Cinema Sunday: A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum

Today's movie is A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum, a 1966 American-British film based on the stage play that debuted on Broadway in 1962 with music by Stephen Sondheim.

The film is directed by Richard Lester who was the director for the Beatles' classics A Hard Day's Night from 1964 and Help! from 1965 and would go on to direct Superman II in 1980. 

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum is set in Rome during the reign of Emperor Nero. The story centers on Pseudolus, a slave whose only wish is to buy his freedom. His master, the handsome but dim witted Hero has fallen in love with Philia, a beautiful virgin courtesan from the house of Marcus Lycus, buyer and seller of beautiful women next door.  Pseudolus sees his chance and makes a deal: he will get the girl for Hero in return for his freedom. 

It's not that simple.  

Philla already has a buyer, the great Roman soldier Captain Miles Gloriosus. Pseudolus convinces Marcus Lycus that Philla has the plague and hi-jinks ensue to keep Philla away from Captain Gloriosus and Hero's father. There is a very large amount of running around as Pseudolus and Marcus Lycus lie and cheat and steal to manipulate a sprawling cast into believing people are not who they appear to be. 

It is a farcical mess of a movie with some genuine laughs as the chaos with Pseudolus at its core spins maddingly out of control. 

But...

Don't you hate pretentious people who look down their noses at movies and pronounce that the book or the original stage play was better?  

Well, I do!

But....

The family saw A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum live at Wake Forest University back in April 2016. The live play was not a professional production, by any means, but after we saw the movie, our general consensus was we liked the play better. 

This is not a knock on the cast of the film. Zero Mostel as Pseudolus and Phil Silvers as Marcus Lycus are hilariously on point in their respective roles. 

I think that artifice of seeing the antics of Forum in a live theater setting helps to defuse the more troublesome elements of the story such as slavery and the sexual subjugation of women. 

And the movie version of Forum is definitely very much a thing of it's time with a frantic editing, extreme close ups and other tricks that film directors were especially prone to in the 1960's.  

Side bar: Doctor Who alert. Jon Pertwee appears briefly as Crassus who reports that there is no plague in Crete which blows a big hole in Pseudolus' scam. By the way, the name 'Pertwee' is in the credits twice. Jon's brother Michael Pertwee was a writer on the screenplay.  

Jon Pertwee also played Marcus Lycus in a 1963 West End production of Forum.  

Erronius is played by Buster Keaton, a classic comedic actor from Hollywood's silent movie era. 70 years old at the time, Keaton was ill from cancer. Scenes with Errronius running employed a stunt double but the bit with Erronius's pratfall running into a tree was performed by Keaton himself. Forum would be Buster Keaton's last movie.  

Hero was played by Michael Crawford who would go on to originate the role of the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.  

The 1966 film version of A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum is a humorous and enjoyable diversion. But one day when this damn pandemic finally passes us by and live theater is a thing once again, seek out a live production of this bizarre, funny show.