灼热的马鞍

1974 is a banner year for Mel Brooks, before releasing YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, “the scariest comedy of all time!”, BLAZING SADDLES is a rip-roaring parody of horse opera that subverts everything in the genre, and then some.

First of all, our hero is an African-American railroad worker Bart (a terrifically chirpy Little), who has been appointed as the new sheriff in the frontier town Rock Ridge, as a cunning stratagem to inflame a racist riot to the benefit of the vile attorney general Hedley Lamarr (Korman), who hopes the town will be ruptured inwardly and pave the way for his new railroad business. But Lamarr’s ploy backfires spectacularly, not only the parochial townspeople (all sharing the same family name Johnson) doesn’t rail against Bart, after being stumped by the latter’s self-sustained “two-man” act of hostage and impressed by his ingenuity in subduing the bozo strongman Mongo (Karras), sent by Lamarr’s lackey Taggart (Pickens), they even warm up to Bart, soon it becomes a losing game for Lamarr out the wazoo, aided by a Caucasian sidekick in the person of the dead-eye gunslinger Jim (Wilder), Bart is indomitable and if you think building an entire town’s replica within 12 hours is scarcely credible, wait for the final ten minutes of the film, it will just blow your mind.

Brooks goes whole hog in this whimsically jocular satire, where sparks and N-words fly, he is not deterred by touching a raw nerve of USA’s inveterate racism and discrimination, and plays up to the stereotypes and preconceptions with a winking archness (the content of his sideswipes and mockery ranging from indigenous Indians, Ku Klux Klansmen, Irish immigrants, Nazi members to Methodist). However, the most sidesplitting gag comes from the nonpareil Madeline Kahn, as the Teutonic seductress Lili Von Shtupp, who walks away with an Oscar nomination by fantastically impersonating a world-weary version of Marlene Dietrich and belting out “I’m Tired” with an exhilarating air of lassitude and knowingness, not to mention nailing a well-endowed joke like nobody’s business.

Also deviously funny is Harvey Korman’s Lamarr, who is constantly ruffled by being called Hedy instead of Hedley (a subpoena sent on behalf of Ms. Lamarr is definitely on the way), and delectably articulates the most treacherous mouthfuls with such distinction that even his wiles are effulgent to a fault, whether he is coaxing Gov. William J. Le Petomane (a boss-eyed Brooks in one of the umpteen roles he plays here), or being soft-soaped by the feckless Taggart. All the greater, he has a self-revealing declaration that his wrongdoings might cost him an Oscar nomination, and his prescience unfortunately is eventuated.

Most outrageously, BLAZING SADDLES really bowls audience over near its coda that brandishes its subversive, anachronistic élan to the hilt, in the white heat of the final good-vs.-evil showdown, the fourth wall is abruptly broken by a craning shot and reveals the contemporary setting, whereupon the ongoing rough and tumble is literally transited onto the lot of Warner Brothers studio (a Busby Berkeley-esque musical nonetheless), a western brawl escalates into a pie-throwing three-ring circus, but when Lamarr escapes into a cinema where the film itself is screened, an inexplicable mise en abyme is actualized with a Möbius loop, how could that happen if the film hasn’t been finished by that point? Is it just a loophole in the setting? Apparently, a head-scratcher is not in Brooks’ intention, one might guess, but that is why BLAZING SADDLES is so fun and ingenious in jostling for the lulz and at the same time, throwing audience for a delirious loop.

referential entries: Brooks’ YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974, 8.1/10); THE PRODUCERS (1967, 7.2/10).