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''The Producers'' is a 1968 American satirical comedy film written and directed by Mel Brooks. The film is set in the late 1960s and it tells the story of a theatrical producer and an accountant who want to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop. They take more money from investors than they can repay (the shares they have sold total more than 100% of any profits) and plan to abscond to Brazil as soon as the play closes, only to see the plan go awry when the show turns out to be a hit. The film stars Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock, the producer, and Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom, the accountant, and features Dick Shawn as L.S.D., the actor who ends up playing the lead in the musical within the movie, and Kenneth Mars as former Nazi soldier and playwright, Franz Liebkind. ''The Producers'' was the first film directed by Mel Brooks. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Decades later, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry and placed 11th on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list. The film was later remade successfully by Brooks as an acclaimed Broadway stage musical which itself was adapted as a film. ==Plot== Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) is a washed-up, aging, and also fraudulent and corruptible greedy Broadway producer who ekes out a living romancing lascivious wealthy elderly women in exchange for money for his next play. Accountant Leopold "Leo" Bloom (Gene Wilder) arrives at Max's office to do his books and discovers there is a $2,000 discrepancy in the accounts of Max's last play. Max persuades Leo to hide the relatively minor fraud, and, while shuffling numbers, Leo has a revelation: a producer could make a lot more money with a flop than a hit, by overselling the shares in the production as no one will audit the books of a play presumed to have lost money. Max immediately puts this scheme into action. They will over-sell shares on a massive scale, and produce a play that will close on opening night, thus avoiding a pay-out and leaving the duo free to flee to Rio de Janeiro with the profits. Leo is afraid such a criminal venture will fail and they will go to prison, but Max eventually convinces him that his drab existence is no better than prison. After reading many bad plays, the partners find the obvious choice for their scheme: ''Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden''. It is "a love letter to Hitler" written in total sincerity by deranged ex-Nazi Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars). Max and Leo persuade Liebkind to sign over the stage rights, telling him they want to show the world "the Hitler you loved, the Hitler you knew, the Hitler with a song in his heart." To guarantee that the show is a flop, they hire Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett), a director whose plays "close on the first day of rehearsal". The part of Hitler goes to a charismatic but only semi-coherent, flower power hippie named Lorenzo St. DuBois, a.k.a. L.S.D. (Dick Shawn), who can barely remember his own name and had mistakenly wandered into their theater during the casting call. After Max sells 25,000% of the play to his regular investors (dozens of lustful little old ladies), they are sure to be on their way to Rio. The result of all of this is a cheerfully upbeat and utterly tasteless musical play purporting to be about the happy home life of a brutal dictator. It opens with a lavish production of the title song, "Springtime For Hitler", which celebrates Nazi Germany crushing Europe ("Springtime for Hitler and Germany/Winter for Poland and France"). After seeing the audience's dumbfounded disbelief, Max and Leo, confident that the play will be a flop, go to a bar across the street to celebrate and get drunk. Unbeknownst to them, their attempt backfires as, after initial dumbfounded disbelief, the audience finds L.S.D.'s beatnik-like portrayal (and constant ad-libbing) to be hilarious and misinterpret the production as a satire. During intermission, some members of the audience come to the bar at which Max and Leo are drinking and rave about the play, much to Max and Leo's horror. The two decide to return to the theater after intermission to hear what the rest of the audience has to say, which echoes what the others already have said. Meanwhile, L.S.D.'s portrayal of Hitler enrages and humiliates Franz, who, after going behind the stage, untying the cable holding up the curtain and rushing out on stage, confronts the audience and rants about the treatment of his beloved play. However, someone behind the curtain manages to knock him out and remove him from the stage, and the audience assumes that Franz's rant was part of the act. ''Springtime For Hitler'' is declared a smash hit, which means, of course, the investors will be expecting a larger financial return than can be paid out. As the stunned partners turn on each other, a gun-wielding Franz confronts them, accusing them of breaking the "Siegfried Oath". After failing to shoot Max and Leo, Franz tries to shoot himself but has run out of bullets. Leo comforts Franz while Max tries to convince Franz to kill the actors, but Leo intervenes. After a reconciliation, the three band together and decide to blow up the theater to end the production but are injured, arrested, tried, and found "incredibly guilty" by the jury. Before sentencing, Leo makes an impassioned statement praising Max (while also referring to him as "the most selfish man I have ever met in my life"), and Max tells the judge that they have learned their lesson and will not do what they did again. In prison, Max, Leo, and Franz go back to producing a new play in prison called ''Prisoners of Love''. However, Leo continues the same old scam of overselling shares of the play to the other prisoners (20%-30%) and even to the warden (50%). The song "Prisoners of Love" plays while the credits roll. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Producers (1968 film)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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