Young Frankenstein

Mel Brooks takes a brain surgeon ashamed of the Frankenstein name to the family castle and his ancestor’s notebook. Gene Wilder started it during a break on the Blazing Saddles shoot; they wrote the screenplay together and Wilder starred. Columbia cut the budget and refused black and white, so the film moved to 20th Century Fox: Brooks changed studios, not his mind. The laboratory gear is no replica. Kenneth Strickfaden, who built the apparatus for the 1931 Frankenstein, kept it working in his garage, lent it for the credit the original never gave him, and stayed on set. Gerald Hirschfeld force developed the negative for hard contrast and overplayed the back light of 1931 house style; the iris outs and wipes belong to the same imitation, so the comedy sits in the technique rather than the lines. Brooks thought the closing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” number too cheap and wanted it cut; Wilder held out. In 1975 the Academy nominated it for adapted screenplay and for sound; it won neither. The Library of Congress registered it in 2003. A good fit if you notice the back light, the iris out and the wipe carrying as much joke as the dialogue. Not for viewers who want jokes that land without knowing the 1931 grammar being copied.