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Silent Movie Movie Review

Silent Movie is a 1976 comedy film directed by Mel Brooks and starring himself opposite Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman and Bernadette Peters. It’s a fun, but flawed flick.

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“He sucks his thumb?!“

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A film director and his strange friends struggle to produce the first major silent feature film in forty years. This Mel Brooks vehicle is a giant parody and an homage to silent movies of yesteryear. It’s created to resemble a silent film in itself. It’s in color, but it’s unspoken throughout with only the score and sound effects being heard while the dialogue is given through intertitles.

Being a big fan of silent cinema myself, I loved the idea behind this movie, and certainly those silent comedies are ripe for a parody treatment from a director such as Brooks. And you could definitely see that in the movie’s first half where the idea behind it was still a novelty, the dialogue was very clever and the slapstick was excellent.

However, the second half unfortunately quickly stumbled, leading to a rather repetitive and not as entertaining movie. My main problem with the film is its plot structure. It entirely consists of these producers meeting big stars and trying to persuade them to do this silent movie for them. I liked the premise itself and it was great at first (the Burt Reynolds sequence is the funniest), but later on it became repetitive with most stars being underutilized, and the plot suffering as a result.

Brooks is good here in a rare acting role for him, and Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman are both excellent. This trio is instantly memorable, fun and endearing. They’re perfectly reminiscent to the goofballs coming from those 20s comedy vehicles and they’re just the right amount of silly and goofy without ever overstaying their welcome. Bernadette Peters is also pretty good here, but most starts, especially Liza Minnelli, were weakly utilized.

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Silent Movie is technically terrific. The score emulates the movies that it satirizes perfectly as it’s old-fashioned and lively. The sound effects are good, though a bit overplayed at times. The dialogue is mostly excellent and the direction and cinematography are both strong. But the humor is uneven with the slapstick in the second half being less interesting. My favorite scenes are the one with Burt Reynolds, the gay gag and the one line of dialogue spoken by a mime.

Although clearly flawed in its much less interesting, repetitive and less funny second half, Silent Movie has a couple of very memorable, hilarious sequences, strong dialogue and a fantastic score that emulates its subject movies so well. It parodies and pays homage to 20s comedies in a very amusing, endearing fashion, though again the overall movie ended up being frustratingly uneven.

My Rating – 3.5

You can get this endearing flick on Amazon. It’s the type of classic movie that could definitely use more attention.