Indeed, the real mystery about "The Twelve Chairs" is how seldom it is mentioned among Mel Brooks' best. Everyone makes a chronological leap from "The Producers" to "Young Frankenstein" and "Blazing Saddles", the triumvirate of hilarity that didn't just make it on AFI's Top 100 Funniest Movies but actually in the Top 15; and so "The Twelve Chairs" stayed in the shadow. Why? Well, I have a few theories.
First, this is a case of a good film sandwiched between great ones. Like "The Wrong Man" for Hitchcock or "1941" for Spielberg and one good third of Woody Allen's filmography, some movies have quality of their own but also the misfortune to be made by directors who did far better before and after. Any lesser director would be proud of making something like "The Twelve Chairs" but Mel Brooks isn't any director, is he?
Second theory: the poster. The one I got on my DVD cover shows a grinning Brooks wearing a big brown cloak, suggesting that he's a sorcerer of some sort or that the film is set during the dark ages. From the poster, I wouldn't have never guessed this was a wild madcap goose-chase comedy set in Post-Revolution Russia. I expected caves, dark corridors, magic, curses and that didn't urge me to discover it. In reality, Brooks is barely present in the film though his role as Tikon offers some good jokes but the poster could've been less self-centered.
Third theory: the tone was too different from the other films. I guess audiences expected the zaniness of "The Producers" to reach a new height, the one they could find in the two 1974 box-office hits, they expected Brooks to go on over-the-top and "rise below vulgarity". The problem with "The Twelve Chairs" is that despite the laughs it generate, the hilarious slapstick moments, it is serious about its subject, so much that it's in line with the spirit of the comic novel by Ilf and Petrov, which I haven't read by the way. But I guess a tale about two déclassés: an aristocrat and a noble turned con-man and one fallen priest seeking one chair that contains a precious treasure makes a relevant statement about the alienating power of capitalism's fuel: greed.
For one thing, it's interesting that Brooks based his second comedy on a Russian, no a Soviet novel and although he shot the film in Yugoslavia, early century Russia is well-rendered with the colorful exoticness we'd later find "Fiddler in the Roff" or "Yentl". The main theme "Hope for the best, expect the worst" based on Brahms gives the film that Eastern-European vibes and get as catchy and memorable as "Lara's theme". Mel Brooks was certainly paying a tribute to his Russian roots and Jewish humor whose essence is self-derision and caricature, using the kind of archetypes that can serve malevolent purposes. Mel Brooks' gags are sharp and witty, but never mean-spirited.
But I enjoyed the film for many reasons: Ron Moody is the perfect actor for Vorbyaninov, the ex-aristocrat turned into a meek civil servant. He was Fagin two years before in "Oliver!" and there's something about this man playing greedy characters, inspiring pity and occasionally, sympathy but never contempt. When we first see him he looks like a harmless bureaucrat, a mini-Trotsky, but once his mother-in-law reveals tells him that a fortune in jewels were hidden in the cushion of one of their twelve chairs from their previous dining room, something snaps. He shouts at the dying woman and in his eyes, a fire is ignited that will spread all throughout the film.
Same fire had already infected the priest who heard her confession. When Father Fyodor, played by Dom De Luise, cuts his beard, the gleam in that look he gave to God reminded me of one of these jokes I simply can't tell (you know, a guy asks for one million etc.)
And in that crazy journey, Moody's character (too complicated to write his name) meets Ostap Bender, played by a dashing Frank Langella. Ostap has a way to get the information and he's the voice of reason, for as long as can keep track on the chairs. The three go through the Soviet landscapes, from Moscow to Siberia, from theaters to private homes, any corner money can drive you to. I knew the odds would beat them before they do, and it was a foregone conclusion that the last chair would be the right one. It's the journey that counted and Brooks' depiction of insanity is so expressive the film could have been silent and be equally funny. Brooks uses a good deal of high-speed chase à la Benny Hill but his talent for slapstick culminates (pun intended) when a man finds the strength to climb a whole mountain with one chair at hands but realizes he can't get down.
Such moments are funny but carried a strange depth, becoming almost tragicomic. When Fyodor destroys four chairs and none is right one, he says "I don't want to live", and there's a truth to life to such a cry, when you can come so close to something big and miss it, your faith in life shrinks considerably. When you miss something, it's comic, when you question God for that, it's borderline tragic. And Moody is the most tragic of all, it was a smart motve to keep his character serious and have violins strings illustrating his descent into insanity. I could feel the pain, the desperation of this man who could have accepted the fatality of the Revolution but not the absurdity of the chairs' situation.
And deeply moved I was by the ending, a silly punchline I know but powerful after that detour in tragedy. And think about it, it's easy to make anyone laugh at a guy punchling a horse, but how many directors can make you laugh at a man losing his mind and his fortune at once? That says something about Mel Brooks.
First, this is a case of a good film sandwiched between great ones. Like "The Wrong Man" for Hitchcock or "1941" for Spielberg and one good third of Woody Allen's filmography, some movies have quality of their own but also the misfortune to be made by directors who did far better before and after. Any lesser director would be proud of making something like "The Twelve Chairs" but Mel Brooks isn't any director, is he?
Second theory: the poster. The one I got on my DVD cover shows a grinning Brooks wearing a big brown cloak, suggesting that he's a sorcerer of some sort or that the film is set during the dark ages. From the poster, I wouldn't have never guessed this was a wild madcap goose-chase comedy set in Post-Revolution Russia. I expected caves, dark corridors, magic, curses and that didn't urge me to discover it. In reality, Brooks is barely present in the film though his role as Tikon offers some good jokes but the poster could've been less self-centered.
Third theory: the tone was too different from the other films. I guess audiences expected the zaniness of "The Producers" to reach a new height, the one they could find in the two 1974 box-office hits, they expected Brooks to go on over-the-top and "rise below vulgarity". The problem with "The Twelve Chairs" is that despite the laughs it generate, the hilarious slapstick moments, it is serious about its subject, so much that it's in line with the spirit of the comic novel by Ilf and Petrov, which I haven't read by the way. But I guess a tale about two déclassés: an aristocrat and a noble turned con-man and one fallen priest seeking one chair that contains a precious treasure makes a relevant statement about the alienating power of capitalism's fuel: greed.
For one thing, it's interesting that Brooks based his second comedy on a Russian, no a Soviet novel and although he shot the film in Yugoslavia, early century Russia is well-rendered with the colorful exoticness we'd later find "Fiddler in the Roff" or "Yentl". The main theme "Hope for the best, expect the worst" based on Brahms gives the film that Eastern-European vibes and get as catchy and memorable as "Lara's theme". Mel Brooks was certainly paying a tribute to his Russian roots and Jewish humor whose essence is self-derision and caricature, using the kind of archetypes that can serve malevolent purposes. Mel Brooks' gags are sharp and witty, but never mean-spirited.
But I enjoyed the film for many reasons: Ron Moody is the perfect actor for Vorbyaninov, the ex-aristocrat turned into a meek civil servant. He was Fagin two years before in "Oliver!" and there's something about this man playing greedy characters, inspiring pity and occasionally, sympathy but never contempt. When we first see him he looks like a harmless bureaucrat, a mini-Trotsky, but once his mother-in-law reveals tells him that a fortune in jewels were hidden in the cushion of one of their twelve chairs from their previous dining room, something snaps. He shouts at the dying woman and in his eyes, a fire is ignited that will spread all throughout the film.
Same fire had already infected the priest who heard her confession. When Father Fyodor, played by Dom De Luise, cuts his beard, the gleam in that look he gave to God reminded me of one of these jokes I simply can't tell (you know, a guy asks for one million etc.)
And in that crazy journey, Moody's character (too complicated to write his name) meets Ostap Bender, played by a dashing Frank Langella. Ostap has a way to get the information and he's the voice of reason, for as long as can keep track on the chairs. The three go through the Soviet landscapes, from Moscow to Siberia, from theaters to private homes, any corner money can drive you to. I knew the odds would beat them before they do, and it was a foregone conclusion that the last chair would be the right one. It's the journey that counted and Brooks' depiction of insanity is so expressive the film could have been silent and be equally funny. Brooks uses a good deal of high-speed chase à la Benny Hill but his talent for slapstick culminates (pun intended) when a man finds the strength to climb a whole mountain with one chair at hands but realizes he can't get down.
Such moments are funny but carried a strange depth, becoming almost tragicomic. When Fyodor destroys four chairs and none is right one, he says "I don't want to live", and there's a truth to life to such a cry, when you can come so close to something big and miss it, your faith in life shrinks considerably. When you miss something, it's comic, when you question God for that, it's borderline tragic. And Moody is the most tragic of all, it was a smart motve to keep his character serious and have violins strings illustrating his descent into insanity. I could feel the pain, the desperation of this man who could have accepted the fatality of the Revolution but not the absurdity of the chairs' situation.
And deeply moved I was by the ending, a silly punchline I know but powerful after that detour in tragedy. And think about it, it's easy to make anyone laugh at a guy punchling a horse, but how many directors can make you laugh at a man losing his mind and his fortune at once? That says something about Mel Brooks.