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series of preposterous sight gags, such as Pseudolus water-skiing on the
baseboard of his broken chariot, which is a send-up of the much more
deadly incident in the chariot race in Ben-Hur where Messala is thrown
from his chariot and dragged behind his team of horses. Finally, everyone
comes crashing together in a very un-epic way: “Even if Lew Wallace
would never believe that he set that into motion” (Solomon, 2001a, 287).
With the addition of these spoofing scenes, none of which was in the
original stage play, Lester and Simmons explicitly use the satiric power of
the comic cinema as a retrospective, and perhaps even subversive, commentary
on those earlier spectacular films.
Themes and Interpretations
In 1967, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was nominated
for and won one Oscar, for Best Adapted Score, and was nominated
for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical/Comedy. Besides
its tremendous achievement as sheer entertainment, A Funny Thing can be
said to be a product of the social and political environment of America in
the mid-1960s. The theme of Pseudolus’ desire for freedom, and the film’s
realistic depiction of the generally insensitive treatment of Roman slaves
at the hands of their aristocratic masters, evoke the ongoing struggles
of the civil rights movement during the decade of the 1960s. Critics have
suggested that director Lester was keen to expose the inequities among
social classes in ancient Rome by showing scenes in the film of the slaves
doing menial labor and being beaten and humiliated by their masters.
One critic notes the cinematic juxtaposition between the main comic narrative
and the tedious lives of the slaves: “Lester inserts shots of slaves
toiling away at their menial jobs as the main characters sing and dance”
(Malamud, 203). In so doing, Lester deliberately unsettles and even undermines
the conventionally uplifting message of the musical-comic film to
create a powerful statement about modern social and economic injustice
(Sinyard, 42).
It was an indisputable social reality in ancient Roman times that the
masters of the house maintained total control over their slaves, who by
law were completely subject to their owners’ authority in all matters, even
life and death. Yet it is also true that the Romans regularly manumitted
more slaves than any other slave-owning society in history; the frequent
and inevitable conquest of foreign lands by the invincible Roman army
172 A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (1966)