The Twelve Chairs is based on a Russian novel of the same name by Ilya Arnoldovich Feinsilberg and Yevgeniy Petrovich Katayev. There have been at least 18 film adaptations of the novel, but I’ve only seen this one. Since this is a Mel Brooks film, you know it’s going to be a farce from the get go.
The main character, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, is a “has been” aristocrat who is now working as the village bureaucrat. He is summoned to the death bed of his mother-in-law who tells him she sewed the family jewels into one of the 12 dining room chairs they used to own. He sets out with a younger drifter in search of the chairs so they can find the jewels and split the money.
They go all over Soviet Russia looking for them. They tear each one apart looking for the jewels, but never find them. At the end of the story, they happen upon a new club built for the railway workers being dedicated by the state. They find the very last chair and plot to sneak in that night to get the jewels. As with the others, the don’t find them, but they do find out that the jewels had been found and that’s what funded the new building.
This version was made in 1970. One of the main stars was Frank Langella. He was quite the looker way back then. Dom DeLuise plays the part of a corrupt priest who follows the main characters trying to get to the jewels first. I watched this one while ripping a DVD set for a TV show I love and want to be able to watch over and over again. It was a good way to spend an hour and a half. I enjoyed it much more because it was a Mel Brook movie that I’d never seen before. Gotta love his comic genius.
