thing to do well, and make funny - and a whole nother ball game from dialogue comedies (the norm for Brooks - if you turned the sound off Spaceballs, you'd be left with nothing. Same for Blazing Saddles. It was presumptuous to think he could make a silent movie. The comic situations he's thought up are just so elementary. Its just a disconnected series of gags sewed Frankenstein-style onto the skeleton of "finding big stars to be in Mel Funn's silent movie."

There's certainly nothing to offend silent film fans here - its all very good natured, just very naive as to how to make a good physical comedy. The man who should actually make a silent comedy is Rowan Atkinson - best physical comic since the masters.

So i guess my main regret is that this will not probably win any fans for silent movies, let alone encourage people to check them out. If you want to see some great silent comedy, check out Chaplin's The Kid, Keaton's The General and Sherlock Jr. Those should be good jumping-off points.

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8 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
A departure from the usual Brooks' fare, 19 January 1999
Author: Beth DiLeo (oola@hotmail.com) from California

When I think of Mel Brooks, I think raunchy. Who wouldn't, with scenes like the "Virgin Alarm" in "Spaceballs" and the chastity belt theme in "Men in Tights?" But this film is a nice departure from the usual Brooks fare. For one thing, it's a satire. While the three producers look for famous stars to be in their silent movie, they're simultaneously acting with the stars in a silent movie. Clever, eh?

Since the only line of dialogue in the movie is "Non!" by Marcel Marceau, cuss words were thankfully left out. It added some character to the movie, which played up the visual gags. My favorite part was the scene where the three producers walk briskly down the hall, hop, then walk briskly again. Shades of "The Wizard of Oz!" A nice little film.

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Not as memorable as Mel's classics,but funny just the same., 18 July 2009

Author: SmileysWorld from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Mel Brooks has an incredible knack for both paying loving tribute to a particular genre of film and giving it a pie in the face or squirting it in the face with seltzer water.As with his other films,this is what you get with Silent Movie.Though perhaps not as memorable as Mel's previous directing efforts,the film should provide laughs for even those of minimal senses of humor.Where else in but in a film made by Brooks can you see Burt Reynolds make fun of his own image? He even managed to get Paul Newman in on the gag.It should also be noted that there is only one spoken word in the entire film,and it is spoken by one known for not saying anything at all.Harpo Marx would have been the ultimate choice for this clever moment had he still been around,but it is just as funny a moment for Marcel Marceau.Good comedy film from one of the masters!

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Be quiet, 30 December 2008

Author: Grann-Bach (Grann-Bach@jubii.dk) from Denmark

I haven't watched very many silent films, so I really can't draw many comparisons. I watched this because of Brooks, and I was not disappointed with it. Making a "non-talky" this long after that died out was an impressive feat, whether or not you like that genre or the result. What's interesting here is what he did beyond simply doing such a piece decades after the time of their grandeur(he's hardly the only person who's ever thought of, or accomplished, something like that... the Coen brothers did, as well, though I'm not sure it was as many years), mainly in the high self-awareness evident throughout, and one specific bit that works on several levels, which I will not wreck by putting it here. The comedy is what you'd expect from Mel. A lot of silly material, some downright childish and/or sexual in nature. There are references and spoofs, as well. This may have more slapstick than the other movies helmed by the man, for obvious reasons. The physical gags and humor in general varies, and a little of it does fall flat, at times landing hard. It's the right people doing the stuff, though, Feldman(whom I don't believe I've seen before) and DeLuise, in addition to the lead himself, do great. The music fits perfectly, and sound is used extensively and to good to magnificent effect. The cameos are cool. There isn't a whole lot of plot, the focus is on getting laughs, and there are portions that could be cut without the overall feature losing much beyond jokes and running time. I can't promise this is necessarily one that stays with the viewer, and while that is a matter of taste, I would imagine that plenty of fans of the old pre-sound-recording releases remain fresh in their minds... and since there are still copies available for purchase, at least here and there, it would seem that they do still have an audience. I recommend this to fans of the director/star, and/or, to a lesser degree, the others involved in making it. Those who love the type of silver screen production that this is about I would say will be divided in opinion of it. 7/10

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