It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World [Blu-ray]

There can never be a true remake of this classic comedy. A few have tried claiming they were "inspired by" but have failed anyway. Stanley Kramer's epic "Comedy to end all comedies" had an amazing cast of comic actors old and (at that time) new which could never be recreated. It is a snapshot of a particular moment in time when comedians stretching back to the borscht belt and vaudeville met up with a new generation of comics working in clubs and on television. In fact many who had had small careers in films had found a much larger audience in the relatively new medium of TV. It may not be the funniest film ever made - that is every person's own opinion - but it is funny and succeeds in the impossible task of keeping up an atmosphere of comic mayhem for over a 2 1/2 hour running time. Enormously popular in its day (it was the third highest grossing film of 1963 taking in over 45 million) it has become a greatly beloved classic even now, over fifty years later.It was written by British screenwriter William Rose, who had written the Alec Guiness comedy, The Ladykillers. It was written originally as a madcap chase through Scotland. He sent an outline to director Stanley Kramer. I'd love to know why, because Kramer was a director of big, serious films with important social messages like The Defiant Ones (racism), On the Beach (atomic war), Inherit the Wind (freedom of speech) and Judgement at Nuremberg (the aftermath of World War II). He would seem like the worst possible choice to pitch a comedy to, but maybe the word was out that Kramer was interested in making a comedy, perhaps to not be typecast. Once things got going, the production, much like the film itself, took on a momentum of its own and soon practically every comedian in town was calling Kramer asking to be in it.There are so many great actors in roles big, small and in cameos that it would take up too much space to name them all. It was great to see some of the older cast members like Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman and Milton Berle go out with a big film that would be remembered. Actors in smaller roles often put in hilarious performances doing their usual schitck. Paul Ford as the bumbling Colonel Wilberforce (he had been the bumbling Colonel Hall on the Phil Silvers Show); Jim Backus as rich alcoholic Tyler Fitzgerald (it adds an extra laugh to know he was the well-known spokesman for Western Airlines whose tagline was "It's the only way to fly"); and Don Knotts in his nervous man routine. British comedian Terry-Thomas got roles in major pictures for years afterwards. Some faces, like Jesse White (TV's Maytag repair man) were only known from television exposure, which is probably missed by aOne would have wanted to see the cameo actors a little longer and some were underused (Stan Freberg, Edward Everett Horton) but the movie was originally over three hours as it was. The Three Stooges are only on for a few seconds and don't actually do anything but stand there but I can attest that they got a huge laugh from the audience just for being there.All of the principals were at their best. Even when they didn't have a line, just watching their faces is hilarious. But it was Jonathan Winters in his first film role who is most remembered. His eight minutes of total mayhem in Ray & Irwin's Garage is one of the great comic scenes in any movie. Again I can attest that in its first run in late '63 the audience was in a state of total sustained pandemonium almost literally rolling in the aisles as this scene played out. I've never again experienced an audience in so complete a state of hysteria.The film also has great support from the entire production team. There is one of the great comic scores of all time by Ernest Gold, a mad carousel-out-of control theme that wildly creates the right mood during legendary animator Saul Bass's creative title sequences. Despite its assertive character the music doesn't try to dominate the film but drops in now and then to enliven a driving scene that would look dull if silent or to accent brief moments of pandemonium. The film was beautifully shot in Super Panovision 70, which simulated a Cinerama effect without the "seams" created by the old three-camera process. And the scenery is spectacular with the Southern California desert, coastal towns and aerial footage. The editing, sound effects people and stuntmen were all major contributors to the film's success.Not everyone liked it and this is still true. A number of the critics of the day dismissed it as too dumb for words. But you have to understand that many critics of that era and before were very high toned and felt only films of great intellectual depth were worth seeing. Bergman, yes, but not something like this. It took until the early 80's for film critics to loosen up a bit and admit they could like both types of films. Others found it too long and too slapstick. Both accusations are true in their way but this was meant to be gargantuan and its excess is part of its nature. Also, a big film made with a big budget had to be pitched to a large general audience and so it needed to have lots of broad humor and not be a witty comedy of manners or something like that. Besides, it's kind of an homage to the whole history of film comedy and actually uses a lot of classic silent comedy bits. All in all the film knows exactly what it is doing, building on its momentum to its conclusion. And it's still a Stanley Kramer film and does contain a deep, cynical observation that totally nice, everyday people can go entirely insane over money as can the entire culture. The movie ends nicely with what could be a nod to Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, illustrating the value of laughter on the simplest level with the oldest joke in the world.Amazon's streamed film looks beautiful. I saw a streamed version a few years ago in the early days of streaming and it looked terrible because it had that over-sampling problem that made it look like daytime television, like it had been shot on somebody's video camera. I'm happy to say there's no trace of that. There are some great tributes, interviews and clips etc. on YouTube and I'd like to point out two really good ones. One posted by The Criterion Collection as "Location Comparison" shows many of the main locations then and now. There are others like this but this one is professionally shot at the exact camera angle as the film. The second is a "Cast Guide" that posts the name and dates of virtually everyone who appeared in the film while showing you a scene they're in.EXTRA NOTE: A few major comics wanted to be in the film but couldn't for one reason or another. Bob Hope's studio wouldn't lend him out even for a cameo. Lucille Ball was too tied up with her TV show being taped for the coming season. Red Skelton's manager wanted him to be paid the same as the primary cast even for a cameo. Stan Laurel sent regrets but said he had sworn never to appear in a film again after Oliver Hardy's death and could not break his word.

This 3 DVD and 2 Blu-ray set is wonderful. The films and extras are duplicated across both formats, arranged differently between the DVDs and Blu-rays, I assume because of space considerations. I'm not a fan of the fold-out card sleeve style, but it's adequate. I wish there was somewhere to stow the booklet and map. But that's all secondary to the content.I've been a fan of this movie for ages. Back in the early 1990s I purchased a double-VHS set which had re-inserted some previously-cut footage. For over 20 years, that VHS release (and its laserdisc version) was the only reconstructed extended version available. It was not a faithful recreation of the movie's 200+ minute original release - much was still missing, and some of the "restored" footage was actually outtake material that was not present when the movie premiered. Because the quality was not up to DVD standards, subsequent releases on DVD and Blu-ray that included this footage have separated it from the feature.Many people have spent decades scouring the planet for every scrap of footage from the approximately 40 'roadshow' prints that were made of the original-length film, in an attempt to reconstruct the full version, and this release is the result of their efforts. It's not perfect, but it is far better than what someone could reasonably expect from elements that were cut out of the movie 50 years ago and abandoned by the industry. Film is a fragile medium and Robert Harris, who helmed this effort with support from many others, deserves an award for the hard and innovative work that was done to bring the full version of this film back from the dead.The general-release version of the film is essentially the same as the previous MGM Blu-ray release. That is a restored version and it looks fantastic. I have read that a few tweaks were done here and there to improve upon the MGM edition, but I don't have that disc so I can't say what was done. I did notice what seem to be compression issues, specifically in scenes featuring aircraft in flight, and in studio-shot scenes of the actors in cars that were shot against a projection background. The backgrounds in both cases appear to have significant compression artifacts around the edges of foreground objects, but I can't say for sure if this might just be a problem with my player or television as opposed to the discs.The extended version is built upon the general-release version, so all the scenes it shares look just as amazing as they do on the shorter version. For the extra footage, a variety of techniques were used to bring them back from the brink and the results therefore vary. Scenes that were once available on the early 1990s laserdisc and VHS usually fare the best. The actual film elements were so badly deteriorated that bringing them up to high resolution in color was apparently impossible. However, an amazing technique was hit upon, whereby the color present on the lower-resolution laserdisc release was mapped to high-resolution scans lacking color. Since the laserdisc release was cropped down from the full 2.76:1 size, not all of the screen space had color information available. So these scenes can be distinguished by the absence of color around the borders. The size of the black & white area varies depending on how far the laserdisc release had been zoomed-in, but in most cases it's just a small area and not distracting.Other parts of the restored footage have other issues, such as variable color, some warbling of the background at the edges, and some loss of focus at the edges. There is one case I noticed of significant fading, but lasting just a few seconds. There are a couple of instances of Japanese subtitles where a print containing them was the only one available for a given scene. Many restored scenes suffer from a lack of the final second of audio, for which subtitles have been added, but it rarely amounts to more than about 1 word each. This was due to the fact that 70mm prints have a soundtrack that is offset from the film frames, so each recovered segment of film contains audio information from a time frame one second earlier than the accompanying images. It's unfortunate but you get used to it. In addition, the scanned film had to be de-rectified, to correct the pinching and squeezing that was put into the prints to make them appear properly when projected onto a curved Cinerama screen. This was accomplished wonderfully, with restored scene segments lining up just about perfectly with parts still present in the general-release version.Other scenes have been reinstated that contain no video, and still images have been used to fill in the gaps while the restored audio plays. In some cases the placeholder is taken from a similar scene or a behind-the-scenes photo; others contain still photos from the actual missing scenes. These inserts are largely successful at keeping the film moving and their inclusion is greatly appreciated for the audio they contain, in some cases adding to the depth of characters. A scene featuring Buster Keaton is particularly welcome.The music before the film as well as during the intermission is present, played over a black screen as they originally would have been in a theater. Also during the intermission, a series of police radio calls serve to advance the story. These were also audio-only and meant to be played for patrons stretching in the lobby or using the restroom. There are gaps of time between them; these may seem like long pauses today, but they are faithful to the presentation of the film in 1963.The extras in this set are also quite extensive and I am still making my way through them. I enjoyed the parts about Stan Freberg's advertising campaign for the original release very much. In particular, the short piece detailing restoration efforts should definitely be viewed to give the viewer an appreciation of just how much work it took to reconstruct the longer version. The audio commentary included with the extended version is also very interesting and informative. I learned many things I didn't know about the film, and I learned also to look at the performances from a perspective I didn't really consider before. There's just one disappointment in the commentary, and it's certainly no fault of the commentators at all. The original audio is so far down in the mix most of the time, that when they speak about the music of the film it's often very difficult to hear that music.In all, the restoration came out far better than could have been hoped for, given the poor condition of what they had to work with. This was a massive undertaking and everyone involved deserves high praise for what they were able to accomplish. Unless more elements happen to be discovered in the future in a high state of preservation (which is very unlikely), little more can be done beyond what has been done here. A scant 3 minutes of the original film is all that is not present in some form. As someone who has been waiting 20 years for more Mad Mad World, I am very satisfied.

This movie will never make a critic’s top 10 of all time list but it is a great movie worth every bit of the 2:40 length. Lots of laughs. All kinds of top stars from that era plus lots of cameos that aren’t credited. A mad chase 200 miles down to California for $350,000 cash equivalent of millions now.

This is a satirical, funny, crazy travel-log across the desert of southern California. Ultimately, this movie is a silly cross state car and airplane chase. From the mountain desert to the sea. It has most of the best comedic actors of the mid 20th Century. Its beyond silly, from the opening scene with Jimmy Durante kicking the bucket, to the hospital ward with a banana on the floor. Yet it's also genius.

Même si le film est long, le rythme est soutenu …Avec de sacrés effets spéciaux ( les effets numériques n’existaient pas à l’époque) et des prises de vue d’une définition au top en ultra panavision…et une flopée de stars…et la VF présente sur ce bluray !

Es gibt nichts Lächerlicheres als die menschliche Gier.Ganz zu Recht zählt der Film zu den komischsten, die gemacht worden sind. Zu Sylvester sah man ihn regelmäßig im deutschen Fernsehen. Es existiert mittlerweile eine längere Fassung von über 190 Minuten, die teilweise Ton anbietet mit Standbildern und leider nicht so sehr zu empfehlen ist.Hier handelt es sich um die Standardversion mit 155 Minuten.Smiler Grogan, ein altgedienter Ganove, stirbt bei einem Verkehrsunfall. Andere kommen des Wegs dahergefahren und erhalten von ihm die Information, wo er erbeutetes Geld vergraben hat. Es beginnt eine ansehnliche Jagd aller Beteiligten nach der Hinterlassenschaft, bei der alle möglichen Wege beschritten werden, die jeweils anderen auszustechen. Auch der ermittelnde Leiter des Polizeidepartments, dargestellt von Spencer Tracy, beteiligt sich.Am Ende ist alles für den Allerwertesten.Sehenswert.

I loved and enjoyed every minute of "It's a mad mad mad mad world", I've seen it on television, but owning it on DVD, now that is something special. And Thank You once again Amazon.

中古でCriterionのブルーレイ2枚とDVD3枚の計５枚組のバージョンを購入。サントラでこの映画の存在を知り聞いているうちにOvertureの歌詞が気になりネットで調べたり、日本盤のDVDを買ったり、サントラの拡張版（La la land版）を買ってライナーノーツを見たりしたがわからず。もしかしたらCriterion版なら歌詞が表示されるかなと思い購入。結果はレビュータイトルの通り。うれしかった。画質はやはりブルーレイだけあって日本盤のDVDよりきれいだった（あまり比較しても意味はないですが）。Saul Bassのメインタイトルのアニメーションもきれいに見れて満足。

ist dieser Film eher nicht, aber Kult. Eine Flut von Gags und Situationskomik, dargestellt von TV-Schauspielern, Komikern und wenigen Filmschauspielern*innen, mit Spencer Tracy als Ruhepol. Ich fühle mich bestens unterhalten. Es gibt immer was zu entdecken. Daher der Kauf.