The World's Greatest Lover (1977)

The 1977 film The World's Greatest Lover, a buried non-classic directed by Gene Wilder, with Carol Kane and Dom DeLuise, may be one of the most wretched successful films ever made (it was the top 25th grossing film that year). From a conventional standpoint, it's abysmal: it's a painfully raucous, screeching, cartoonish spoof of the silent film era, Rudolph Valentino, Hollywood, and romance; additionally it has a weird undercurrent of humor that at times strikes one as being somewhat homophobic. I don't think this was intentional, but perhaps it was; that was a different era, a different world. But, it will scarcely do a lot to disturb the viewer. The film is grotesque in its sledgehammer approach to humor; homophobia is just awful icing on an already rancid cake. Perhaps a wedding cake left to rot in the hot Hollywood breeze.

Dom DeLuise is a fat, bellicose, and very, very loud Hollywood producer, one surrounded by sniveling comedic yes-men. While getting a massage (or was it a shave?) from one of them, he implores them to tell him which studio has the most popular performer. Or was it specifically a picture? I suppose it is both.

The answer, of course, is Paramount because they have RUDOLPH VALENTINO. Thus starts the hair-brained, Mad Magazine-level "plot," which distributes an old-fashioned phonograph record with acting "lessons," to snag an undiscovered Valentino for DeLuise's struggling studio.

Gene Wilder plays Rudy Hickman, a ne'er-do-well baker who begins the film by getting caught, in what I take it was supposed to be inspired, old-fashioned "slapstick" à la Buster Keaton, on a conveyer belt. Cake icing and candy topping shoot out on his face while he swims against the conveyer's pull in fast-motion; this particular episode does NOT recall the best of Keaton or anyone else. It just begins the mild sense of dazed confusion the film evokes.

We find out that Rudy likes to stick his tongue out at rude customers, like the fat woman who asks which calorie-laden pastry is healthier. We discover this while two detectives are seemingly grilling him. This whole damn film is so mysterious it would take a detective to figure it out.

Hickman is married to the beautiful, adorable Anne (Carol Kane), his long-suffering wife. His emotional outbursts (the acting style is satirically over-the-top) would amount to psychological abuse by anyone's standards in this day and age. Still, we glimpse the Gene Wilder that helped make Young Frankenstein (1974) an outstanding achievement. Here, not so much.

Hickman plans to get his hands on one of the so-precious phonograph records and, of course, go to Hollywood to try and become the next RUDOLPH VALENTINO. Is any of this making any sense so far? No? Well, don't worry, virtually NOTHING in this moronic mess of a movie--not the so-called "plot," not the individual scenes, not the characters' motivations--makes any damn sense.

Rudy and Anne take a train to Hollywood, where a mix-up between Rudy's wife (who is wearing a blanket to keep warm) and a man with a mustache (same cloak) lead to the puzzlingly homophobic undercurrent, which is a running gag throughout the film.

Once in Hollywood, they rent a lavish hotel suite, and Rudy gives his name as "Rudy Valentine"; for some reason, everyone thinks he's Rudolph Valentino even though he looks not one thing like him.

Rudy gives Anne a sex-instruction booklet. The next day she leaves him, first turning on the tap, which somehow floods their suite's entire sunken living room. Some relatives or something visit, and they all go swimming in the living room.

Surreal, dream-like, absurd.

Rudy goes to the studio of Mr. Zits (Dom DeLuise) and does a screen test. He strangles a woman for some unknown reason. His character shouts a lot. Wilder utilized this explosive side of his otherwise mild comic persona to significant effect in Young Frankenstein. Here, it leaves the viewer asking, "Why is that idiot shouting?"

Anne gets tossed in jail after punching a pimp or something, who is inquiring about a line-up of ugly hookers, each with a varying price. Rudy goes to a church and prays (maybe for forgiveness for writing and directing this picture), and the REAL Valentino shows up (seen only from behind), and the viewer is still left to wonder: why? What the hell is going on here?

The homophobic subtext gets more pronounced. A director (who seems a stand-in for D.W. Griffith) suddenly tells a male assistant to "kiss me!" Rudy breaks into a weird falsetto and rubs and kisses a burly man's leg when, for some strange reason, his wife (for unknown reasons, she thinks the veiled Rudy is Valentino, a plot point that remains unexplained) tries to seduce him. In the end, Rudy, who attacks the same actress as before, suddenly breaks into the same high-pitched falsetto, "I don't like girls! No, not me!" All of this is offensive by modern standards, but it does show how mores have changed and how far we've progressed in that, now, this subtext would be met with anger and outrage, instead of what, at the time, must have been mild amusement.

At any rate, De Luise appears in a Grand Poobah hat, and Rudy wins the contest (I guess). He and Anne go home on another train; Anne is reading an old-fashioned silent movie era fan magazine with Rudy's face on it (he's one of three, but we are never really aware of why). The great secret of the film is that it's so gut-wrenchingly awful, so mind-bogglingly wretched, that, for some strange reason, it's both disgusting and enjoyable all at the same stroke, like some obscure cheese. It is over before you know it, and it runs over an hour-and-a-half.

One cannot stop adoring Carol Kane. Otherwise, only the visual appeal of the cinematography and costumes hold any interest. There are a few moments of surreal, dream-like inspiration: Rudy swimming in the sunken hotel suite living room. As well as the seemingly never-ending procession of men in identical suits that go walking by the train after Rudy has just shouted out how "unique" he is and is about to disembark. But these are a polished stone or two in a turd of a movie that is so deficient it makes Battlefield Earth look like Citizen Kane. It's almost as if Wilder cobbled this together from his notes after waking up from an intense fever-dream.

Though unsavory and nerve-grating as it is, it has something in it that is still strangely enjoyable. As a viewer, I can't deny that (perhaps it is only the appeal of watching a movie so unremittingly awful that few others in a similar category can compare).

However, much like the motivations of all the characters and any of the salient points of the "plot," I am still left to wonder: if it is "entertaining," why?

The World's Greatest Lover can be viewed in on YouTube in its entirety for free.