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Young Frankenstein's Freudian Twist
In advance of a tribute this Wednesday by San Francisco’s Sketchfest, comedian Gene Wilder reveals the origins of “Frau Blücher.”
Monday, March 17, 2008 at 10:25 PM
By FilmStew Staff
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20th Century Fox
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The woman all Transylvanian horses fear
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Gene Wilder makes no bones about it. Young Frankenstein is not only his favorite of all the films he has done, but it is also, he feels, his most perfectly realized.
This according to a recent interview with the San Jose Mercury News ahead of a special screening and tribute at the Castro Theater in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 19th organized by San Francisco’s Sketchfest. A Q&A with Wilder will follow the screening.
Most intriguingly, he reveals an interesting bit of synchronicity relating to the naming of the character "Frau Blücher" (Cloris Leachman), which – whenever mentioned in the film – caused any nearby horses to rear up in fear. “I chose the name because I wanted an authentic German name,” Wilder, who played the part of Dr. Frankenstein and also co-wrote the script with Mel Brooks, tells the paper. “I took out some of the books I had of the letters to and from Sigmund Freud. I saw someone named Blücher had written to him, and I said well that's the name.”
“Later on, I heard from about two or three sources, who said Blücher refers to a horse going to a factory and being turned to glue.* I just thought it was a funny name.”
*Blucher, when inputed into a German-English dictionary, defines the word - within the context of the sentence "er geht ran Wie Blücher" - as signifying "he doesn't hang about." So very loosely it relates to the idea of a horse not being allowed to hang around.
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