Movie – The Inspector General

The Inspector General (1949) – A bumbling assistant to a snake oil salesman(Danny Kaye) stumbles into a corrupt village where he is mistaken for Napoleon’s Inspector General, charged with rooting out crime and corruption.  The fake inspector tries to make the best of the mistaken identity until his old boss shows up with other ideas.

This is a classic Danny Kaye vehicle, that relies on his physical comedy and ability to both sing and speak extended bits of gibberish.  The movie has been allowed to pass into the public domain so the copy I saw had serious quality issues.  With no profit in restoring the faded print of a relatively minor film, you end up with huge swings in the colors.  Some scenes are faded to faint pastels while others will suddenly jump out at you in almost perfect saturation.  In the end this simply isn’t a good enough movie to spend the money on doing a full blown restoration.  Which isn’t to say that it’s not a good enough movie.  Danny Kaye was a unique performer that brought together a special group of talents.  Kind of Robin Williams meets Dick Van Dyke meets “Weird Al” Yankovic.  Williams’s ability to just freestyle through characters added to Van Dyke’s elastic physical presence with Yankovic’s unique approach to songs.  This one gives him plenty of room to play along the silly side of the street.

The movie is based very loosely on Nikolai Gogol’s 19th Century play of the same name.

Why I Liked It – In addition to Kaye this movie has a great cast of character actors in supporting roles.  Elsa Lanchester plays the mayors wife, Gene Lockhart (the judge in “A Miracle on 34th Street” among his 146 roles), Alan Hale (the Captain from “Gilligan’s Island”) as the chief of police and the wonderful Walter Slezak (he did lots of ’60’s TV among his 97 roles) as Yakov, the snake oil con man. Even the lesser known cast like the twins Lew and Sam Hearn, playing the heads of the local post office, Izzick and Gizzick, are wonderful.  The cast is filled with faces and voices that will make you say “Wait, who is that?”

Why You Will Like It : Danny Kaye.  Danny Kaye movies are always about showcasing the star.  There will always be music by Kaye’s wife, Sylvia Fine, who highlights her husband’s particular singing talents.  The best one here are “The Medicine Show” near the beginning of the movie that highlights both his singing and his elastic facial expression, and “Gypsy Drinking Song” which is a full on Kaye classic performance.  Add in the physical comedy and silly characters and it’s just good fun.

Never a great movie but fun for the whole family.

Released prior to the rating system but good for any age.

Rating – *** Worth A Look