A Brief Introduction

The Movie A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Forum) is an adaptation of the moderately successful Broadway production of the same name. Beloved by the audience for his attention stealing charm, Zero Mostel takes the title role of Pseudolus, the irreverent slave, desperate for freedom, in both versions. Forum is a playful, Roman romp that turns all toga film conventions on their heads, producing comic gold.

Music

Part of the charm and humor of the songs in Forum, is that there is no warning or build-up to the musical numbers. Nowadays, in musicals such at Mamma Mia, the producing is so seamless you’d think that Lady Gaga’s producer cut and spliced the recordings. In Forum, there is palpable dissidence between the recordings of the musical numbers and the talking lines. The humor of the songs in Forum is how out of place they are, like someone super-glued a recording of Zero Mostel singing in the shower onto the film. The disconnect between speech and music is humorous because it’s the opposite of what would be in a serious epic toga film.

In Spartacus(1960) Antoninus recites a song to a group of slaves in the dim twilight. The song is stark and impresses the crowd with because of it’s desperate longing (a feeling the slaves sympathize with).

When the blazing sun hangs low in the western sky,


when the wind dies away on the mountain,


when the song of the meadowlark turns still,


when the field locust clicks no more in the field, 


and the sea foam sleeps like a maiden at rest,


and twilight touches the shape of the wandering earth,


I turn home. 


Through blue shadows and purple woods 


I turn home. 


I turn to the place that I was born

to the mother who bore me and the father who taught me

long ago, long ago... 
long ago. 


Alone am l now, lost and alone, in a far, wide, wandering world. 


Yet still when the blazing sun hangs low,

when the wind dies away and the sea foam sleeps, 


and twilight touches the wandering earth


I turn home.

It is a very powerful scene and a good example of how a song would be used in a toga movie. Forum does not try to woo it’s audience with moving lyrics. This is an excerpt from the song ‘Everybody Ought to Have a Maid’:

Everybody ought to have a maid,

Someone who you hire when you're short of help

To offer you the sort of help

You never get from a spouse:

Fluttering up the stairway,

Shuttering up the windows,

Cluttering up the bedroom,

Buttering up the master,

Puttering all around the house!

Oh, oh, wouldn't she be delicious,

Tidying up the dishes,

Neat as a pin.

Oh, oh, wouldn't she be delightful,

Sweeping out, Sleeping in.

The context for this song is that Senex comes home to find a confused prostitute asking him to go to bed with her and he is told by Pseudolus that she’s just the new maid. The song if full of innuendoes, dirty little jokes and foolish dancing.

The song itself is funny, but it is also used as an excuse to watch three middle-aged men traipse across aqueducts, stack on each other’s shoulders and do other arbitrary things, all the while singing and dancing in unison. The song does nothing to move the plot forward, is awkwardly choreographed and certain moves of Mostel’s seem to be completely improvised. The unpolished quality of the musical numbers is what makes it a brilliant parody of toga movie music. Firstly, any singing or dancing in a toga movie is calculated and serious. Secondly, the soundtracks from toga movies are in general very grandiose, full of horns and crashing cymbals. The soundtracks tend to garner great accolades, such as Ben Hur(1959), which won Best Sound and Best Music in the 1960 Academy Awards. There is nothing grandiose about ‘Everybody Ought to Have a Maid’, aside from being grandiosely funny.


Full version of 'Everybody Ought to Have a Maid':

Love

Love, like toga movie songs, is turned upside down and made foolish, instead of painfully romantic. One of the most hilarious musical number in Forum is the love theme between Hero and Philia, which has very loving lyrics, but is made funny by Hero bumbling after Philia like a doofus, as she walks through a series of romantic settings. He swings from a tree grabbing for her as she unseeingly sings of sweetness. He then coos, begging her just to say his name, but she’s forgotten it. Finally they appear in a honey colored, wooded meadow and Hero manages to knock over a tree and behave like a wiggly little puppy.

This scene could act as thesis for what a good toga movie does. It takes traditional elements of toga movies—in this case it’s two lovers who have something keeping them apart—and makes fun of the convention by making the serious things silly.

As seen in Cleopatra(1963), Ben Hur(1925, 1959), Sign of the Cross and countless others, love is the stuff of fiery passion, eternity and a lot of drawn out sappy looks. Cleopatra for example, was essentially a four-hour analysis of power-hungry couple dynamics. When Anthony boards Cleopatra vessel in a Roman port, the scene is filled with sexual tension and plenty of vaginal symbolism as he cuts away the soft hanging surrounding her bed.

Forum doesn’t try to convincingly portray epic love. It makes fun of love and how ungainly and common it is. Before Hero meets his maiden, he attempts cartoon like stunts, such as strapping himself to a catapult, aimed at his ladies window.

Funny Quote:

“Receive, oh bosom, thy fatal blade” This is Hero’s exclamation, when he learns that Philia is sold to another man. His faithful blade misses by half a foot and merely snags his toga. This is parodying the desperate love and loss in toga movie. Think of Cleopatra voluntarily being bit by a poisonous snake at the end of Cleopatra.

Manly Men

Toga movies are a bit like fashion magazines: only the fittest, most attractive people are displayed. Middle-aged, pot-bellied men aren't welcome, unless they're a villain or used to show Roman hedonism.  Forum says 'goodbye' to sex appeal, and chooses to use it's budget not on gallons of body oil, but on talented comedic actors. Forum embraces sweaty brows and 'real' men. 

Jack Gilford from Forum

Richard Burton in Cleopatra(1963)

Michael Hordern from Forum

Charlton Heston in Ben Hur(1959)

Zero Mostel from Forum

Russell Crowe in Gladiator(2000)

Phil Silvers from Forum

Kirk Douglas in Spartacus(1960)

Gladiators

Long gone are the rippling, oiled bodies of Gladiator and Spartacus. Forum beckons in an age ripe with the smell of thick sweaty thighs and an indifference to conventional toga movie men. The arena in Forum is filled with gladiators training for their fifteen minutes of fame. The camera moves to a pair,  a more experienced gladiator showing a novice the tricks of the trade. A line of slaves moves as if on a conveyer belt, each to be stuck down by the novice. Sounds a bit morbid, but alas, the instructor’s bland indifference to the slaves as he discusses the novice’s technique is so absurd, one can’t help but laugh. The scene is made humorously ironic when the pretty, mute prostitute, that Pseudolus is running around with, throws a spear (a la Spartacus) with absolute precision, and pins a man shoe soul to the ground, rendering him immobile. This play on the famous arena scene in Spartacus further humanizes the gladiators in Forum, since a pretty girl—dressed like a lemony I Dream of Genie—is the best gladiator.

Gladiators are synonymous with toga movies. A fight to the death, in nothing but little skirts and (generally) inaccurate armor is what the collective American conscious has come to expect of toga movies. This is of course why Forum is still funny and relevant today. Although made in 1966, toga movie after Forum have not deviated from the common gladiatorial conventions described above. Intensity, sensual dress and handsome chiseled men are still the standard today as they were in the sixties. In my opinion, Forum’s depiction of gladiators is it’s very best use of parody. It shows us how we grossly exaggerated our depictions of gladiators are in cinema. More importantly, it makes this message funny. 

Roman Religion and Superstition

In Forum, religion is only casually mentioned and only as a joke. The characters give the impression of being comparable to ‘Christmas and Easter’ Christians. Those people who sneak into the back pew of church on Christmas Eve and Easter, but other wise spend their Sundays doing less pious activities.

In blossoming joy, Senex whispers, “A thousand thanks, whichever one of you did this,” thanking the Gods when he finds the confused slave Philia in his home, offering herself to him.

The irreverent behavior of all the characters is in stark contrast to Cleopatra who consults with her mystic fortune-teller. Also, in 300, King Leonidas takes great pains to consult with the oracle in the movie, although he does go against their advice.

A further example of poking fun at Roman religion and superstition is the scene between Pseudolus and Buster Keaton’s character, Erronius. Erronuis comes home to a house being used by Senex to bathe. Pseudolus and Hysterium do not want Erronius to know of all the scheming—and subsequent bathing—so they fool the nearly blind Errronius by telling him that the singing he hears—coming from Senex’ jolly bath—is really the howls of haunting. In the following scene, Pseudolus imitated a soothsayer, trying to convince Erronius.

The prescription of this haunting is seven laps around the hills of Rome. Erronius sets of to do this labor, and the audience laughs at how foolish the Romans were for believing in superstitious nonsense.  

Being 'Epic'

All the element I’ve mentioned, which contribute to making Forum a fantastic parody, more importantly combine to make Forum an anti-epic. The most noteworthy difference between epic toga movies such as Spartacus, Cleopatra, Ben Hur (1959) and Forum is that the epics embrace larger-than-life characters, doing larger than life acts. The names Cleopatra and Cesar are common, even if one has never seen Cleopatra. Pseudolus, on the other hand, is something like Rumpelstiltskin.

Pseudolus, the slave trying to buy his freedom, is a huge jump from typical toga movie lead. Aside from being a common person (a slave, at that!), he continually makes frivolous jokes and isn’t traditionally attractive man. 

Marcus Lycus discovers that he has been tricked by Pseudolus and the following conversation ensues:

“I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!”

“Who?”

“The lying-est, cheating-est, sloppiest slave in all Rome”

“Oh, Pseudolus”

It is rather strange to focus on such a normal person in a toga movie. Even more unusual is the series of close-ups on everyday happenings in the market place, at the beginning of the film. The opening shows a mans weathered neck, old meat covered in flies, people shopping, and a couple of guys painting a donkey to look like a zebra. The zebra-donkey, of course, is fabrication, but it shows another ‘anti-epic’ convention: silliness.

Prostitutes are displayed on a giant lazy-susan, a mare is wrapped in a towel while in the sauna and women in black, feathered lingerie do a synchronized interpretive dance at a funeral. The attention to every minute, physically impossible, historically inaccurate, utterly bizarre detail is what makes Forum stoutly ‘anti-epic’. In the genre, Forum is a much needed breath of fresh air.