In the early days of cinema, the Marx Brothers thrived in surrealistic stories that were based on loading as many gags and one-liners as was humanly possible into their films. When those jokes had impeccable timing, and great delivery (The brothers were the best at this), the gags and jokes hit their mark. With “The Producers”, Mel Brooks worked from a glorious story to match his sometimes vulgar and inciteful humor. In 1974, by using the premise of satirizing the clean wholesome façade of the classic Hollywood western, Brooks went the route of the Marx Brothers by concentrating on theme and non-stop set-ups, stealing some of Godard’s 4th wall idiocy in the process. The resultant movie, “Blazing Saddles”, is so ridiculous and off the wall that it compares very favorably with some of the Marx Brothers’ best work.
What places this movie apart from those classic comedies, is its straightforward and in-your-face attack on racism. Brooks took a timeworn and simple western plot of an evil railroad baron wanting to own and take control of a town that his incoming railroad will pass through that he borrowed right out of Leone’s, “Once Upon a time in the West”. He then turns this plot upside down by making its hero a black man. His understanding as to how this would affect the paranoid racist citizens of the wild west and expanding on that with no-holds-barred exaggerations is what makes the movie work. The town’s citizens send a letter to the Governor asking him to send a new sheriff to protect them from the railroad villains. Said villain has the corrupt Governor in his pocket, and they agree to send a black man about to be executed as the new Sheriff of the town (Rock Ridge), with the understanding that the townsfolk would never accept a black man as their savior.
The beauty of the movie is the unapologetic way it depicts the western and racial stereotypes that existed throughout the history of the Hollywood Western. Cleavon Little stars as the Black Sherrif Bart, and he is a delight. Of all the movie characters, it is Bart who is the least lampooned and Little mostly plays him straight. He is charismatic and full of an unearned form of confidence that could only survive in the world of cinema. He is, of course, a bit flashy and extravagantly dressed (for the West), sporting his white hat with flair and pride. He is probably the least crass person in the movie. Brooks emphasizes the cartoonish depictions of all the characters throughout the film, and with Bart, it comes in his Bugs Bunny delivery of a letter bomb to the character Mango. Other than that scene, Little mostly plays Bart straight.
The rest of the cast are a different story, and they are played by many Brooks regulars. Harvey Corman is delightful as the evil Hedley Lamarr, and the running joke of people consistently pronouncing his name wrong never fails to amuse. It is his idea in making Bart the Sheriff, rightfully thinking that he would not be accepted by the ignorant town folks. Corman goes over-the- top in his portrayal and embraces the evil in Lamarr while expanding on his utter stupidity. In fact, all the white characters, except for Gene Wilder’s, are shown to be very stupid.
Gene Wilder is once again marvelous here as Bart’s sidekick, Jim, who will tell you used to go by the name, Jim, which is in itself a joke, since he will, a bit later, say that he is known as “The Waco Kid” (Pun intended). Wilders’ character type was portrayed in the past by the likes of Dean Martin and Kirk Douglas. A former fierce gunfighter turned alcoholic due to all the people who want to kill him. For Jim, it was being challenged by a 6-year-old that finally breaks him. As you can see throughout the movie, there are these added silly exaggerations that lampoon and satirize well-loved icons of western movies. Wilders’ character is a bug-eyed Shane or Clint Eastwood on steroids. He is so fast on the trigger that we never see him move (yes, I mean literally), as everything in this movie is exaggerated.
There are many more off the wall character spin-offs, such as the delightful Madeline Kahn who is a hooker hired by Lamarr to seduce Bart out of town, but instead gets enamored by his physical endowment (another stereotype expanded on for laughs). There is the football player Alex Karress portraying the fearsome killer Mango as a cross between Leatherface and Jerry Lewis. He is such a bad ass that he knocks a horse out cold with one punch.
At another point, Brooks works to insert reality into a typical western scene in order to show that scene’s actual outcome. For example, how many western TV shows or movies show cowboys eating cooked beans at an evening campfire? Quite a few, but this is the only movie where we find out what eating beans can do to your bowel movements in the famous and legendary campfire bean eating scene. The old westerns either had the Native American Indians speak an untranslated foreign language or broken English. Here Brooks uses the foreign language aspect and has them speak Yiddish. Sure, maybe the Indians were one of the lost Jewish tribes. When things like this happen, they caught me by surprise the first time I saw the movie, and then it became something I looked forward to seeing at all subsequent viewings. Each time they also made me laugh out loud.
During the few times I didn’t laugh while watching the movie, I was struck by the strong and effective way that the movie tackles racism, stereotypes, and political correctness. The N word is used all the time, and usually in a mostly uncomfortable and vicious fashion. In the end, when we laugh at how almost all the white people callously use it, we are laughing at the damnable stupidity that is racism. This movie is one of the more effective condemnations of racism I have ever seen in a Hollywood movie that I thought was just meant to entertain. One of the brightest, sharpest comedy minds of the 70s was a black man named Richard Pryor, and Pryor contributed with Brooks in writing the screenplay. It was his insistence on the use of the N word consistently in the movie that leaves a mark on the viewer while making him laugh at the same time. All the white people in the film are also characterized as ignorant and extremely idiotic. This I believe was also done purposefully to further emphasizing racism as a terrible blight on American history.
To top everything off, Brooks ends his film with the most outrageous breaking of the 4th wall ever put on film. Godard said that it was smart and meaningful to have his movie characters speak directly to the viewing audience. When Brooks does the same thing at the end of his movie, I was already clearly aware that there was nothing real happening in the movie. When the characters leave the movie’s period and story to enter a movie set in a Hollywood backstage, they are not only speaking to the viewer but carry with them all the set-ups, props and, of course, gags. This had the strange effect of making me feel even more of a conspirator to the racist stereotypical behavior that I was laughing at while watching the movie. It was a bit of an unnerving feeling for me, and I believe that was Brooks’ point.
While it is not very visually arresting, “Blazing Saddles” has a marvelous cast who give good performances, with exquisite timing, and non-stop jokes that work about 80% of the time. The fact that, at the same time as I was laughing out loud, I thought about the evils of racism within our society attests to its success in getting its message across. For a comedy to succeed in doing both of those things is quite an achievement, making “Blazing Saddles” one of the greatest comedies of all time.
1001 Movies before you die 