Film Friday: Silver Streak (1976)

Silver Streak is one of my favorite comedies. This film is funny, clever, thoroughly enjoyable, and timeless. And it’s the timelessness I want to talk about, because this film again shows us how to do a comedy that lasts: tell a compelling story first, add the jokes later.

** spoiler alert **

The Plot

Silver Streak is the first collaboration between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, who would go on to make three more film together. It’s the story of George Caldwell (Wilder), a man who edits books for a living and his attempt to take a train from Los Angeles to Chicago for his sister’s wedding. As the story begins, Wilder meets a man named Bob Sweet (Ned Beatty), who claims to be a vitamin salesman, and he ends up romancing a woman named Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh). Hilly is the personal secretary of a Professor Schreiner, an art historian who has just written a book on Rembrandt.

When George takes Hilly back to her compartment, George sees the professor’s body dangling from the train outside the window. This starts a chain of events which gets George thrown off the train by the men who killed the professor. George then works his way back onto the train, with the help of an old woman with a biplane. Once onboard, he discovers that the professor was killed by a man named Roger Devereau (Patrick McGoohan), an art dealer who would be embarrassed by the professor’s latest book. Then he gets thrown off a second time.

George seeks the help of the police, only to learn that he is now suspected of murdering Sweet, who was actually a federal agent. He flees the police and boards the train again with the help of Grover Muldoone (Richard Pryor), a small-time thief, after they steal a Jaguar and catch the train in Kansas City. Once onboard, he discovers that Devereau is holding Hilly hostage. Once again, he ends up being tossed off the train. This time he and Grover are found by the feds, who are after Devereau, which leads to a rather well-done final conflict.

Why This Film Works

Silver Streak is an interesting movie because it’s a great comedy, but it’s not hilarious. It has lots of lines which will make you laugh out loud and quite a few inspired situations, but ultimately, the vast majority of this film is quite serious. Indeed, the plot itself is serious – there is a murder to prevent a multi-million dollar mistake from being exposed. The villain is quite serious – Devereau never tells a joke or even becomes the subject of a joke. He is quite nasty and could easily be the villain in any serious action/suspense film. Hilly too is played seriously. The feds don’t joke around either. Beyond this, all the jokes tend to be one-off lines delivered by minor characters, like the porter, whose hilarious line consists entirely of “damn hippies.”

Even Wilder’s character is played seriously except for a couple moments which count more as tension breaking than humor. For example, Wilder has a great line about “having met some dumb bastards in my time” but this is in response to difficulties he is having with a brainless sheriff. Really, the only “funny” scene involving Wilder is when Wilder tries to sneak past the police onto the train in blackface with Grover’s help.

The only exception to the above involves the moron sheriff and the old woman with the biplane, both of whom are played as ridiculous characters. But honestly, those scenes fall flat and just aren’t very funny. . . they detract from the film.

The lesson here is the same as with Ghostbusters, that a film can be hilarious without being a series of comedy sketches and without setting up a series of jokes. In fact, when I look back on most of the great comedies, the thing they all have in common is a solid, serious story which acts as a backbone upon which the jokes are added – the jokes then arise from the natural actions of the characters as they move through the story. Now clearly, there are exceptions, but how many of those are there? Airplane and its cousin The Naked Gun, Blazing Saddles, the Marx Brothers and the Stooges, but what else? Compare that to dozens of the comedies which dominate the AFI’s Top 100 comedies, including The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, etc. Most of these films are surprisingly serious, even though we remember them as hilarious.

This is also why these films have staying power, because you can keep watching them long after the jokes have gone stale because you’re watching them for the characters, for their relationships, and for the plot itself, and not the jokes. Indeed, what this suggests is that if you want to write a comedy with staying power, write a serious film first and then add the humor where it fits rather than setting out to write an intentionally funny film.

Thoughts?