Henry Potter
Helzapoppin

'Helzapoppin' (1941)

Here is a film that has left a strong impression on the social fabric of an entire nation to such an extent that the title (absolutely "untranslatable") has become over the years synonymous with "madness, nonsense, and unpredictability" tout court.

The first film (1941) that with just 84 minutes will mark the debut of a true "new stand-alone cinematic genre" classified as "nonsense". A strange mishmash of comic gags assembled almost in random order and held together by a virtually improbable plot, a real pretext to blend together all the different performances in an almost plausible but not entirely context. Practically the story of a film to be made, which struggles to take off due to lack of funds, with the director trying in turn to convince the producer of the "successful outcome" of his entire work. Needless to say, the realization will be a disaster on all fronts, but the film will be an enormous success (and not just in fiction!).

Released in '41 in the wake of a great Broadway theatrical success, the film was perfectly in tune with that "strange climate" of euphoria that was being felt in America at that time (oblivious to the specter of World War II that was devastating Europe).
A film, as we were saying, built within another film to be made (Federico Fellini himself stated he was inspired by this film for his "Intervista"), set on a typically theatrical choreography and almost entirely shot inside a manor house that will inevitably be devastated. A film that still holds today the charm of "pleasant anarchic, transgressive and rogue folly” where anything is possible and where one cannot afford the luxury of losing the attention and imagination even for a moment.

Despite the many vicissitudes faced by the real producer, the film is a true catalog of gags, skits filled with jokes, and truly experimental effects for those years, and will be the reservoir and the "Bible" from which everyone, literally EVERYONE, the directors who follow in the same vein will draw: from Mel Brooks to the Marx Brothers, passing through John Landis and arriving at our own Neri Parenti and Vanzina (of much lower caliber and stature).
We remember among other scenes:
- when the film reel gets out of sync with the transmission, with the same characters quarreling in several superimposed frames,
- The devils sharpening their pitchforks sliding on the platforms,
- The delivery boy who, without warning and without logic, interrupts various scenes in the eternal search for "Miss Jones" to deliver a plant that keeps growing bigger,
- The continuous purely visual inventions with intertwined sequences one on top of the other, still unsurpassed today...

In short: a series of truly mad numbers, each more surreal than the last with a pressing rhythm and with a "creative freedom" rarely found in current modern filmography, always on the hunt for a "sense" and "logic" in the unfolding of the story which, willingly or unwillingly, must have always and in any case a plot.
And it is still funny today to see the director's name, which is almost identical to the acclaimed hero of contemporary fantastic cinema (so much so that some sites confuse both!).

It may well be irony of fate, but I like to think of this fact as yet another coup of a film so "brilliant in its absurdity" that continues to deliver its low blows even today, 66 years later, when you least expect it…
(Who knows if Joanne Kathleen Bowling, the author of the mythical wizard, had really thought about it!)

Absolutely MUST-SEE at least 2 or 3 times (among other things, it is coming out for the first time on DVD these days, woe to those who miss it!!)