Brevity and the Soul of Wit: Why Steven Spielberg’s “1941” Deserves Reconsideration
“I will not make this movie if it costs a penny over $12 million.” - Steven Spielberg
When will the world finally forgive Steven Spielberg for “1941?”
Revolving around the ensuing public panic in Los Angeles after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Spielberg’s underrated comedy has certainly taken its share of critical impieties for going on 40 years now.
But why? What is it about “1941” that so reviles its cynics? Certainly not its ensemble cast, boasting the likes of then mega-stars like the indomitable John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Then add film stars like Nancy Allen, Tim Matheson, Ned Beatty, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee, Treat Williams, Slim Pickens, Robert Stack, Warren Oates and John Candy to the mix. And yes, there’s even a cameo by legendary filmmaker Samuel Fuller (“The Naked Kiss,” “Shock Corridor,” “The Steel Helmet”).
None of the hate can possibly emanate from the film’s technical merits — the late William Fraker’s soft focus cinematography is literal eye candy. Visual effects maestro A.D. Flowers’ spectacular miniature effects gave John Dykstra’s motion-control camera system — the ILM Dykstraflex — created for “Star Wars” a run for its money. Art Director Dean Mitzner’s magnificent sets on the Universal and Columbia back lots transported the audience back to a time when Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” was unleashed and gas was only 12 cents a gallon.
And the music — on my, the music! John Williams' stellar score for “1941” remains the most imaginative and daring of his long, indelible career. It also remains my favorite-ever film score — my jaw still drops in awe when Williams' "Swing Swing Swing" kicks in during the big USO jitterbug dance contest, clearly a loving homage to Louis Prima and Benny Goodman.
Seriously, what is it about “1941” most people just don’t get? What is it they don’t appreciate? It’s wildly entertaining and funny as all hell. No other war film I can remember ever had a M3 Lee tank careening through a paint factory doused in hundreds of gallons of every color on the visible spectrum, only to then careen again through a conveniently-placed turpentine factory next door and emerge spotless. Come on, man … now that’s one funny sight gag!
Honestly, it could be this, it could be that. And most certainly everything in between. We can blame up-and-coming screenwriters Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (“Back to the Future,” “Used Cars,” “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”) for a less-than-sensitive approach to real life paranoia. We can also blame director Spielberg himself, at that time one of the hottest filmmakers in the world, for taking full advantage of lofty aspirations based on his monster successes with “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
“1941” is a film very much in-your-face. It’s loud, it’s excessive, it’s chaotic and viewers are too overwhelmed by shattering glass, mayhem and inside gags to notice everything they’re supposed to laugh at. And yet this disproportionate hatred of “1941” confuses me because this is certainly not the first time a film of this deranged, turbulent magnitude was made and to astounding box office receipts (Norman Jewison’s “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” and “Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” both come to mind).
I guess one could find offense in Spielberg inadvertently turning American patriotism into unsophisticated, unnerving Three Stooges-esque hijinks — Spielberg often describes “1941” as nothing more than a Tex Avery-inspired pie in the face of the Statue of Liberty. John Wayne himself famously turned down the role of Major General Joseph Stilwell, berating Spielberg for deciding to make such a “anti-American” film depicting patriotic Americans as complacent thugs intent on waging war against one another instead of on our Axis enemies.
Then more transgression could be found in Spielberg, Zemeckis and Gale closing the film on a Japanese victory on the Los Angeles coast — a greatly exaggerated variant of what really happened during the Bombardment of Elwood in February 1942 when a Japanese submarine did indeed launch a naval attack on coastal beach targets near Santa Barbara, California to very minimal damage.
Despite comedy obviously never being Spielberg’s forte as an artist, “1941” is a blatant, often hilarious tribute to vaudevillian slapstick in the vein of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and paying loving homage to the old Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1930s and 40s. That being said, the film also demonstrates Spielberg’s propensity at the time for being too easily influenced by Hollywood peers with a penchant for emulating over-the-top aberrants like John Landis (“Animal House,” “The Blues Brothers”) and “1941” producer John Milius (“The Wind and the Lion,” “Big Wednesday”). And because I love “1941” as much as I do and appreciate the inside gags more than any one person should, I give Spielberg a pass on this one for accepting such a challenge outside of his comfort zone to create something this ostensibly raucous.
One other popular “1941” misconception to finally put to rest — it was not in any way a box office bomb. “1941” made a profit and a fairly healthy one at that. “1941” banked $92.5 million globally in box office receipts off of its $35 million (over)budget. And this accounts for the age-old Hollywood adage that a film needs to recoup twice its budget just to break even. Surely not “Jaws” or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” numbers, but a solid profit, even for a film made legendary not for its narrative content, but for its extravagant budget and schedule overruns.
William Shakespeare once famously penned in “Hamlet” that “Brevity is the soul of wit,” which I borrowed for the title of this retrospective. I’ll defend “1941” to the end of my days. Yes, I can see some taking issue with its coarseness and cumbersome, heavy-handed humor. But I tend to overlook the film’s faults — and yes, I’ll admit there are many, including moderate, albeit conspicuous moments of racism and sexism reflective of the 1940s — to instead love it and its extraordinary energy and dazzle for what is really is. And that’s a truly funny cult classic that is undeserving of the critical and commercial antipathy it's suffered for far too long.
