692 It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

[colinr0380]

It has been at least a decade and a half since I last saw It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and never in either widescreen or its longer restored version, so despite the jokes since its announcement for release I immediately picked this release up! While I have to agree that I don’t find the film particularly funny at all (it seems to fundamentally exchange wit and humour for mania, verve and wasteful excess, and doesn't seem to understand that there can be modulations in tone or room for different types and styles of humour from their different comedians. Though the highlight for me is the sequence of two of the most nebbish garage mechanics ever seen plotzing over the complete destruction of their garage!), this does feel like an important release for Criterion, both in filling in some gaps in its collection both in terms of classic comedies and comedians (even if Buster Keaton and The Three Stooges, to name a couple, are completely wasted in their cameos, though that fits in with the idea of extravagant wastefulness going on throughout the film) and also for being able to fulfil a remit of providing as close to as definitive a version of an extremely influential film (would we have ever gotten the perfect mania of Playtime if producers couldn’t look towards this grand folly for inspiration and/or justification?). For that service alone this is an excellent release.

There’s not much I can say about the film itself, except I have a bit of a headache after watching it, and it fits squarely into the tradition of watching horrible people get the comeuppance they deserve over and over again. A few gory tweaks and it could play as an entry in the Saw series! Just kidding, although on this viewing, especially in the final car chase sequence across the city, I was really struck that Grand Theft Auto V could play as the modern day version of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, just with the gunplay replaced by a different form of sniping from aging comedians – an enormous overblown product full of unlikeable characters from disparate backgrounds chasing down the American dream across various changing landscapes. It even has its own aircraft, car chase (both escape, tailing and pursuing) and double cross sections, plus an obsession with blowing things up and destroying cars and buildings!

To try and answer some of the questions above, I watched the 197 minute restoration this evening and it features a lot of quality changes for the added sections. Often the colour is washed out and faded and I found the audio quality is noticeably different (a bit more towards the centre speakers in the 5.1 track), but nothing too terrible. The obvious difference helps to show which are the added sections, so I found it more interesting than annoying (there was an occasion late on in the film in one of the police station scenes where this added footage was stable in the middle of the screen but on looking at the edges they were wobbling back and forth quite drastically. I can only assume that has something to do with the Cinerama rectification to the geometry that Moe talks about above). I only noticed three sections which used still photographs running under the audio track. And the trims from Japanese prints are very obvious, as they have burnt in Japanese subtitles! There are often brief cut outs of the audio at the end of some of the restored sections. Nothing major is lost and I could always understand the gist of the scenes, but Criterion helpfully include subtitles covering all of the lost dialogue sections too. So it is very rough, but that is fine by me and I felt in a strange way it all added to the rough-hewn, rickety and ramshackle charm of the film.

[Moe Dickstein]

Hey what's that accent, are you from Harvard or something?

I'll be able to comment more fully when my copy arrives, theoretically tomorrow.

Thanks for chiming in, good to read an open minded review. I will say the fact that the stooges just stand there and do nothing IS the joke, since they are known mainly for violent physical comedy. It was specifically planned for that reason that they should just stand there and BE, that's the joke.

[colinr0380]

I will say that this film completely typifies the positively infantile American obsession with bosoms!

I agree on the Three Stooges cameo, and I find it amusing that they do nothing in a film obsessed with characters running around desperately but getting nowhere! I can see an audience coming to see specifically them in a film feeling a little short-changed though, like hiring Buster Keaton and not having a house collapse on top of him or something! I suppose a couple of the other characters do a Stooges routine of slapping, punching and eye pokes, so it isn't a total loss!

The most interesting, and frustrating, aspect of Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is that the film often doesn't have a joke to even tell, let alone have a joke to run past the punchline of. The film seems comprised of huge blocks of characters-in-situation comedy, but once it gets its characters into, say, a plane or locked in a basement, it doesn't seem to be able to find much to actually do with them except have them scream a bit or do some pratfalls. Alternatively I'd be happy with the film not being particularly funny if it actually created an exciting, tension filled or nail biting race for the loot, but the film also shows a kind of tin ear for dramatics, even in creating drama through cross-cutting! It is just blocks of 'stuff' that we cut between with no real sense of how it is fitting together or interrelating with the other stuff (which makes the few moments when groups of characters run into each other, such as one car leaving a gas station as the next one arrives, intermittently spark the interest only to immediately lose that spark through the inept handling). I hate to say it but Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit would go on to handle this kind of stuff better!

It kind of fails as both exciting chase drama and/or comedy, and I presume some of the antipathy towards this film comes from the way that it is really much too shoddily put together for such a grand scale film (it is a great example that you can't just throw money at a comedy, or extend sequences indefinitely, to try and make a film funnier). Yet that perhaps adds to its uniqueness and to a certain must see quality, to watch such a slapdash (rather than slapstick!) film with all the resources in the world (actors, gloss, technical specs, grand sets and huge numbers of locations) thrown at it to try and paper over the utter nothingness at its heart!

It sometimes seems as if the filmmakers are actually trying to see how few jokes can be fit into such a long running time! But in an odd way that makes the few actual funny moments in there play better, such as the river crossing or the far-out beatnik dancing (with the same guy who would still be doing the 60s schtick as Adolph Hitler in The Producers years later!) or the Ethel Merman shake-down. Maybe the film is meant to be a comment on how you cannot appreciate the few gags without crossing the comedy desert to get to them!

Similarly I found the enforced mania tone to be pretty annoying for the majority of the film, yet that treasure digging, final car chase and running up all the flights of stairs of the abandoned building suddenly worked. It was as if then the mania had gone into such delirious overdrive that the screaming, scratching and struggling for the money suddenly began to work as its own kind of statement about the futility of the whole system itself, climaxing for me less with the roof hanging stunt but that moment when everyone is struggling in a pile of bodies at the top of the final flight of stairs! (And to illustrate again the fine line between comedy and horror, the closest thing I've seen to that moment recently would have to be the zombies in World War Z! Though in its own way this is the film referencing the climax of Rene Clair's Le Million too)

[Red Screamer]

an extremely influential film (would we have ever gotten the perfect mania of Playtime if producers couldn’t look towards this grand folly for inspiration and/or justification?)

Yes.

[colinr0380]

Agreed, but I can pretend can't I?

(In the interests of fairness, I should point out that I also liked the 'he's kicked the bucket' scene at the beginning of the film! I also amused myself by wondering whether Paul Verhoeven did a little homage to the opening car overtaking section here during Basic Instinct!)

I'm mostly just left praying that Criterion might one day release A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, a much better film featuring Phil Silvers and Buster Keaton and a more adept handling of chase scenes and intercutting between action!

[Moe Dickstein]

I think as in any comedy the divide comes down to, is it funny to you? And for me I've always found the vast majority of the film funny. It's also something that's not easy to explain in a written forum such as this or in any way really other than are you laughing, and for most of the film, I laugh.

[cdnchris]

I chuckled here and there when I originally saw it. My main issue with it is that it's so long and feels it. Shorter, and I probably would have fonder memories of it.

[Moe Dickstein]

And having gotten to know the movie in the longer version (though not as long as the new version) the regular cut feels too short and lacking to me. It's all in perception.

[Moe Dickstein]

DVD Beaver:

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[colinr0380]

I think as in any comedy the divide comes down to, is it funny to you? And for me I've always found the vast majority of the film funny. It's also something that's not easy to explain in a written forum such as this or in any way really other than are you laughing, and for most of the film, I laugh.

I do agree, and it is almost impossible to be on a winner trying to explain comedy or a particularly funny moment to someone who doesn't have the same reaction! I will say that the film 'clicked' for me a few times, most particularly in the gas station destruction scene, where the sheer length of the scene, combined with the screams from the mechanics is punctuated by crashes, bangs and smashes and occasional soundtrack foley shouts of "watch it", "oh no", and "aaarrgghhh!" had me actually laughing! That scene, like almost all of the others in the film, doesn't really 'develop' or change in tone at all, but the way it stops only to start up again a few times (with a few more squeals and screams from the hapless mechanics!) until all that is left is a pile of rubble was very amusing, and perhaps even in my mind stands as a microcosm of the film as a whole!

And having gotten to know the movie in the longer version (though not as long as the new version) the regular cut feels too short and lacking to me. It's all in perception.

I definitely agree with you. Despite my issues with the film in general, the 197 minute version with some of the linking material you talked about above left in (Phil Silvers getting car-jacked, the Keaton scene, and so on) leaves the film feeling much more satisfying and a bit less 'jumpy' than the shorter one.

Yet I also semi-agree with cdnchris. The film is "too long and feels it" for me too. Yet that would be the same for me in either the 163 or 197 minute (or cut even further down) version! The removal of 30-40 minutes doesn't really make the entire premise of the film any more acceptable length-wise to me, and the additions and restorations here are often some of the most interesting parts! So to disagree with cdnchris, I'm of the mindset that if we are really going to have an enormous, epic-length comedy then it might as well be as long as possible, going full bore into insane excess rather than trying to cut it back to 'acceptable' limits (and the uncivilised unacceptable unwieldiness of this film is part of the utter craziness that is its reason for being), and I get the impression that the filmmakers felt the same way!

[manicsounds]

DVD Beaver:

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I can only see the MGM caps, seems like the review is unfinished...

[Moe Dickstein]

yep i posted early but it'll be up soon enough.

[eerik]

It's up now.

[kingofthejungle]

I will say that this film completely typifies the positively infantile American obsession with bosoms!

But it doesn't even accomplish this with the imagination or (shall we say...) conviction of Frank Tashlin's comedies.

[tenia]

Drawback for me : no full-length SDH subs on the reconstructed cut.

[Jameson281]

DVD Beaver:

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I can only see the MGM caps, seems like the review is unfinished...

Criterion used the MGM master of the short version for the bulk of the film, so don't expect to see a significant difference in image quality.

One of the scenes for which there is audio but no picture--an added bit of Caesar and Adams locked in the basement--is covered with behind-the-scenes photos. That took me out of the movie; they're supposed to be in the basement alone, and we're seeing crewmen, Stanley Kramer, etc. They should have used generic images of Caesar and Adams instead.

[jindianajonz]

DVD Beaver:

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A I the only one bothered by the fact that they didn't line the discs up in the first picture so that you could clearly read the title on the digipack?

Probably.

Also, I haven't seen the movie, but the scene at the end where they are digging the hole on a cliff face looks a lot like my hometown of Santa Barbara. Does anybody (Moe, probably) know where this was filmed? Based on my own limited knowledge of the movie, I am guessing those palm trees in the background formed a big X?

[EddieLarkin]

Criterion used the MGM master of the short version for the bulk of the film, so don't expect to see a significant difference in image quality.

Comparing the caps at least, I'd say the Criterion general release is a tad sharper and with more grain than the MGM version.

[Moe Dickstein]

The Big W scene was filmed at a private estate in Rancho Palos Verdes in the South Bay

[jindianajonz]

The Big W scene was filmed at a private estate in Rancho Palos Verdes in the South Bay

Cool, thanks! That penninsula (I presume) in the background looked like the channel islands, and the setting looks like any of a number of palm-filled blufftop parks that Santa Barbara has.

[colinr0380]

I have been amusing myself by thinking of what the 'modern comedy' version of this film would be - not exactly the Rat Race film from the early 2000s but the one that would be made in this decade with extra gross out humour. I bet there would be scenes of the husband pimping his wife out to the airplane pilot as payment, a lot more arguing between the couples, and I can be pretty certain that in my imaginary remake there would be a scene of either projectile vomiting or someone getting food poisoning causing them to have to run to the bathroom at every stop on the journey! Or both!

So there you go, seen in that light It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World really could be worse, and is even kind of charmingly innocent these days!

(Though having said all that, imagine what a John Waters version of the film with Divine in the Ethel Merman-role could have been like!)

I will say that this film completely typifies the positively infantile American obsession with bosoms!

But it doesn't even accomplish this with the imagination or (shall we say...) conviction of Frank Tashlin's comedies.

That's because it had English writers

Drawback for me : no full-length SDH subs on the reconstructed cut.

Not perhaps for the same reasons as tenia but I was disappointed in this too, as I always prefer to play a commentary with the film's subtitles playing underneath. Unfortunately that is not possible here. Perhaps it was just unfeasible to create and time subtitles for the longer version of the film, as well as creating a separate subtitle track for 'full' subs to complement the one we have now that just finishes the dropped sentences of the extra material.

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that they didn't line the discs up in the first picture so that you could clearly read the title on the digipack?

Not really, but I did pedantically take every disc out of the packaging and replace it correctly rotated so that it matched the background lettering!

[Moe Dickstein]

To fill in the gaps so to speak, Gary talks about the gaps during the intermission in the extended version which are broken up with police radio calls.

They are presented as they would have been in the theater, as mostly silence with the series of radio calls piped into the lobby and bathrooms and auditorium for the benefit of the audience, but otherwise the intermission period was silent. I believe the whole intermission time was condensed, but the gaps allow for something of a recreation of what was intended for the radio calls.

[tenia]

Drawback for me : no full-length SDH subs on the reconstructed cut.

Not perhaps for the same reasons as tenia but I was disappointed in this too, as I always prefer to play a commentary with the film's subtitles playing underneath. Unfortunately that is not possible here. Perhaps it was just unfeasible to create and time subtitles for the longer version of the film, as well as creating a separate subtitle track for 'full' subs to complement the one we have now that just finishes the dropped sentences of the extra material.

I believe it has probably more to do with the Roadshow reconstruction being included as an extra. But that's also weird, because they did advertise a lot, with RAH, the fact that it will include the reconstruction.
In my case, that mean having to watch 3h17 without any subs, which is quite tiring since English is not my mother tongue, and despite my level probably being good enough. But bring in the first actor with a strong accent, or dialog not crisp enough, and I'm likely to miss a sentence...

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that they didn't line the discs up in the first picture so that you could clearly read the title on the digipack?

Not really, but I did pedantically take every disc out of the packaging and replace it correctly rotated so that it matched the background lettering!

Admittedly, I do this with every single titles I own.

[Jameson281]

Criterion used the MGM master of the short version for the bulk of the film, so don't expect to see a significant difference in image quality.

Comparing the caps at least, I'd say the Criterion general release is a tad sharper and with more grain than the MGM version.

If there is any visible difference, it's solely a product of different disc authoring. I suppose Fox may have tweaked the master a little when prepping their release, but offhand I'm not seeing a significant difference.

[Moe Dickstein]

They're the same transfer so the difference is in the new material, not the quality of what exists in both. There were also some tweaks done to the main titles in the General Release version as I believe the wrong credits had been used and a couple other things (it looks like they added the enr'acte back as the GR Criterion is longer than the MGM)

Hoping to have my copy in the mailbox when I get home in an hour or so...