Jokes about Hitler are not funny, Frederick Bronski (Mel Brooks, who also produced the picture and co-wrote some of the songs), pretending to be Nazi spy Professor Siletski, reproves Gestapo Colonel Erhardt (Charles Durning), especially Polish pickle japes. In this remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 classic comedy, director Alan Johnson delivers, from an updated script by Ronny Graham (who also has the role of Sondheim) and Thomas Meehan, great guffaws at the expense of the nasty Nazis.

Beginning with their singing "Sweet Georgia Brown" and arguing in Polish, the narrator interrupts vaudeville actor Frederick ("world famous in Poland") and his actress wife Anna (Anne Bancroft) to assure the audience that the remainder of the movie will be in English.

In the Bronski Theatre of Warsaw in August 1939 with Hitler exclaiming his intentions on the radio and the German army massing on the border, as Frederick performs with his acting troupe his "Naughty Nazis" shtick on the stage - Bronski costumed as Hitler sings "All I want is a little peace … A little piece of Poland, A little piece of France …" - the secretary of the Polish foreign office, Dr Boyarski, interrupts the show because of its offensive, insulting nature toward the neighboring German dictator. Frederick then replaces the sketch with a command: "Sondheim, send in the clowns" - the Klotski Klowns, that is.

Meanwhile, backstage Anna has received a generous gift of flowers from an anonymous admirer, whom her dresser Sasha (James Haake) suspects is a young lieutenant. Sasha and Anna (love shouldn't stand in the way of good fun) connive to get Lt Andre Sobinski (Tim Matheson) backstage, while Frederick performs Hamlet's soliloquy from his Highlights of Shakespeare, by sending the Polish officer a note to get up from his seat just as Bronski begins "To be or not to be …" Sasha then warns Anna of the time by saying: "It's getting late in Denmark."

On the second night of this same shenanigans - enter Sobinski, "Exit Sasha," says Anna - Andre expresses his intention of being an honorable man by declaring to Frederick his love for Anna (stupid man!) when news of war's announced, followed by air-raid sirens and bombs falling. In three weeks Warsaw is obliterated and Poland surrenders.

Sobinski escapes to England where he and other patriotic Poles join the RAF; the Gestapo takes possession of the Bronskis' home for its headquarters, resulting in Frederick and Anna's accepting Sasha's offer for them to move in with him. It's a rat hole, but they make do as Sasha affixes a pink triangle (for homosexuals, while Jews must wear yellow stars) to his jacket - "I hate it. It clashes with everything" - excusing himself: "I've got a late date with another triangle." Bronski (a Gentile) attempts to keep his theatre open by entertaining the Germans, who are rounding up the undesirables: "Without Jews, fags, and gypsies, there is no theatre."

Suspicious of Professor Siletski, known as the voice of Radio Free Poland, who has taken the names of relations and other contacts from the Polish airmen, promising to get in touch with them during his secret visit, because Siletski doesn't recognize the famous name Bronski, the lieutenant volunteers for a daring mission of parachuting into Poland to stop the traitor before he can pass along the list of resistance fighters to the Nazis.

Upon his return to Warsaw, Sobinski needs the assistance of Frederick ("I'm an actor. I stink without a script") to play the roles of various Nazis - first Colonel Erhardt, then the professor, and finally Hitler - in an effort to retrieve the list of names involved in the underground movement. Having found out about Anna's flirtation with Sobinski, Frederick magnanimously says he forgives her if he doesn't return: "But if I do come back, you're in a lot of trouble."

After his meeting with the real Col Erhardt (whose orders are to "shoot them and interrogate them"), posing as the professor, Frederick in a soliloquy says: "I gave the greatest performance of my life and nobody saw it." (Actually we see it, and it's hilarious.)

Repeatedly Col Erhardt gives SS officer Schultz an order that comes back to embarrass the Gestapo chief. During a diversion to gain time, another actor Lupinski plays the part of Shylock - "I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? " - in a confrontation with the Nazis.

Mel Brooks, known for The Producers with its "Springtime for Hitler" routine, has said that the best way to get back at one's enemies is to humiliate them in public - get the last and best laugh at the expense of the evil ones.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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