Pinnacle
Mel Brooks, someone who has slightly faded over the years with comedy, was at the top of his game when he made History of the World Part I. Thankfully the world was less politically correct and actually understood how to laugh without looking around a room to make sure someone was laughing with them. Again, this was the pinnacle of the man’s career.
History of the World Part I was a vaudeville act that lasted 92 minutes. Brooks put together a movie that used history to create comedy (not that history didn’t already do this on its own). Starting with the birth of mankind, and mimicking Stanley Kubrick’s opening to 2001, Brooks takes you through randomly chosen historical events that don’t have real connections with each other (until the end, of course). This is what vaudeville constructed when it put together act after act after act and this is how Mel Brooks treated the movie.
Guess what? There’s nothing wrong with that arrangement. Thanks to a superb group of actors that believed in Brooks’ plight, the movie works out well. The strongest portion of the film, one that graces the biggest part of the movie cover, is the Roman skit. Brooks plays Comicus, a stand-up philosopher, who helps out a slave named Josephus (Gregory Hines). Josephus gets a gig with the Emperor and ends up meeting Comicus again as he also gets a gig in front of the emperor. The emperor is played by the late Dom DeLuise and should be considered the most physically offensive role in some time. Anyway, this type of talent and comedy comes together to bring one of the better moments in the film, as Josephus and Comicus have to escape the palace (after a disastrous showing) together. The chase involves a group of Eunuchs, a large joint and plenty of fat jokes. It’s tough to describe, but its the best/longest moment in the film.
Anyway, the film hasn’t aged much, though some of the comedy is a bit shallow at times. I think that for the most part people consider this particular piece in Mel Brooks’ top three right after Blazing Saddles and Silent Movie.
As for the upgrade to Blu-ray, it’s a good upgrade. Somewhere around December Fox released an entire collection of Brooks’ material on Blu-ray and this is just an individual piece of that collection. It looked good then and it looks good now. The audio is a bit empty, but it’s not an action film so what do you expect?
I think this is still a good Blu-ray to have in your collection and one that you’ll pull out on a year-to-year basis.
The features really do help the cause, as you get a nice set of featurettes in HD. One is the ‘making of’ the film, which is positively amusing and fascinating. The other HD featurette is on ‘The Inquisition’ musical piece (apparently it caused a great deal of controversy) that is equally as good. You get an isolated score track and a trivia track as well (which is very cool).