The Comic

This movie is hard to track down, but worth watching if you like Dick Van Dyke (who doesn't?), Stan Laurel, or silent film comedy in general. While the movie itself isn't the best thing Dick Van Dyke has ever done, he's very good in it. Being a big fan of silent films himself, you can tell this film meant something to him. Hopefully it well be more available to the public in future. There's some great original gags created by Dick and Mickey Rooney is fun to see as well. Don't expect this movie to change your life (unless you want to be a slapstick comedian that is), but it's entertaining to watch. Dick Van Dyke is always a joy.

"The Comic" is one movie I could always watch again as I think it was the best thing Dick Van Dyke ever did. I always thought that Harry Langdon was the chief prototype for the Billy Bright character because of his pork pie hat that he wore. I didn't know much about his personal life but that when he decided to write, direct and produce his own films, he learned too late that he should have left that to people who knew their business. Thanks to the other bloggers on this site, I learned about Buster Keaton. Never quite understood his character, just that dead pan face of his. Mickey Rooney of course was modeled after Ben Turpin. He makes the prophetic comment that when people stopped laughing at his crooked eyes, they started killing each other. There was a cute scene where Billy and "Popeye" are walking up Hollywood Boulevard and Billy is guessing whose footprints he's stepping on. When he reaches Chaplin, he looks down and says "He never became a citizen." A comment which was made for criticism but tinged with a bit of envy. A classic, underrated movie, in the same class as "Face in the Crowd."

I watched "The Comic" on TV when I was teen. Sure, it was not the very best movie I ever watched. But somehow it was unforgettable. Until today, I still can recall a scene when drunk Billy Bright (Dick Van Dyke) smashing neighbor's house thinking that it was his. Sad, funny, and bitterness mixed. After "The Comic", for me, Dick Van Dyke had never been funnier then.

Carl Reiner's 1969 film, "The Comic," like Elia Kazan's 1957 movie, "A Face in the Crowd," is a cautionary tale about fame and Hollywood. Both deserved more attention, and truth to tell, some awards (or at least some nominations), and gained notoriety years after their release as fans and film aficionados discovered the works amid new appreciation for earlier eras. "The Comic" is arguably one of the most overlooked films of the inside-Hollywood genre, probably because it came along in a period when the film industry was convulsing into a grittier, more realistic phase (indeed a year when John Wayne in "True Grit" competed against both stars of the X-rated "Midnight Cowboy," with Wayne winning best actor and "Cowboy" winning best picture _ talk about a mixed cinematic metaphor). In "The Comic," a roman a clef which was written, produced and directed by Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke plays the fictitious silent film star Billy Bright (the film's initial title was the name) _ a character that in itself has caused some debate as to who it was really based on, with many saying it's a composite of Harry Langdon, Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel, the latter Van Dyke's hero and friend. Others also have seen shades of Harold Lloyd. Having interviewed Van Dyke some years later when he spoke fondly of Laurel and how they met, describing how he delivered the eulogy at Laurel's funeral, and how anxious he was to discover the whereabouts of the comedian's famed bowler hat that he said he had been promised but never received (I was pretty sure I knew the guy who had it and shared the information), I find it difficult to believe he would have based the character on someone about whom he cared so deeply. At any rate, as a denizen of Hollywood and a fan of the silents who grew up at a time when many of the old comics were still around and re-emerging, I can say without hesitation that Van Dyke got it right and hit a home run in what is perhaps the best work of his career (Van Dyke doesn't get enough credit for the fine work he did in films, largely because he came along at a time when the division between TV and film was great and the film people still looked down upon their TV counterparts, and again, film was in the midst of a great transition). Reiner (known to later generations as Rob Reiner's Dad, but to many of us as the brilliant second banana on Sid Caesar's early-TV "Show of Shows" and one half of the 2000-year-old man comedy team with his friend Mel Brooks) constructs the film beautifully from the opening sequence at Billy's funeral. The latter, an absolute hoot, contains an overhead shot of cars driving on the way to the burial plot that will have you struggling to keep a straight face at every funeral you attend from here on out, and while that isn't a humorous thing, it demonstrates the power and the rightness of the moment. One of the more fascinating elements of the film is a Hollywood story-within-a-story, how Carl Reiner's pacing and sense of comedic irony laced with sadness and the sense of smiling through the tears influenced his own son Rob's acting and directing style. Now there's a subject for a future film. "The Comic" is a keeper and deserves to be seen and more widely discussed, if only to shed more attention on the silent era lest it be forgotten in a time of pyrotechnic overkill.

I have seen this movie only twice, and it was decades ago, but I still remember every scene. In 2003, I had to opportunity to meet Dick Van Dyke when he was in a nearby town visiting a relative. He looked approximately the same age as the character in "The Comic" during the final scenewhen the young VanDyke was 'aged' to portray Billy Bright as a lonely old man. Mr. Van Dyke and I exchanged a few pleasantries, then I said, "By the way, Mr. VanDyke, you're looking more like Billy Bright every time i see you." He did a double-take, then smiled and said, "Oh my gosh! You saw that picture?!?!" I assured him that I had and it was one of my favorites; he replied, "I think you and I are the only people who saw that one. But I'm glad you enjoyed it." Very nice man, a great,under-appreciated movie.

PLEASE release it on DVD.