The Critic

At first I didn't understand anything about the work (mainly because I'm Brazilian, I don't have subtitles and I still understand little English), however, when I listened more carefully and tried to know the context in which the work was conceived, I understood the message that is a joke with all of us lovers of the seventh art.

I was so glad I finally got to see this online (again, via you-tube), because it's an incredible shot of comedy from the sharp-as-a-Jewish-tack mind of Mel Brooks. It's like Brooks stumbled into an avant-garde theater showing an underground short, like a slightly more sophisticated Brakhage short. Which makes it all the more uproarious, because these sorts of films DO take themselves way too seriously as art sometimes (sometimes the symbolism is deep and meaningful, but other times, as Brooks's old man comments that it's meaning is junk). We also get the insight that it's, of course, a "dirty picture" as he sees two amorphous shapes come together and "bond" in the ways that only abstract images from avant-garde filmmakers can do. But of course the director Pintkoff is in on the joke too, and shapes his movie in order to suit Brooks's lashings, despite the 'others' in the theater that just want silence. I think maybe a part of me just found it funny, in the first few minutes I mean, because it was Brooks doing such an over-the-top Russian caricature. But there's many, many great zingers in there, the kind that provided me the same belly laughs I had from the classics the Producers and Blazing Saddles. Though for some, since it's onlt 3 1/2 minutes long, there won't be much in the way of "story" to get in the way. It's just a cranky old man fobbing off on 60s experimental film-making- and an old man that could criticize anything any day of the week and make hilarious!

This short film by Ernest Pintoff is probably the funniest short ever made. It stars Mel Brooks as an Old Man from Russia who watches a series of abstract cartoons. He can make neither head nor tail of them, and comments outrageously the entire time, much to the disturbance of the other patrons. Here is some of the earliest Brooks humor, and already it keeps your rolling in the aisles! Produced in association with Brooks' Crossbow Productions (the precursor of Brooksfilms).

Heaven only knows what Mel Brooks might have made of half of Norman McLaren's animations - indeed this might even have been inspired by them a little, He's paid $2 to go the cinema and so now provides us with a running commentary of the abstract images he sees on screen. He reckons it's a cartoon but is unsure as some of the images look real, others rude, and by the conclusion I think he just feels that the designer - must be over thirty - hadn't a clue what was going on either. Regular viewers of all things surreal might appreciate his candour here - a layman's hatchet job on artistic pomposity or just an ignorant fool?

This short won the Academy Award for Animated Short and it deserved the prize! This is marvelously funny and its unavailablity, given the stature of Mel Brooks and the success of his projects with Carl Reiner, is unfortunate and somewhat puzzling. Ernest Pintoff's animation is largely unavailable and that's a shame, because he did some great stuff. Well worth watching. Most highly recommended to all of you wonderful people in the audience. It's better than Saran Wrap!