Producers, The

Mel Brooks's directorial debut remains both a career high point and a classic show business farce. Hinging on a crafty plot premise, which in turn unleashes a joyously insane onstage spoof, "The Producers" is powered by a clutch of over-the-top performances, capped by the odd couple pairing of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, making his screen debut. Mostel is Max Bialystock, a gone-to-seed Broadway producer who spends his days wheedling checks from his "investors," elderly women for whom Bialystock is only too willing to provide company. When wide-eyed auditor Leo Bloom (Wilder) comes to check the books, he unwittingly inspires the wild-eyed Max to hatch a sure-fire plan: sell 25,000 percent of his next show, produce a deliberate flop, then abscond with the proceeds. Unfortunately for the producers (but fortunately for us), their candidate for failure is "Springtime for Hitler", a Brooksian conceit that envisions what Goebbels might have accomplished with a little help from Busby Berkeley.