Mel Brooks names his ultimate comfort movies: “There is always a happy ending”
Comedy has developed enormously since the early days of cinema, and Mel Brooks has been around long enough to watch these rapid changes, having started his career in the industry in 1949. He was born during the silent era of cinema, a time when slapstick comedy reigned supreme, but by the time Brooks was a young man, screwball comedies, black comedy, and increasingly political takes on satire were becoming popular.
As Brooks began to earn recognition for his comedy writing for the likes of Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, his distinctive style came to emerge. He loved parody and slapstick, recalling the earlier days of comedic cinema, often using a darkly comic approach to address certain themes. His directorial debut came in 1967 with The Producers, which starred one of Brooks’ closest friends and frequent collaborators, Gene Wilder.
Brooks earned an Oscar for ‘Best Original Screenplay’, helping to cement his place in the industry as both a comedic heavyweight and a genuinely skilled filmmaker. From there, more success followed with the likes of Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and History of the World, Part I. Brooks is widely praised for his approach to complex and endlessly enjoyable comedy films, and even though he’s nearing his 100th year, the filmmaker and actor is still keeping himself busy, creating and narrating 2023’s History of the World, Part II and starring in the upcoming television movie Fairy Tale Forest.
Evidently, Brooks has enjoyed a very impressive career, and it seems like he has always had his finger in a certain cinematic pie, whether that be in the form of creating a new movie, writing a memoir, or guest-starring alongside Larry David in four episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. But what does he watch when he wants to switch off from work?
Taking to Reddit, Brooks revealed that his ultimate comfort films are “Any Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie.” That could be any of the ten movies that the dancing duo starred in between the 1930s and 1940s, making them arguably the most iconic pairing of the era. They made their first appearance as a duo in 1933’s Flying Down to Rio, which also featured Dolores del Río and Gene Raymond. From there, they appeared in one movie a year together (including two in 1935 and 1936), until 1940, before reuniting in 1949 for The Barkleys of Broadway. Starring in movies like Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee together, they earned significant popularity, with viewers loving their on-screen pairing.
According to Brooks, “No one ever gets killed, and there is always a happy ending,” something that makes these movies perfect for a comfort-watching session. In 2005, Brooks actually revealed that “My favourite film of all time is the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical, Top Hat.”
He continued, “With Astaire, there was no cutting. The number starts, two people are dancing. The camera can move in a little bit and move back, but there’s no cutting.”
Top Hat was released in 1935, when Brooks was about nine years old, and he surely grew up watching the movie many times as he got older, in love with the screwball comedy’s charming sense of humour and impressive dance numbers.
