The Inspector General (1949)

 The Inspector General (1949)

A curious thing happened soon after we watched Calzonzin Inspector (1974), I found the nice Warner Archive Collection DVD (warning: avoid all those PD eyesores! the sound is a bit fuzzy, with no subtitles, in the Archive version, but it's the best you are gonna get,) but I refused to immediately dive into it afraid that we’d be watching the same movie all over again.

I needn’t have worried.

While the Mexican adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector has a clear satiric and political bent, Danny Kaye’s version is a Danny Kaye vehicle and nothing else.

Other than pointing out that there was widespread corruption in township governments during the Napoleonic era there is no possible reflection whatsoever on then-contemporary events at the time of release.

Instead, we get the story of a mountebank gone straight who is confused for an incognito inspector general and whose illiteracy stops him from uncovering much, or even of doing anything remotely like an inspection.

Kaye spends his time selling snake oil; awaiting execution (and escaping death); attempting to eat (and failing) at a banquet held in his honor; accepting bribes; evading the advances of the mayor’s wife (Elsa Lanchester), entertaining at a party, etc. while performing signature bits like superfast patter songs, rhythmic facial tics, physical comedy etc.

With Walter Slezak, Gene Lockhart, Alan Hale, and Barbara Bates.