Tag Archives: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) a (very) belated review

I’m a sucker for “deleted” scenes from films as well as movies that were trimmed down from the director’s vision and subsequently “restored”.

Perhaps the most famous of this later bunch -and easily one of my all time favorite films- is the 1927 sci-fi classic Metropolis.  Because of the high costs associated with the production and its too long run time which lead to fears the film would not recoup its expenses, Metropolis was cut down in length shortly after its premiere and the cut scenes were thought lost forever for many, many years.  That is, until a relatively complete print was miraculously found in South America.  The “restored” version, which still doesn’t include a couple of too far damaged scenes, is an incredible experience despite the blurriness of the reinserted lost scenes, especially if all you’ve ever experienced of the film is the “cut” version.

But restoration doesn’t always mean a superior product from the one released theatrically.  As much as I loved Apocalypse Now and as much as I was intrigued with seeing Apocalypse Now Redux, director Francis Ford Coppola’s extended version of the film, that version of the film wound up being an incredible disappointment.  The extra sequences proved, at least to me, forgettable and wisely trimmed from the film.  A good example is checking out the Redux version of the full Robert Duvall sequence and comparing it to the theatrical one.  In the theatrical version, those scenes are among the best of the film, concluding on a bizarre, wistful Duvall speech (“One day, this war is going to end.”).  In the Redux version, the scene goes on and on, bringing us an unnecessary -and silly- bit involving the boys stealing Duvall’s surfboard.  Similarly, The Warriors was, again IMHO, a great film in its theatrical form and a mess -again IMHO- in its expanded director’s cut.

Regardless, my interest in seeing “restored” versions of films remains very high and the latest example of just such a creature is the Criterion company’s release of the 1963 comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (I’ll refer to it as IAMW from now on).

The theatrical cut of the film runs 154 minutes but most fans of the feature know there was a 202 minute pre-release version that was subsequently trimmed and no longer exists.  Criterion nonetheless searched long and hard and found as many of the lost elements as they could and the restored version presented on their BluRay runs a lengthy 197 minutes.

Does this version add to the film like Metropolis or subtract like Apocalypse Now Redux and The Warriors?

The answer is a little tricky, but ultimately my feeling is the “restored” version of the film is the superior product…with a mild asterisk.

Why the asterisk?  To begin, IAMW was already a very time consuming film experience and those who didn’t “get” the joke were bound to think negatively about the film in its shorter version and would no doubt feel even less for the longer version.  I suspect younger viewers, too, might find less in the film because it features a cast that, frankly, the younger set may not recognize at all.  At the time of its creation in 1963, IAMW featured just about every popular comedic actor there was out there.  The all star cast was crammed into a race to the finish type film, where the various groups of people hunt for a buried treasure while greed gets the best of them.

Though I’ll admit to not being a huge fan of some of the principle actors (Milton Berle and Sid Ceasar, just to name two, were a little before my time), I nonetheless got a kick out of seeing all the various faces parade before me.  And some of the set pieces, in particular the wayward airplane sequences, were outright hilarious and an obvious inspiration to things that were to come (I’m looking at you, Airplane!).

The restored sequences reinserted into IAMW are at times pretty ragged.  Some of them have the dialogue cut off at the last second.  But worse are other scenes, most notably one featuring silent comedy legend Buster Keaton, which only feature the dialogue recording and were presented, in lieu of the actual film, with stills.  Unlike Apocalypse Now Redux, I felt most of the “restored” scenes were, if not always vital, at the very least added to the story and, in certain cases, filled in a few of the story’s gaps.  Returning to the lost Buster Keaton scene, now I understand where Capt. Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) was going toward the end of the film.  As it was in the theatrical cut, he heads to Buster Keaton’s place but I was never exactly sure why.

That’s not to say all the restored bits are all long and involved.  Many of them amount to a nothing more than a few seconds of extended dialogue or film that are interesting enough but could have been lost without hurting the feature all that much.

Still, my daughter, who usually doesn’t care all that much for older films, nonetheless wound up watching the restored version with me from a little after the beginning to its end and enjoyed the feature.  Given that the only actors she recognized were The Three Stooges in their couple of seconds long cameo, it didn’t detract from her enjoyment of the madness before her.

In the end, I recommend the restored version of IAMW.  While the film is long and therefore requires a considerable investment on the part of viewers, it is an at times hilarious bit of madness, a comedy on a grand scale the likes of which hasn’t been made any time recently.

Check it out.  If you’re into this kind of comedy, you’ll have a good time.