''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' (film)

A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum
theatrical release poster
Directed by Richard Lester
Produced by Melvin Frank
Screenplay by
Based on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
1962 play
by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart
Starring
Music by Stephen Sondheim
Cinematography Nicolas Roeg
Edited by John Victor-Smith
Distributed by United Artists
Release date
  • October 16, 1966 (1966-10-16) (United States)
  • December 14, 1966 (1966-12-14) (United Kingdom)
Running time
 99 minutes
Country
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
Language English
Budget $2 million
Box office $3.4 million
(US/Canada)[1]

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a 1966 British-American DeLuxe Color musical comedy film, based on the stage musical of the same name. It was inspired by the farces of the ancient Roman playwright Plautus (251-183 B.C.) – specifically Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus and Mostellaria – and tells the bawdy story of a slave named Pseudolus and his attempts to win his freedom by helping his young master woo the girl next door.

The film was directed by Richard Lester, with Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford reprising their stage roles. It also features Buster Keaton in his last motion picture role; Phil Silvers, for whom the stage musical was originally intended; and Lester favorites Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern and Roy Kinnear.

The musical was adapted for the screen by Melvin Frank and Michael Pertwee from the stage musical of the same name with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. The film's cinematography was by Nicolas Roeg.

Plot

In the city of Rome during the reign of Emperor Nero, Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) is "the lyingest, cheatingest, sloppiest slave in all of Rome", whose only wish is to buy his freedom from his master's parents, the henpecked Senex (Michael Hordern) and his dominating wife Domina (Patricia Jessel). When he finds out that his master, Senex's handsome but dim son Hero (Michael Crawford), has fallen in love with Philia (Annette Andre), a beautiful virgin courtesan from the house of Marcus Lycus (Phil Silvers), buyer and seller of beautiful women next door, Pseudolus makes a deal: he will get the girl for Hero in return for his freedom.

Unfortunately, the virgin has been sold to the great Roman soldier, Captain Miles Gloriosus (Leon Greene), who even now is on his way from conquering Crete to claim her as his bride. In an attempt to fake out the great Gloriosis and buy enough time to come up with a plan that will give Philia to Hero, Pseudolus and his overseer, Hysterium (Jack Gilford), stage a sit-down orgy for fourteen. Pseudolus informs the captain that his bride is dead and blackmails Hysterium into masquerading as the corpse of Philia to fool the captain and send him heartbroken away; but things go wrong at every turn.

When the supposedly dead "Philia" suddenly comes back to life after the great Gloriosis announces his intention of cutting "her" heart out as a memorial, an hilarious chase across Rome and on into the countryside ensues. Eventually, Miles Gloriosis collars Hero, the real Philia, Hysterium, Marcus Lycus, Pseudolus, and Gymnasia, the silent woman courtesan fancied by Pseudolus, and brings them back to Rome to untangle the skein of deception and see that justice is done.

In the end, Hero gets Philia; Senex's next-door neighbor Erronius (Buster Keaton) learns that Philia and Miles Gloriosus are in fact his long-lost children; Marcus Lycus is spared from execution for breaking a marriage contract; Miles Gloriosis takes the gorgeous Gemini twins as his consorts; and Pseudolus gets his freedom, the beautiful Gymnasia to be his wife, and a dowry of 10,000 minae, compliments of Marcus Lycus.

Cast

Cast notes

Songs

  • "Comedy Tonight" — Pseudolus and Company
  • "Lovely" — Philia and Hero
  • "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" — Pseudolus, Senex, Lycus, and Hysterium
  • "Bring Me My Bride" — Miles Gloriosus and Company
  • "Lovely" (reprise) — Pseudolus and Hysterium
  • "Funeral Sequence" - Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus and Company
  • "Finale" — Company

Songs from the original Broadway score which were cut for the film: "Love I Hear" (Hero), "Free" (Pseudolus and Hero), "Pretty Little Picture" (Pseudolus, Hero, Philia), "I'm Calm" (Hysterium), "Impossible" (Senex and Hero), "That Dirty Old Man" (Domina) and "That'll Show Him" (Philia)[5]

Sondheim's music was adapted for the film version of Forum by Ken Thorne, who previously worked with The Beatles on Help! (1965).[6][7] Thorne won the only award that Forum received, a 1967 Academy Award for "Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment".[8]

Production

Although the musical had originally been written with Phil Silvers in mind, Zero Mostel starred on Broadway as Pseudolus,[9] and Richard Lester was his choice to direct the film version. Other directors who were considered included Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Mike Nichols.[6]

It was filmed at the Samuel Bronston Studios in Madrid, Spain, and on location around that city,[10] on an estimated budget of $2 million. Filming took place from September to November 1965.[11]

Jack Gilford was also re-creating his stage role, as Hysterium,[9] and there are other connections to the Broadway production. Tony Walton, who designed the production, including the costumes, was also the designer of the Broadway show. For Walton, who was married to Julie Andrews from 1959 to 1967, Forum came at the beginning of both his film and stage careers: it was his second Broadway production, and his third film - he had designed costumes for Mary Poppins in 1964, and did the overall production design of Fahrenheit 451 in 1966.[12][13]

Bob Simmons, a renowned stunt coordinator, designed and performed many of the action scenes in the film.

Forum is remarkable as one of the few films in which Buster Keaton appeared where he employed a double. Keaton was suffering from terminal cancer at the time – a fact of which he was not aware – and Mick Dillon stood-in for him for the running sequences. However, Buster performed the pratfall after running into a tree in the chase sequence near the end of the film himself, as no one could properly imitate his pratfalls.[14]

The animated end credits created by Richard Williams feature many houseflies, a reminder of the fly problem the production suffered through when the fruits and vegetables which festooned the set were left out to rot overnight after the end of the shooting day.[6]

George Martin, who with Ethel Martin is credited with the choreography of the film,[15] was the assistant to choreographer Jack Cole on Broadway.[16] (Jerome Robbins also did some uncredited work on the stage show.[9]) Other members of the Forum team are notable as well. Cinematographer Nicholas Roeg moved up to the director's chair to make films such as Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) with David Bowie.

Release

Forum premiered in New York City on October 16, 1966[17] and in London on December 14 of that year.[18] It went into general release in January 1967.

Reception

Box office

The film received about $3 million in rentals in the U.S.[11]

Critical reception

Reviews from critics were mostly positive. Variety wrote, "Flip, glib and sophisticated, yet rump-slappingly bawdy and fast-paced, 'Forum' is a capricious look at the seamy underside of classical Rome through a 20th-Century hipster's shades ... Generally assayed with satirical thrust and on-target accuracy, almost all of the performances are top-rung and thoroughly expert."[19] In a generally favorable review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the "handsomely realistic settings" and determined that "Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics hold up well," but also found it "hard to decide whether Mr. Lester has gone too far, or not far enough, in translating into film terms the carefully calculated nonsense originally conceived for the theater. He's done a lot of tricky things — with his penchant for quick cutting and juxtaposition of absurd images — but there are times when this style seems oddly at variance with the basic material, which is roughly 2,000 years older than the motion-picture camera."[20]

Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film moved so fast that "I simply couldn't ingest it all in one viewing," but "I was able to register enough to realize I was enjoying myself hugely. 'Forum' is a bawdy, ribald romp that rips Rome's Great Society right up the middle, an out-and-out burlesque show that may even—underneath all the frenetic foolery, the flourishing of floozies and the pratfalls—have something satirical and cynical to tell us about nations and why they fall."[21] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post raved, ""Bawdy, gaudy and lawry, how funny! 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum' has arrived at the Cinema, where laughter should be exploding for months."[22] Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote that "I laughed my way mindlessly through ninety percent of the picture," calling the jokes "both awful and exactly right for Mostel, Silvers and company."[23] A review in the UK's Monthly Film Bulletin thought that Lester's fast-moving direction style made for a "curious effect of dislocation," writing that Mostel and Silvers "constantly find the editor snapping at their tails while Lester dashes down some attractive byway and the laugh they probably would have got is stopped short." The review concluded, "Apart from the long chase at the end, which is boring and irrelevant, this is an odd, good-humoured mess of a film, in spite of everything decidedly likeable."[24]

Awards and honors

Music director Ken Thorne received an Academy Award for "Oscar Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment" in 1967. In addition, the film was nominated that year for a Golden Globe as "Best Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy".[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Big Rental Films of 1967", Variety, 3 January 1968 p 25. Please note these figures refer to rentals accruing to the distributors.
  2. ↑ Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, Thames Television documentary (aired in the U.S. on Turner Classic Movies)
  3. ↑ IMDB Buster Keaton
  4. ↑ IMDB Roy Kinnear
  5. ↑ "Songs" on the Internet Broadway Database
  6. 1 2 3 Jessica Handler "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (TCM article)
  7. ↑ IMDB Ken Thorne
  8. 1 2 IMDB Awards
  9. 1 2 3 IBDB "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"
  10. ↑ IMDB Filming locations
  11. 1 2 IMDB Business data
  12. ↑ IMDB Tony Walton
  13. ↑ IBDB Tony Walton
  14. ↑ Freese, Gene Scott (2014) Hollywood Stunt Performers, 1910s-1970s (Second Edition). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company ISBN 978-1-4766-1470-0
  15. ↑ TCM Full credits
  16. ↑ IBDB George Martin
  17. ↑ TCM Overview
  18. ↑ IMDB Release dates
  19. ↑ "Film Reviews: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum". Variety: 6. September 28, 1966.
  20. ↑ Canby, Vincent (October 17, 1966). "Screen: 'Funny Thing' Happens Here". The New York Times: 48.
  21. ↑ Scheuer, Philip K. (December 4, 1966). "'Fahrenheit' Freezes Blood, 'Forum' a Funny Thing". Los Angeles Times. Calendar, p. 11.
  22. ↑ Coe, Richard L. (December 24, 1966). "'Funny Thing' A Funny Thing". The Washington Post: D7.
  23. ↑ Gill, Brendan (October 22, 1966). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker: 165.
  24. ↑ "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 34 (398): 41. March 1967.
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