I can’t imagine sitting down and watching Blazing Saddles now for the first time
and coming away enjoying it very much. It’s got some funny gags, classic lines,
and as a satire of the Western genre and the marginalization of black people in
the United States it can be searingly funny. But much of what made the film
work so well was that it was made the early 70s. Mel Brooks was a well-known
name, but he was not yet a well-known satirist. The Producers was a big success a few years earlier, but Young Frankenstein would follow later in
1974 and still to come were High Anxiety
and History of the World: Part I.
Though Blazing
Saddles has been cemented in the annals of classic American comedies, it
wasn’t universally revered in the beginning. Of course I loved it as a kid. I
didn’t get a lot of the racial humor, but I understand why the central premise
was funny. Mostly I liked the goofiness of it, which is the kind of comedy most
kids are drawn to. Some of us eventually grow out of that, so I thought it was
time to give the film another shot – this time as a grown man many years
removed from the last time I saw it and after two years of regularly writing
film criticism. Knowing what jokes are coming give any comedy a little less
bite. I still knew nearly all the lines and though I can’t say I guffawed at
any point, I did appreciate a lot of the humor in a way I don’t recall as a
younger man.
The film really shouldn’t work. It was cobbled together
by a cadre of screenwriters sitting in a room hashing out the jokes. They
included Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Alan Uger, Andrew Bergman (who wrote the
story that got rehashed by the team), and the late great Richard Pryor.
Together they threw in everything but the kitchen sink. The basic idea is it’s
a western taking place in 1874, made with jokes that nod toward 1974: a black
cowboy rides past Count Basie’s jazz band; he uses a Gucci saddle and wears a
velvet outfit; and the entire finale breaks the fourth wall (almost literally)
as a melee crashes onto the set of another film on the Warner Brothers backlot.
Brooks and his team assembled, at face value, a send up
of the Western genre that includes a village under attack by marauders, the
need for a courageous sheriff to save them, unforgiving politicians, corrupt
businessmen, a washed up gunslinger, a sexy chanteuse in the vein of Marlene
Dietrich, and a hilariously juvenile scene involving copious consumption of
beans and plenty of gas. Blazing Saddles
goes farther than Brooks’ successors in the spoof genre ever dared to venture.
From the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team to the Wayans brothers, I can’t recall any
spoof that even touched on culturally significant issues.
As the black Sheriff Bart, Cleavon Little is mostly the
straight man to a cast of comedic actors. He has his moments, to be sure, but
Brooks makes what I imagine is a calculated decision to avoid having the principle
black character act the clown in a way that could have undermined everything he
was trying to do. Nor is he the butt of the jokes, but rather the impetus for
other characters being depicted as fools. Gene Wilder plays Bart’s partner, the
Waco Kid: Fastest Hands in the West. Wilder was an actor of inspired comic
genius in the 70s. Along with Willy Wonka and Frederic von Frankenstein, this
completes a triumvirate of brilliant comedic performances. Always a standout in
whatever she touched, Madeline Kahn plays the prostitute Lili von Shtupp, a
parody of several Marlene Dietrich roles that earned her an Academy Award
nomination. Oscar accolades weren’t in the cards for Harvey Korman as Lt.
Governor Hedley “Hedy” Lamarr, even though his character makes an on screen
appeal for a nomination. Slim Pickens also has a role as an earnest and
well-meaning, but dim-witted cowboy.
Blazing Saddles
is more than a genre spoof – it’s a satire of not only depictions of black and
other minority characters in America’s beloved Westerns, but also of
contemporary attitudes toward people of other races. The premise of the movie
is that the corrupt businessman Lamar wants the railroad to pass straight
through the peaceful town of Rock Ridge. He orders the marauders to terrorize
the villagers until the sheriff quits. When the people demand that the governor
(Mel Brooks) post a new sheriff, Lamar convinces him to appoint a black man, a
move that is sure to drive the townspeople to abandon their homes. Perhaps that
film has more resonance today given the current occupant of the White House. It’s
worth noting that the story, such as it is, doesn’t contain much of a plot. It’s
thrown together and rather slipshod in its execution, but the level of humor
compensates such that you don’t really consider how facile it is.
Modern audiences might consider most of the language and
situations to be quite tame by today’s standards, but I still think it’s pretty
shocking when Sheriff Bart gives a good morning greeting to an elderly woman
who responds, “Up yours, nigger!” The N-word is used earlier in the film, but
not until that moment does it have the full force and effect of jolting you in
your seat. The movie riffs on the entire idea, anathema in Hollywood at the
time, that a black man could be the hero. For the sake of historical accuracy,
it’s certainly understandable why Westerns had virtually all-white casts with
the exception of villainous Indians, an ethnic group that gets a nod by Brooks
playing a Chief in a flashback story told by Bart about a time the Indians let
him and his parents go because “they’re darker than us.” The racial reversal is
very funny in itself, but by having the Indians speak Yiddish, Brooks manages
to bring the historically put-upon Jews into the mix.
The witty and wonderful screenplay that is full of laughs
and the occasional great acting more than make up for a climax that runs a bit
off the rails and suggests that the writers couldn’t quite come up with a
plausible ending that didn’t involve a post-modern crossover into a 1940s style
musical. I hope I can keep coming back to this movie into my old age and find
something to laugh at like I do now.
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