Film Summary CCCLXXIX (It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)

It's the magical everything movie. Every actor, every event, every story line, it's all here. There's just so much going on.
Yet it's not overbearing. It's pretty simple keeping all the characters actions and movements in your head.
What I love most about this movie is the incredibly simple premise that's inter woven with so many subplots. There's about seven or eight different stories going on, within each one of these stories there's two to three characters and a lot of the time these characters will start mixing with each other.

There's one man (Jimmy Durante) speeding along in the California desert. He keeps passing other cars until he's inevitably run off the road by his own stupidity. A bunch of people pull over to investigate the accident. A group of men go down to where they think the guy is only to find him on the side thrown out of his car near death.
He tells the group and a half dead stupor that there's a quarter of a million dollars buried in a park somewhere in southern Los Angeles underneath a giant W. Or ''Dubya'' if your Jonathan Winters.

now originally it doesn't seem like that big a problem. All the men get together (along with some other women who are waiting in there cars) and try to broker a deal as to how to broker the money. This is where everything starts to fall apart. They can't decide on who gets what amount of a share. Some are arguing that it should only be the people who went down and saw the man to begin with. Others argue that it should be a collective share for all the people who came in individual cars. And still others think that everyone who's currently involved in the conversation should get one share individually.
All of this becomes even more exaggerated with Mrs.Marcus (Ethel Merman) who keeps agitating everyone around her. Eventually getting to the point where everybody breaks down and decides that it's an 'all for one, one for all' phenomenon.
A fair bit of the movie from this point on is just everybody travelling by different methods trying to get to the supposed location of the money. And watching is all their various efforts become even more meaningless as they keep hitting every possible roadblock.
A fair bit of the movie from this point on is just everybody travelling by different methods trying to get to the supposed location of the money. And watching is all their various efforts become even more meaningless as they keep hitting every possible roadblock.
What makes it even more chaotic are all the newcomers Who start getting involved in the plot. As each person keeps betraying those around them, then watching as the trade people turn to outside sources for help.
But then those people try to stake their claim to the prize as well. Until you eventually get to the end up with about 15 different people, each with a small steak in the supposed prize.

Then just as one final piece of chaos as if adding a cherry on top of a cake. You have a police Captain who finds himself in such a desperate situation after supposedly losing everything, who decides to go after the money himself. Creating a scheme in such a way that he can convince the police department to back away from the entire investigation, fool everybody (who was searching for the money) into handing him over the cash and then driving himself down to a boat yard, where he can get on a ship and head for Mexico never to be seen again.

And it's all spectacularly well done. Everyone's personal story is easy to follow, its relatively entertaining the entire time and despite its long-running time the pacing is surprisingly solid. We're watching an adventure as it happens. There's no cutaways, no skips in time, no before or after shots, every moment you see of one character has evants happening with every other character at the same time.
Which makes it funny with Sid Caesar and Edie Adams who arguably have the simplest story as they were able to make it to their destination long before anybody else. But then got trapped in a hardware store.
Which leads into one of the greatest room smashing scenes ever betrayed on film. Ironically only out beaten by a different room smashing scene from the exact same movie. And where Jonathan Winters character fight these two gas station attendants who think he's a looney from a a sane Asylum who's trying to kill them. The ensuing fight will see the entire destruction of this massive gas station and every little item within it being thrown around.

The amount of stunt work is phenomenal. And I mean 'stunt work'. Not special effects or trickery of the eyes. You want somebody flying a giant playing around an airport in the most ludicrous way possible?
Well we're going to do that. You need a bunch of stuff destroyed for those smashing room scenes. It'll be done.
And the soundtrack to the movie is great too. It's just as memorable as the actual film. All those great trumpet noises and really energetic little beats really get you in the mood. It puts just enough emphasis on the action and excitement but you never forget that you're watching a comedy.
and that brings us to the comedy. Which is probably the best thing about the film. You have 7 million different actors half of which are all Comedians and they all get to shine at one point or another. Their able to work off of each other and make their own unique dialogue and the whole thing is just hilarious.

You mix it all together and you end up of a great film. And one of the biggest laugh out loud moments for me was a strange part of the movie somewhere in the middle, right when everything was starting to heat up. The planes were crashing down, the people were stuck in buildings, there's explosions, car chases, everybody screaming and yelling and the chaos is at maximum. And then you just hit the intermission part. And for some reason they just couldn't help but laugh at that. All that buildup and then we stopped right here in the middle.

The odd part about all this is. I didn't like this movie I first time saw it.
Younger me thought it was, kind of slow. I didn't get half the jokes that we're going on and I just didn't care for any of the acting. At the time I hadn't seen too many movies with any of these actors in it. Which now makes me think if I had seen anything.
If you were to ask me what film best represent at the 20th century. I might have to point at ''It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.''
There's just so much flare and style, every famous actor is here and you can find something to enjoy no matter who you are. The theme of average people being overtaken by greed is just so ideal for the 20th century. Everyone's looking to make a quick Buck, they want quick ideas, quick cars, quick philosophy and they want to try and cut Corners at any chance given.  and they're all willing to step on top of each other to get it. These people could have easily acquired the money if they just work together and acted sensibly.

One problem films like this usually have is, why aren't the police getting involved? With all that wanted destruction, endangerment of other people's lives and just general Mayhem the police should be on these people's tales all the time.
Of course they are monitoring these people the entire time. There purposely sitting back and watching the chaos unfold. One part of it being that they're looking for the stash of stolen money that the one guy said was buried under the Big W but the police have no idea where it is. And then you find out later on that the police are actually betting on various people to see who will get there first.

And it's such a clever way to get around so many basic problems in a film of this calibre.
The biggest problem is that the inevitable money that's found will not cover all the damages that have been done. Between the entire destruction of a gas station, half of the structure of a Airport Restaurant, all the stolen vehicles (half of which have been demolished). An entire hardware store that's been blown to bits along with the wall of a Chinese Laundry.
and that's to say nothing of the man hours and resource is consumed by the police force itself. Between the various squad cars helicopters and radar equipment they probably blown through $200000 right there.
And how about the very end of the film. There's about 13 different people in full body cast. How much money did that cost?

I've heard rumours for at the years that there's longer takes of this movie. But the studio actually shortened it down to a more reasonable time. And usually I like to see movies with the extended cuts. To see what can be added and what it was at the studios deemed inadequate for an audience of the time. But I really don't think a movie like this should be any longer than it is. It's almost 3 hours long and it's getting just to be a little too much at that point. Adding anything to what I think would diminish the film. I supposed to be kind of interesting to see the scenes out of contact maybe just on some DVD extra. But I think the film has a perfect length of time. You feel like you're getting involved in an adventure, an investment without it becoming stagnant.

I love the long screen look of this movie. The type of film used gives everything this large atmospheric look to it. And you really learn to appreciate it when you're looking over vast Vistas, long drawn-out Sky shots. And of course the multiple scenes and where you have anywhere from 5 to 20 characters in a single shot all facing the camera together. There's some beautiful cinematography here.