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The question is what to do after achieving complete mise en scène, thus Jerry Lewis as the world's richest man bored out of his mind, nothing to look forward to but the chance to change the course of history. The novelty of military enlistment, denied (the word "rejection" is enough to send moneybags into squawking arias), a simple solution, start your own Armed Forces. The nightclub comedian (Jan Murray), the henpecked husband (Steve Franken) and the two-timing lothario (Dack Rambo) are the recruits in blue jumpsuits, off to fight Nazis on a yacht loaded with caviar. "Well, we certainly can't land in the middle of an invasion, can we?" At War with the Army, as it were, with swish-pan transitions and freeze-frames and tinted stock footage to blatantly mock the "1943" backdrop. The stalemate in Naples, a switcheroo between the billionaire and his braying lookalike, Field Marshal Kesselring himself. (Cf. Dassin's Nazi Agent, "Conrad Veidt would be proud.") "Music to Mein Kampf By" as preparation for the raid on the articulate, the ferocious breakdown of language wears a monocle and mutilates Fascism with its own medals. "Good German! Wunderbar! Get 'em while zey're hot!" The Great Dictator and The Dirty Dozen, but also Douglas' The Devil with Hitler. The amorous Eye-talian wife (Kaye Ballard) who will not be denied, nitroglycerin inside the satchel for the assassination plot inside the Reich, vaudeville retribution down the bunker with a mincing Führer (Sidney Miller). And then, like Buñuel switching institutions at the very end of Viridiana, Lewis is off to the Pacific with buck teeth at the ready. "Wait a minute. How did we win? There wasn't a battle!" Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds evinces a rare understanding of its brilliance. With John Wood, Willie Davis, Robert Middleton, Harold J. Stone, Paul Winchell, Joe Besser, George Takei, Neil Hamilton, and Kathleen Freeman.
--- Fernando F. Croce |