Danny Kaye – Yesterday's Movies

*The Court Jester. Paramount Pictures 1956.*

Before watching the movie:

I may have encountered this in some dusty streaming back catalogs or cheap collection of classic movies, but it didn’t appeal much to me on the face of it. Much more recently, I learned that it’s the source of the tongue-twister scene I think I saw in an AFI special about “the pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle”, which I always wanted to find. The climactic swordfight is also highly praised by fight choreographers, I believe coming behind few other than the famous Princess Bride duel.

I’ve seen a few other Danny Kaye movies, but I only just now realized I might have been confusing him with Dennis Day occasionally. Kaye seems to be someone who used to be much more appreciated, but has been forgotten since the New Hollywood revolution.

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The Inspector General. Warner Bros. 1949.

Before watching the movie:

I was only familiar with this story previously through a Wishbone adaptation of the play. What I recall of it is rather different from the summary I’ve seen of this movie, though on the one hand this is credited as “suggested by” the play, admitting they’ve walked rather far away from it, while Wishbone could well have bowdlerized the bungled assassination attempts mentioned as being in this movie. Having quickly scanned a summary of the play, I’m inclined to think it’s more the former than the latter.

It’s a rather surprising notion to do a story about corruption in the Imperial Russian government as a cheery-looking musical starring Danny Kaye, no matter how farcical the plot may be.The songs should either be quite something or a lot of nothing.

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