Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

My Favorite Year Blu-ray Movie Review

Remembrance of Chaos Past

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 18, 2019

My Favorite Year is based on a colorful account that Mel Brooks told to screenwriters Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo about his time as a young comedy writer. Brooks got his start on Your Show of Shows, an NBC variety series that ran from 1950 through 1954 and starred comic legend Sid Caesar. The show's writers room incubated an entire generation of now-famous talent. Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Woody Allen and Neil Simon were among its alumni, and all of them have spoken of the insanity that reigned behind the scenes. But what else could anyone expect from the pressure of producing ninety minutes of original material every week for thirty-two live shows a season? (By way of comparison, Saturday Night Live does a mere twenty-one.) Adding to the pressure was the commanding presence of the show's star, whose mercurial—one could fairly say "volcanic"—temperament was as outsized as his considerable gifts.

Simon would eventually turn his experience into a successful Broadway play, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, which provided a showcase for Nathan Lane as the Caesar-like star. (Simon later rewrote the play into a cable TV movie, which currently appears to be unavailable in any form.) Reiner took a more oblique approach with The Dick Van Dyke Show, which focused on the life of a live comedy show's head writer both at home and in the office, with Reiner himself making guest appearances as the show's capricious and tyrannical host.

But it was Brooks's account of being assigned, as a junior writer, to babysit guest star (and unrepentant drunkard) Errol Flynn that inspired the script for My Favorite Year. The fact that there is no record of Flynn ever having appeared on Your Shows of Shows does not seem to have deterred Brooks from sticking to his tall tale, and the resulting film demonstrates that truth doesn’t really matter when a story is so gloriously funny. My Favorite Year netted a well-deserved Oscar nomination for star Peter O'Toole, who tore into the role of a faded matinee idol with gleeful gusto. The film also provided a graceful transition to directing for actor Richard Benjamin, who skillfully guided the ensemble surrounding O'Toole through the precision machinery of the Steinberg/Palumbo script.

Responding to innumerable fan requests, the Warner Archive Collection has added My Favorite Year to its roster in an immaculately remastered Blu-ray.

The year is 1954, and it's the favorite year of Benjy Stone (Mark-Linn Baker), who has landed a coveted job as the junior writer on the popular Comedy Cavalcade starring "King" Kaiser. (King in English = Kaiser in German = Caesar in Latin—you get the idea.) As played by Joseph Bologna, King is a bizarre blend of insecurity and megalomania, and he treats his staff with alternating abuse and abrupt acts of generosity. Everyone on the show is terrified of him, including Benjy's immediate boss, head writer Sy Benson (Bill Macy), who talks tough until King enters the room.

The rest of the writing staff is composed of Alice Miller (Anne De Salvo), who acts as translator for the fourth writer, Herb Lee (Basil Hoffman), who is so shy that he never speaks except to whisper in Alice's ear. Neil Simon has claimed to be the character's inspiration, but others have said the shy behavior was Woody Allen's. Whoever the model may have been, Herb's biting comments, which Alice repeats with relish, are a highlight of the writers room. The producer in charge of wrangling this band of misfits is Leo Silver, who is played with just the right touch of desperation by musical-comedy-writing legend Adolph Green (Singin' in the Rain, Bells Are Ringing, The Band Wagon and others too numerous to mention).

For the upcoming show, the producer has landed a big name in the person of Alan Swann (O'Toole), a box office star of yesteryear's silver screen, whose image was that of a fearless swashbuckler. Now Swann is mostly known for debts, prodigious drinking and compulsive womanizing. But Swann has been Benjy's hero since he was a boy, and he willingly undertakes the task of chaperoning his idol, little suspecting the crazed adventures that lie ahead. Benjy is aided in his efforts by Swann's indulgent limo driver, Alfie (Tony DiBenedetto), who loyally drops everything to chauffeur "Mr. Swann"—and quietly protect him from himself—whenever the star is in New York. (DiBenedetto's role is small, but his performance is a deadpan masterpiece.)

Like a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Benjy and Swann navigate the wilds of New York, braving self-created dangers and tilting at imaginary windmills, as Swann's mood and degree of inebriation take them. Their exploits include venturing into Brooklyn for dinner with Benjy's colorful family, where Swann's appearance creates a stir throughout the building. But being star-struck doesn't stop Benjy's mother, Belle (Lainie Kazan), from continuing to reproach her son for changing his name to "Stone" from "Steinberg". It doesn't appear to bother Belle that she herself no longer bears a Jewish name, having remarried after Benjy's father died to a Filipino bantamweight named Rookie Carroca (Ramon Sison), who serves a meatloaf for dinner that captures the very essence of the term "potluck".

The Comedy Calvacade has other challenges beyond Swann's shenanigans, and they're considerably more dangerous. King's routines regularly feature a character named "Boss Hijack", who is based on a local gangster name Karl Rojeck (Cameron Mitchell)—and the mobster doesn't think it's funny. Cameron Mitchell has only one scene in the movie, but he makes such an impression that his presence echoes through the rest of the story. Meeting with King in Leo's office, Rojeck demands that the sketches about him end, and King—who fancies himself as tough as any crime boss—refuses. From that point onward, sudden "accidents" occur on the set, leading to a violent confrontation on show night.

If My Favorite Year has a weak spot among its many subplots, it's Benjy's amorous pursuit of the producer's assistant, K.C. (Jessica Harper, taking a break from horror films). Benjy's efforts allow Swann the chance to offer sage advice, and they also provide the pretext for an absurd and perilous climb from a Manhattan rooftop to an apartment below, but the scenes between K.C. and Benjy are dead moments in an otherwise consistently energized film. Harper and Linn-Baker dutifully play their parts, but they lack any chemistry, and they're never credible as a romantic couple.

Director Richard Benjamin juggles the script's plethora of subplots with remarkable dexterity for a first-timer, and he and editor Richard Chew (an Oscar winner for the first Star Wars) expertly build to the film's finale, a collision of numerous competing storylines where comic landmines carefully laid throughout the film detonate with precision timing. (Anne De Salvo's line, "What the hell is happening?", perfectly sums up the situation.) But nothing can upstage Peter O'Toole's Swann, a creation every bit as memorable and complex as his Lawrence of Arabia. Only a star of O'Toole's stature could have made the character credible, and only an actor of his skill could have managed the rapid transition near the end of the film, when things briefly turn serious (I can't be more specific without spoilers). As memorable as Lawrence screaming "No prisoners!" is the sight of Swann in a drunken stupor being slowly dragged, one step at a time, up the stairs of his hotel suite, when he abruptly breaks into a rousing rendition of "The 1812 Overture". It's a moment of inexplicable hilarity that Monty Python would envy—and My Favorite Year is full of them.

My Favorite Year Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

My Favorite Year was shot by Gerald Hirschfeld (Young Frankenstein), who supplied a gently warm palette to complement the film's narrative structure as a memory play told by Benjy Stone. The film looked pretty good on DVD (at least, as I recall it), but its 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presentation is far superior. Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility has newly scanned an interpositive at 2K, followed by the Warner Archive Collection's customarily thorough cleanup to remove dirt, scratches and age-related damage. The result is a wonderfully film-like image with fine detail that showcases the film's (idealized) period production design. Clarity, densities and color saturation are superior throughout, and the blacks are truly black (men like Alan Swann wore tuxedos to elegant restaurants in those days, which means the deep blacks are critical). The reproduction is so faithful that, at the one-hour time mark, when Stone and Swann are on a Manhattan rooftop looking down, you may spot the matte lines around their heads where the nighttime sky has been added by optical superimposition. (See screenshot 18; the visibility of the outlines will vary, depending on one's display and calibration.) This is not "banding", as some viewers may wonder, but an artifact of the era's effects technology. WAC could have erased it digitally but, as usual, has chosen to preserve the film in its original form. Artifacts that might be attributed to the process of taking analog film into the digital realm are non-existent. WAC has mastered My Favorite Year at its usual high bitrate, here just under 35 Mbps.

(Note that WAC's Blu-ray departs from the now-familiar practice, at both Warner and other studios, of reformatting films framed at 1.85:1 to 1.78:1. WAC has retained the original aspect ratio, and tiny black bars appear at top and bottom, although they will be hidden by overscan on most displays.)

My Favorite Year Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

My Favorite Year was released in mono, which WAC has encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. As mono tracks go, this one is particularly good, with a skillfully mixed selection of effects and dialogue, of which the latter is always clear. The musical score ranging from nostalgic to mock-heroic was supplied by Ralph Burns (winner of Oscars for both Cabaret and All That Jazz), and the film opens with a sweetly reproduced rendition of "Stardust" sung by another "King", Nat "King" Cole.

My Favorite Year Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Richard Benjamin: Benjamin provides an informative account of how the film was developed and cast, and he is particularly entertaining on the pursuit of O'Toole to play the lead. He points out numerous small details (including the use of clips from Lord Jim to help create Alan Swann's "filmography"), and he also offers a fascinating account of an original ending that followed the one currently in the film. Based on test audience reactions, that ending was dropped. Unfortunately it was not preserved, but Benjamin's description is good enough that you can see it in your head.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:43): "I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!"

My Favorite Year Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even though the film boasts an Oscar-nominated lead performance by a cinema superstar, not enough people know the comic gem that is My Favorite Year. The movie remains a comedic masterwork that hasn't aged a day, and Warner's excellent Blu-ray should serve as a fine introduction to neophytes as well as a reward to fans who have been patiently waiting. Highly recommended.