USA,
1966, 99 min
Shown in 1966 / 1977
CREDITS
- dir
-
Richard Lester
- prod
-
Melvin Frank
- scr
-
Melvin Frank, Michael Pertwee, Burt Shevelove (musical)
- cam
-
Nicholas Roeg
- editor
-
John Victor-Smith
- mus
-
Stephen Sondheim
- cast
-
Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton, Jack Gilford, Michael Crawford, Annette Andre, Patricia Jessel, Michael Hordern
- prod co
-
Quadrangle Films
- premiere
-
West Coast Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Opening Night Feature in 1966; Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers and Michael Crawford appeared in person. Shown on October 11, 1977 as part of the Morning Musicals program.
OTHER
A major addition to the history of the musical film, this work is also the American directorial debut of the outstanding young Canadian, Richard Lester, whose previous cinematic excursions with four youths from Liverpool have already set a new style for hip, dazzling effects and wild humor. The alliance of Lester with most of the original Broadway cast, notably Zero Mostel, transforms the show into a sumptuous, outrageously amusing film, set in an ancient Rome that at times seems to be part of a lost work by Henry Fielding. One encounters a lively set of rogues, pimps, thieves, pickpockets and con-men who help a scheming slave cheat his way to freedom from a domineering mistress and her henpecked husband, but the presence of Zero Mostel and the hilarious, final performance of Buster Keaton gives the film its own special place in immortality. Another discovery of the film is the appearance of Jack Gilford, recreating his role of Hysterium, and revealing a flair for satirical portraiture that one usually encounters in the Comédie Française.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #73
James Wong Howe was the first cinematographer to receive a tribute at the Festival, October 19, 1974. The legendary lenser photographed such classics as The Thin Man, Pursued, Sweet Smell of Success and Hud.
