Movies - Blazing Saddles

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	Movies - Blazing Saddles

Blazing Saddles is a Warner Bros. 1974 comedy directed by Mel Brooks and starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. The film was written (in what Brooks called Your Show of Shows-style) by a team of writers, namely Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, and Alan Uger; it was based on Bergman's story and draft. Brooks appears in multiple supporting roles, including Governor Le Petomane and a Yiddish-speaking Indian Chief. Slim Pickens, Alex Karras, David Huddleston, and Brooks regulars Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman are also featured. Musician Count Basie has a cameo.

The film is an over-the-top parody of the Western film genre, in addition to being an intelligent satire about racism. It is also considered as one of the forerunners of gross-out films that proliferated since the success of Animal House.

Plot summary

The story is set in the Southwest United States in 1874 (though it is filled with deliberately anachronistic references to the 1970s). Construction on a new railroad runs into quicksand; the route has to be changed, which will cause it to be built near Rock Ridge, a frontier town where everyone has the last name of "Johnson". State Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (played by Korman) — not to be confused, as he often is in the film, with Hedy Lamarr — wants to buy the land along the new railroad route cheaply, but first has to cause the townspeople to leave. He sends a gang of thugs, led by Pickens's character, to scare them away, prompting the townsfolk to demand that the Governor appoint a new sheriff. The Attorney General convinces the dim-witted governor (Brooks) to appoint Bart (Little), an African American railroad worker, as the new sheriff. He believes that this will so offend the townspeople they will either abandon the town or lynch the new sheriff.

With his quick wits and the assistance of an alcoholic former gunslinger Jim (Wilder), "The Waco Kid" ("I must have killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille!"), Bart begins to overcome the hostile reception. He defeats Mongo (Karras), an immensely strong subhuman sent by Pickens, then resists the seductions of wily temptress-for-hire Lili von Shtupp (Kahn), before inspiring the townfolk to lure Lamarr's small army of thugs into an ambush.

The resulting fight between the townsfolk and the gunfighters is so devastating that it even breaks the fourth wall; the fight spills out from the westerns lot in the Warner Brothers Studios and manages to destroy a musical set before culminating in a cream pie fight in the studio canteen. As with all westerns, however, it cheerfully ends with the good guys defeating the bad guy, rescuing the town, catching the end of the movie, persuading people of all colors and creeds to live in harmony and, finally, riding off into a beautiful sunset (although Bart and Jim quickly swap their horses for a limousine) – in that order.

Themes and motifs

The movie uses some outrageously racist themes, but in a self-aware manner that successfully manages to mock racism itself. The racist individuals in the movie are quite possibly the dumbest people on earth; stupid enough, for instance, to fall for Bart holding himself hostage until he gets to safety. No ethnic group is spared from satirical barbs. At one point, David Huddleston's character grudgingly concedes to some railroad workers: "All right, we'll give some land to the niggers and the chinks. But we don't want the Irish!" Although to be fair, he did not use a racial epithet to refer to the Irish. After a vocal outcry, he then lets everyone, including the Irish, have land.

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Movies - Blazing Saddles

Plot summary

Themes and motifs

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