DON'T MENTION THE WAR!!! Americans React To "Fawlty Towers - S1E6 - The Germans"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- #fawltytowers #johncleese #americanreacts
Original Video: • Don't Mention the War ...
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The setup of “you started it” leading to “Yes you did; you invaded Poland!” is a masterful joke.
One of the best jokes ever in a series!
@@soreneriksson3210 'Don't mention the war. I did once but i think I got away with it alright' Is to this day one of THE funniest lines of all Television.
Yes. People still say it.
My favorite line of the series.
They invaded poland due to the bromberg massacres!
The sight of John Cleese goose-stepping and placing his finger under his nose,
PRICELESS!
After this episode aired, so many of us were going around saying "Don't mention the war" that it sort of entered the annals of Britishness. Not to mention the marching. And thanks for getting it up on TH-cam by the way!
And it's worth pointing out that by after this episode aired, you don't mean immediately after. It's ever since. Still happens.
@@shanustheanus So true.
The march was stolen a bit from Monty Pythons "Silly Walk" skit.
Dont mention zee war
Here in Australia, "don't mention the war" and "I did once but I think I got away with it" are frequently used.
Still love Ballard Berkley as the Major. He is brilliant at playing old buffers.
I remember Cleese talking about his time in the catastrophically run hotel that inspired this series.
After having spent an astonishingly bad couple of days in the hotel, Cleese left, only to realize he'd left a suitcase behind. He returned and asked the owner if he knew where it was.
"We put it outside, it's at the far end of the swimming pool."
"Why on earth did you put it there?" a bemused Cleese asked.
"We thought it might be a bomb," came the reply.
"Why in God's name did you think it might be a bomb?"
"Well... we've been having a lot of trouble with the staff lately."
The late Queen Mother (Who was Queen during WWII) loved this episode. In the 1980s, she was being escorted by Colin Burgess, her equerry, into a small and very formal gathering in Buckingham Palace where the new German Ambassador was being introduced. As she and the equerry were about to enter the room, and trying to make the man 'corpse', she whispered: "Colin, don't mention the war".
She and her daughter had great senses of humour. It's even funnier as her husband's family are German. They loved yes minister and yes Prime minister too.
@@Jinty92 Prince Phillip was Greek
@andrewupshall9425 He was a member of the Greek Royal family, yes... but they are actually German (ethnically speaking). Yeah, I know it's confusing. I didn't know that myself until I saw an interview with Prince Philip where he actually explained the situation.
😂😂😂
Is that the Queen mother who was pictured giving a nazi salute on Buckingham Palace lawn in th1930s 😂
The first time I saw this was as a teenager on a school exchange from Scotland to Germany. Staying with a German family. I was happily shocked to find out how beloved it is in Germany or was then 30 years ago!!!
Manuel (Andrew Sachs) actually got real burns on set because of this episode but soldiered through the scene like a legend. What a guy
Perhaps his yelp of pain when clutching Basil's legs was more real than acted.
He got a fair bit of compensation from the BBC though.
He really was such a brilliant actor. Not just in this role, but on stage also.
That's right. Two chemicals were added to create the illusion of him smoking, but unfortunately these leaked right through his costume during filming and he suffered second degree burns on his arms and back.
Not to forget the irony of him being german.
Everyone remembers "Don't mention the war", but IMO Manuel and the Major with the moose's head and the fire drill are two of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Yes! Especially when he asks if the moose is Japanese.
@@bwc1976 around my family, "I speaka da English - I learn it from a booook" has become a long-running in-joke
This was aired in Germany and they thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen.
Remember , In Britain The war Started in 39
Only Manuel could set fire to the hotel in the middle of an already chaotic fire drill! He's up there with Father Dougal and Baldrick!
People always say the Germans is their favourite citing the funny walk etc, but the first half of this episode us a masterclass in situation comedy and is twice as funny as the second half involving the 'germans'. The semi tone difference segment is genius.
"Perhaps they're upstairs..??" 😂😂
The conversation about cricketers & women between Basil & the Major is hilarious!
The whole Fire Alarm skit for me, is one of the best in the FT anals. has a perfect flow to it.
When the phone rings and he screams into it, literally hopping mad, that is the funniest bit for me.
@@philjones45 just watched it, and sadly no lol. But it happens during the drill, when hes getting angry that they dont know the difference between the alarms. Hes in the middle of arguing with them with the alarms ringing in the background, and when the phone rings, which sounds like another alarm, he picks up the phone in a rage, screams something incoherent into it while hopping mad, then hangs up. It was probably Sybil ringing again, and she got an earful
I've watched this episode like 50 times and I still laugh out loud. So happy to see you guys enjoying Fawlty Towers.
Just in case nobody has mentioned it, the episodes were written by John Cleese and Connie Booth….who plays Polly….and she was his wife at the time…..because I’m not sure anyone has mentioned it yet
The Germans scene is a classic but the Fire Alarm in this episode is absolute comedy genius.
The large blonde "What's happening now?" lady is Claire Davenport, who would later be the larger of the two dancing girls in Jabba the Hutt's palace.
Thank you, it will never not be funny watching Americans react to that episode, the comedy in it is so good it crosses all cultural divides, without losing the huge impact it had on Britain at the time, I think you hit on it when you noticed that this was only 30 years after the war ended, 2 years after we had joined the European Community (became the EU) and that very year we had a national referendum on whether or not to stay a member, for many people it still felt like defeat from victory... but reconciliation was the name of the game, and comedy a great way to get there. (btw, the Major's scene is part of that process too, the comedy is about the words and people who use them, and even back then how shocking it was to hear them uttered on tv, believe me, they're there because they were not used, not because they were.) Remember, half of Britain watched this together, and everyone talked about it afterwards, that's how 'don't mention the war' came into the language, chiefly in playgrounds all over the country at morning break the next day! It's still used for any embarrassing slip-up situation, it's perfectly adaptable. I remember being allowed to stay up to watch this. You had to talk about it next day to get the whole script because every house in the country must have lost bits to howls of laughter and there were no videos, we had to wait for repeats, which were random and infrequent. I think that's the moment John Cleese reached godlike status...
I love Brits, but I wish the famous ones like Clease and H&M would move back “home.” You’re causing the rents to be raised higher and higher in my hometown and locals can’t afford to live here!!!😢😢😢
Interesting fact about the spiel with the Major there. Apparently during the George Floyd protests the episode was temporarily taken out of circulation due to that joke, until people, including John Cleese himself, pointed out that the Major having a racist and outdated attitude was the point of the joke, you're supposed to be laughing at him not with him.
Agree, I can't understand how people keep missing that. For me the scene is about two clueless men (for different reasons) that are trying to understand women and have a normal conversation.
I'm heartily sick of the pearl-clutching generation who seem to believe that all racism on earth will evaporate if they stick their fingers in their ears. I watched a film recently that had a trigger warning because it contained "language" and "smoking".
@@jamesrowe3606 Seems every film on tv has a trigger warning. In this instance people really don't have the intelligence to grasp the humour and are just looking to find an excuse to point fingers without seeing the irony
Yes heaven forbid tens of thousands of basketball-Americans have their weekend of looting, raping & pillaging interrupted by some 1970's UK sitcom dropping the N-bomb!
All hail St George, patron saint of Fentanyl!
The major was correct with the terms. The amusing thing for me is, the golly### came from India and nothing to do with black ppl, just the doll on the label triggered the weak.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a German dubbed version of this episode, it shows they too can appreciate the true humour of the old and outdated British attitudes towards the war. Yes Basil was concussed and that allowed the more bizarre behaviour towards everyone around him , the Germans were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, we were all laughing at Basil and his ranting, nothing else. As the German said at the end "How on earth did they win?" Epic comedy at it's best IMHO.
Outdated attitudes, but sadly not old - believe it or not, you can *still* find Brits who think that way about Germany, if you know where to look. Heck, some enterprising sociopath was busy selling plastic WWII-style German helmets with the England flag painted on them for football fans to wear to taunt the Germans not so very long ago...
Outdated attitudes to the war?!!! What do you mean? Showing pride that we won? Is that the 'outdated attidtude'? Tells all that the end remark of the German in the episode is perfectly acceptable to you.
Time has proven that the war was a complete waste of time and life. Those poor young men, slaughtered and dying in foreign fields and for what? A country that is not free, has no free speech, rejects Christianity but embraces every other religion and champions sexual deviance and paedophilia.
Fire drill was also a classic scene of this episode , the chaotic and confused explanation of the different bell sounds questioned by the guests, the missing alarm key , the lack of cover for Polly's area when she was off duty, the faulty fire extinguisher , it was an health and safety nightmare 🤣🤣 watched this first time around in mid seventies , my kids loved on the cable channel repeats, this was all based on an actual Torquay hotel manager visited by the monty python team , the team left the hotel 2 days early because of his rudeness, John cleese stayed on out of fasination and basil faulty was born in John's writing of this new sit com
I've never forgotten the line when he looks up at the Nursing Sister "My God you're Ugly" I laughed out loud for 10 minutes straight gulping so much air I could hardly breath.
This is arguably the best one. The phrase 'don't mention the war' has been added to our Dutch dictionary, because we use it so much as a saying these days. 😂😂
"Listen, don't mention the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right."
John Cleese is a master of physical humor; the sight of that tall, lanky frame goose-stepping ludicrously across the stage and that impeccable, complex 180-degree turn may be the funniest scene in the series.
Happy it made it to TH-cam 😂😂well done fellas, great reaction ❤️
Awesome Tv- Show and Work Guys, Thanks 👍👍👍 Greetings from Helsinki, Finland 🇫🇮🇺🇸🇫🇮🇺🇸🇫🇮🇺🇸
A lot of shows have iconic moments. But 2 back to back iconic moments in one scene is rare.
"Yes you did, you invaded Poland!"
&
"I'll do the funny walk."
😂😂😂
The episodes weren't live. Like most sitcoms of the time, Fawlty Towers was recorded on video tape in a multi-camera studio set-up. Any location scenes would have been pre-filmed on 16mm. On the day of recording, the day would be spent planning the camera moves (the cast would have spent the week rehearsing in BBC rehearsal rooms). The actual recording would take place over a couple of hours in the evening with a live audience. There would have been breaks in recording for costume changes, to play in the telecine inserts or to do another take if necessary. A warm-up man would entertain the audience before recording started and during any breaks.
I can’t believe the spin from the walk was cut, that’s my favourite bit!
If anyone ever mentions not starting anything, my reply is always ‘yes you did, you invaded Poland’
Ha, I will do that spin albeit slightly toned down when I leave home and realise I've forgotten something.
John Cleese has pointed out that the Major character has outdated views for the time. The younger characters dont call him out because it's a commentary on how we don't tend to call out our elders if they are inappropriate, we just roll our eyes and make excuses for them like "well, he's x years old.."
This is why the younger characters don't laugh with or agree with Major, as he is the butt of joke, but also they don't call him out on the things he says.
Yes I remember my elderly relatives being racist and just rolling my eyes at them!
And of course Brazil would never offend a long staying guest by calling them out
@@vickywitton1008 I don't think they were racist, they just used outdated terminology 🤷♀
Definitely the best episode of Fawlty Towers and without doubt one of the greatest episodes of all time in comedy.
The greatest ever example of comedy Timing!
It's amazing how many laughs could be got into one 30-minute episode.
Your 2 faces when the word bomb dropped was hilarious 😂 😃
I went to an audience with John a few months ago and he talked about the reboot a bit and I cannot wait to see it!
John is still as sharp and witty as he always was. Love him, the greatest comedy legend of all time in my book
You must be the only one. If it goes ahead, it’s going to be truly awful. As John Cleese is nowadays.
@@andrewmay1299 Snowflake alert.
@@andrewmay1299why do you think that HE is truly awful these days? What has he done in order for you to make this conclusion?
This is a genuine question, and the opinion of ‘oh, it’ll be awful’ is a mystery to John himself also.
@@andrewmay1299How? Because he's honest?
Love the copryight in the middle of the screen 😂 were you rearranging the letters like the hotel sign?
When this was on the telly and was a kid about 5 or 6 years old - the war part is funny, but the fire drill and poor Manuel lighting himself on fire 'is fire , is fire' etc - had us rolling on the floor with laughter. Classic episode.
So glad you did this one! The Major thinking the moose head was talking to him (and asking Basil if it was Japanese) has to be the single funniest thing I've ever seen on TV. Also I saw the Young Ones package behind you, so I'm looking forward to seeing you do that as well.
Watching you let your guard down thinking this wont make it to youtube was one my my highlights of this one!! Have a drink on me!
Love when basil looses it in this episode during him explaining different bells 😂
Humans are ridiculous. Shows that point that out are needed, now more than ever I think. Because everyone can preach from above about our faults, but only if we see ourselves or parts of us acting like imbeciles will we begin to understand what needs to change. ;) I am German, loved this episode from the moment I saw it many, many, many years ago. My fav episodes are still to come in season 2 though, have a nice ride guys!!!
The goose step walk came from The Ministry Of Silly Walks sketch in Monty Python.
i'm giving you both 2 thumbs for not actually wetting yourselfs
How do we know they didn’t??
Watching it on TH-cam before the censors remove it. Enjoy the beer lads!
To answer your question (which you've probably already seen, but anyway) it was written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, who plays Polly. Her calm attempts to cover for, or otherwise help out Basil, or keep Manuel out of trouble, is so endearing. I love this show.
I love how Polly tries to distract Basil by getting him to do Jimmy Cagney instead ("Please try!"), but then when she sees he's going to do it anyway she just slinks off to the kitchen and leaves him to deal with the repercussions!
The point of the old man saying all the racist things is that it's old fashioned and out dated. Even though for the audience at the time in the UK, I'm sure some still felt the same way...but this scene made a mockery of it. The silly old fart is confused and contradicting himself. I view this scene as I think it was meant to be interpreted...that the old ways and racist thoughts are now exactly that. Passed over, even by Fawlty character, as the ramblings of someone completely out of touch. I'm not saying that it still doesn't shock me though!
Brilliant episode. You gotta remember lads, attitudes were different in the 70's. By the way, just watched this on TH-cam!
the fire drill part is my favorite over the more famous one. That is John Cleese at his very best.
Also people understood sarcasm and satire back then.
we still do its the visitors that dont, the UK is known for it.
Good luck with this lads!!
Love how you said it's the funniest one yet way before you were up to the funniest and most famous part!
A lot of Johns' writing was cathartic for him, as he was and probably still is a big believer in therapy, so the idea of writing a character who was neurotic, uptight etc was probably a great way to get out through his art, that type of neurosis. It has also been stated that he and Connie swapped character writing, i.e., he wrote for Polly while she wrote some of Basil's lines. To get more of an understanding of him and his writing, it would be worth exploring his early stuff on Monty Python and you can also find on TH-cam, his early incarnation for Basil and FT when he was a writer for Doctor at Large, episode "No ill feeling", where it is obvious that it was a sort of pilot for FT. A very good episode too.
Hi guys glad you put it on TH-cam . Bloody good episode. Thanks again.
I went on holiday to Spain when this was popular, where, in their translation, Manuel was Italian!!
The lesson to be taken away from this is own *physical* media.
Classic episode, well they all are really but this is right up there amongst the 12 episodes made. Glad you've had a chance to see it and appreciate it.
That’s 2 Egg Mayonnaise, prawn goebbels, a Herman Goering and 2 Cold Blitz Salads 😂 never fails to make me laugh😂😂.
It's Colditz salads. As in the castle that was used to hold allied POWs.
@@adamgillian9873 yeah I know I get that thing where you type a word in it changes didn’t realise it haha Meant to say colditz haha.
Great British comedy, a classic i grew up with in the UK 🇬🇧
The first thing I noticed was the mention of "bed jackets" so old world my Mum had patterns for them!
hahaha this is one of my favourite shows, seen them all more times than I can count! Love watching your reactions to this classic!! Love from the UK 🥰
John Lennon quotes a line from this episode in one of his last interviews. I guess someone got the tapes of series 1 to him in New York. He described it as a "masterpiece" and made him wished he'd done comedy instead of music.
I never saw the first series back in the day as I'd have only been 3 at the time (but have seen them when they were repeated), although I saw the 2nd series which aired just over three years later in early 1979 when I was 6, so the 2nd series still holds a special place in my heart. Also the 2nd series has far better sign variations in the opening titles - especially the 5th episode which I'm surprised made it to air as it has a slightly less rude version of the word 'cunt' on it. Then again, it was still the 1970s.
Outrageous and Awesome! ..sshhhh.. don't mention it made it onto YT! 🤭😉 ... keep going, guys! 🤣
🤫🤫🤫🤐🤐🤐
Just don’t mention the war …..😂
So glad you got the uncensored version.
These few episodes are superb, and quintessential classic English humour 😂
"... Oh,this is never going to make I on to TH-cam..."
I watched this with friends from Germany back in the 1980s. My German friends were wetting their pants. Particularly with Basil's goose stepping.
Enjoying watching this uncut on you tube 😂
Our local theatre group did this on stage and I was stage manager. It was a fantastic experience and very much enjoyed by cast and audience
In a similar vein, please check out ‘Allo ‘Allo! Another classic British sitcom. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s been shown in the USA.
I love Allo Allo, it's got to be the most underappreciated british sitcom
'Allo 'Allo! definitely gets a thumbs up from me, I am unsure if they have given Dad's Army a go either.
Madonna with the big boobies
God, when Gruber enters the cafe for the first time and Renee mistakes him for a spy who is ‘master of disguise’. Best bit. ‘Are you one of them?’ Cracks me up every time
They made 12 of these and then walked away: perfection
The Major is my favourite character in the whole series.
They only made 12 episodes in total. There is now a west End play that’s recently opened in London
Aired in 1975! Most of the actors ( including most of the actors playing the Germans ) had actually lived through WW2, this was cutting edge comedy. Can anyone, today, even imagine a comedy skit (apart from in cartoon form) being aired by the people who suffered and survived. I was born in 1959 so I knew nothing, my dad on the other hand almost pissed himself at this episode.
He said "the Huns and us are family" so now and again , we argue.
Weren't the Huns from WW!?
People of a certain age still refer to bad hotels as 'Fawlty Towers'
I’m from UK & grew up with fawlty tower’s humour & your slightly missing the point with the Major because you see he is suffering from senile dementia which is why he is always all over the place 😂 NOW DO you get it?🤣🤣🤣
We had the series on VHS tape. I watched it so many times on repeat and I was only 8 years old and very much shaped my sense of humour. Now I am about Basil's age in real life, I also kind of get him more at this age than when young. One of my fav comedies :)
Well done for finding this episode!
It was produced mid 70s and was therefore about 30 years after the war finished! Oops sorry I mentioned the war!
Some internal DVD drives allow you to change the region a set number of times. Changing to our region will allow you to watch them on your computer.
You would love Allo Allo.
The scenes with the Moose has me rolling every time.
Out of all the amazing episodes of this show, this one and the first of the 2nd season are probably my favourites.
You started it.
No I didn't.
Yes you did you invaded Poland.
Comedy like it used to be ❤
the fact that you counted "k k k k k k k k k k k... 55-65-75.. thirty years!" just blew my mind
A German tourist in London recently said to me ''Don't mention the War'', also one of many great lines of the series ''I don't know why I bother, we should let you all burn.''
Here in the UK we used to refer to our DVD's as PAL versions and US ones as NTSC. I still have a vintage DVD player which can play both versions.
This is the masterpiece within masterpieces, the most legendary episode of them all.
I love the 'semitone higher' bit in this. I was working at a petrochemical plant once, and they had the safety induction video. If they had a leak of one type of gas, you had to shelter indoors, so you didn't walk outside and choke to death. There was a different alarm to evacuate, about a semitone different. I was thinking instantly of this episode.
Thank you for posting that on YT.....I remember people using those now unacceptable words and nobody gave it a second though as they where seen as simply descriptive words and used without rancour or to demean anyone, hard to understand now but the world was a very different place then. What descriptive words in use now are going to prove unacceptable in the future do we imagine?
I'm just going to assume you're trolling for shits and giggles. No one who actually lived through the 1970s, and paid any attention to what was going on around them, could possibly believe that.
The changing sign in the intro was always great. Farty Towels was my fav!
For me the weirdness of Fawlty Towers is how densely it packs many different styles of comedy...slapstick, wordplay, puns, situational, shock, insults, dry humor, physical humor, literally anything and everything...while not sacrificing the plot (and subplots). It's just CRAMMED with every flavor of comedy brilliance in a way that no other series ever seemed to even try to attempt. It should be impossible to write this or perform this or film this... but here it is???
It was both John and his then wife Connie Booth who plays the maid who came up with the idea for the programme and wrote all the scripts
i love how much you enjoyed this. Your reaction is pretty much how the entire population of Britain reacted at the time. Perhaps this helps you to understand why this, Monty Python and John Cleese are considered national treasures.
One of the best episodes of the show's run! BTW the hospital that this episode opens up on "Northwick Park Hospital" you can easily get to on the Metropolitan Line train here in the UK!😊
Thanks for not editing it out, context matters.
I've always found Faulty Towers to be mildly amusing but Your reactions literally made me laugh out loud. Cheers guys. 😂
Love you Chaps immensely..........to me you're honorary Brits !!!!!
The Holy Grial of British TV...
Is the 'Copryight' typo there for copyright reason or as a social experiment I wonder? Either way I love spotting these fun little oddities so thanks ETS, Peace out!