History of the World: Part I

"Ten million years in the making. The truth, the whole truth, and everything, but the truth!"

"A little something to offend everyone..."

"IN MEL WE TRVST"

"Mel Brook's History of the World - Part I shows its stripes right from the opening scene. In this Dawn of Man episode, apelike creatures rise up from the mud, learning to stand erect and reaching nobly toward the heavens. Then they begin bumping, grinding, rutting, gyrating and otherwise slipping back to the slime from whence they came. The movie, like these primitives, delights in being lowdown. Even by prehistoric standards, Mr. Brooks's latest comedy is especially crude... There are loads of familiarly funny gags in the film... But the movie is so sour that its humor is often undermined, because so many of the jokes are either mean-spirited or scatological, or both. Women are either explicitly predatory or stupidly decorative, and homosexuals are made fun of regularly. Bathroom jokes are everywhere. Flamboyantly bad taste, which Mr. Brooks raised to the level of supreme wit in his Springtime for Hitler number in The Producers, is this time just bad. A musical number about the Spanish Inquisition, with Mr. Brooks playing a torturer who merrily abuses Jews, is about as crashingly unfunny as a musical number can be...In Rome, we... watch a gladiator on an unemployment line, being asked... Did you kill last week? Did you try to kill last week?... As a waiter at the Last Supper, Mr. Brooks is seen asking the apostles whether they'd like separate checks. As Moses, addressed by the Lord, he mutters: Yes, I hear you, I hear you. A deaf man could hear you!"

"Brooks casts his comedic eye at humanity's past and... seems to view our story as one of big guys keeping little guys down. To quote the film's most famous line: "It's good to be the king." ...King Louis XVI (Brooks) goes clay pigeon shooting with peasants, where a man is thrown in prison for saying the lower classes "ain't so bad" and where the Roman Senate angrily shouts "F**k the poor!" Brooks doesn't merely lampoon economic injustices. Sexism, racism, anti-Semitism and human cruelty in general are all satirized... If there is a running theme in Brooks' view of major historical events..., it is that people with money and power have great lives. For people without those things — or who belong to marginalized groups in general — life stinks. ..the genius of "History of the World" is that it manages to subtly convey Brooks' social critiques in the packaging of a zany Borscht Belt comedy. If climate change and pollution destroy the human race, and an alien civilization was to find just one work of art to understand the human condition, I can't think of anything better than "History of the World." This is not being said in jest. "History of the World" captures one of the greatest joys of human existence — the ability to laugh — even as it recounts some of the most important events in our collective story. Perhaps most significantly, it chronicles the stupidity and selfishness that will have led to our downfall."

"Orson Welles - Narrator"

"Mel Brooks - Moses, Comicus, Tomas de Torquemada, Louis XVI of France and Jacques le Garçon de Pisse"

"Dom DeLuise - Emperor Nero"

"Madeline Kahn - Empress Nympho"

"Harvey Korman - Count de Monet"

"Cloris Leachman - Madame Defarge"

"Ron Carey - Swiftus Lazarus"

"Gregory Hines - Flavius Josephus"

"Pamela Stephenson - Mademoiselle Rimbaud"

"Spike Milligan - Monsieur Rimbaud"

"Andreas Voutsinas - Béarnaise"

"Shecky Greene - Marcus Vindictus"

"Sid Caesar - Chief Caveman"

"Bea Arthur - Dole office clerk"

"Mary-Margaret Humes - Miriam"

"Paul Mazursky - Roman officer"

"Hugh Hefner - Roman outside Temple of Eros"

"Barry Levinson - Column Salesman"

"Charlie Callas - Soothsayer"

"John Hurt - Jesus Christ"

"Andrew Sachs - Gerard"