Mum's the Word

By JAY COCKS

SILENT MOVIE

Directed by MEL BROOKS Screenplay by MEL BROOKS, RON CLARK, RUDY DeLUCA and BARRY LEVINSON

Yes, it is really silent. There is music in Silent Movie, stray sound effects, and some title cards--just like in the days before Vitaphone--but no one utters a single word. Well, somebody does pronounce aloud one tiny monosyllable, but let no one step on a laugh by revealing either the word or the perpetrator. Just one caution: people may be laughing so hard all around you that, to hear the word, close attention will have to be paid. Silent Movie is brassy, incautious, funny without mercy. For laughter, Brooks gives no quarter, and he disdains the small change. As ever, he is out to break the bank. He comes as close as anyone in the vicinity to succeeding. Maybe even a little closer.

Daffy Asides. Silent Movie is welcome not the least for its audacity. Nobody makes silent movies any more, but the last person who might be expected to try is Brooks, who began his career cooking up outrageous interludes for Sid Caesar, consorted with Carl Reiner in the creation of the splendidly garrulous 2,000 Year Old Man (2,013 on his last birthday), and made a group of antic movies (Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein) that needed dialogue for life's blood. Brooks' favorite weapon was the non sequitur (mankind's greatest invention, according to the 2,000 Year Old Man, was Saran Wrap). He also excelled at illogical logic and brassy, daffy asides, like the hermit in Young Frankenstein sulking because the monster had shambled off without sampling his espresso.

In Silent Movie, Brooks has put these devices aside, or worked to find purely visual equivalents: in a spicy Szechwan restaurant, where steam billows from the customers' mouths and ears; in a ro mantic fantasy number, featuring the bride and groom coming to life atop a wedding cake, tapping down the tiered layers and sinking in a swamp of frosting. There is a rambunctious interlude in a sports car, small and overcrowded, where a pregnant passenger in the boot tips the balance and sends the MG down the street on rear axle power, looking like a bicycle on training wheels.

Desperate Scheme. The movie has to do with the efforts of a down-at-the-heels Hollywood director named Mel Funn (portrayed, inevitably, by Brooks himself) and his desperate scheme to save not just his own career but a major studio. Funn wants to make a silent movie, a comedy, of course. The studio chief (Sid Caesar) thinks Mel is nuts, but Mel, a pro, counters with the one blandishment proved irresistible to moguls on the ropes -- movie stars. What if Funn and his two buddies (Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise) are able to round up some of Hollywood's brightest?

As the unholy trio hits the well-manicured streets of Beverly Hills, struggling to recruit the likes of Paul Newman, Anne Bancroft, James Caan, Liza Minnelli and Burt Reynolds, the studio chief stews in his office, combatting a takeover by a notoriously ruthless conglomerate called Engulf and Devour.

That is all the plot there is. Brooks assumes that all he needs is a premise, and he may be right. The movie is a se ries of set pieces for Mel and the boys:

pursuing Paul Newman in electric wheelchairs; surprising Burt in his shower; bringing poor comfort to the studio head, now stricken by a heart attack and laid up in the hospital; or sweet-talking -- silently, of course -- an extravagantly campy sex bomb (Bernadette Peters) into joining the cause. Under scrutiny this premise may not be quite enough. Silent Movie could have used the sort of unifyingly insane notion that made Brooks' The Producers memorable: make a success by mounting the most miserable failure you can find.

Silent Movie is very much like a revue, laughs hung out on a thin line. It is a line that Brooks walks with zany skill, however. He is a tightrope artist who makes it from one side to the other with just a couple of false steps, and he has the inspired, reckless lunacy to turn a couple of handstands along the precarious route. All without a net, too. Jay Cocks

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