It’s an astap movie. We chatted like that, in the rooms of the Latin Quarter. Astap meant “to slap his thighs laughing”. “Hellzapoppin'” is a film within a film within a film: the actors come out of the frame, yell at the spectators, break the film, sing, interrupt each other, in short, it’s crazy humor. The two heroes, Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, had a show on Broadway, during which they won a live pig or chicken (immediately delivered to the room). The winning spectator ended up with a prize that shit on his knees. The room was dying of laughter.
Here, in the film, the two zozos put on a show, and everything goes wrong: the sets collapse, the young first sings in a corner, the stairs bend, the characters go straight to hell, the screenwriter is murdered and Olsen is looking for a sled named “Rosebud”. I love the scene where Johnson asks the projectionist to rewind, and where everything goes back: if only life were like that… Olsen, who died in 1963, had engraved on his tombstone: “ May you laugh all the days of your life. Amen, my brother.
Thursday April 27 at 9 p.m. on OCS Géants. H. C. Potter’s Burlesque Comedy (1941). With Martha Raye, Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson. 1h25. (Multicast and On Demand).
