"I can’t help myself. I think Mel Brooks pulled off a magic trick, which was to pull off a parody of a certain style of film, but also make it something absolutely new at the same time. I love The Producers because it has such great characters, but Young Frankenstein is a little broader and it has some of the most brilliant comic moments. It’s hammy without being overtly crass like Blazing Saddles was. Madeleine Kahn — God bless her — it’s one of the best comic performances that I know of. I go back to it and see something new that she’s added to it. Mel Brooks and she must have fed off each other’s madness to get that sort of performance. And Marty Feldman attacking her fox stole and chewing on it; I lose it every time when I see that."

"I was at Sundance for 36 hours this year and this was one of two movies I wasn’t going to leave without seeing. Lots of friends worked with Lynne Ramsey on this one, and told me tales of the production, and in other cases I can usually see such stories in the finished products. But not this one. This was its own untouchable thing, hovering far above from whatever means it took to make it, barely there and unbearably heavy at the very same time. I went to see it a second time opening weekend, and then listened to the score repeatedly until the movie itself was released on iTunes, at which point I let it become background music, playing on a loop as I drift around the house, hoping to subconsciously siphon off some of that tough magic."

"The beautiful music by Miklós Rózsa (the first film score ever released as a recording), the photography by Georges Périnal, the production design by Vincent Korda, and the performances by the Indian child star Sabu, Conrad Veidt, and the entire cast make it the most beautiful fantasy film I’ve ever seen. Like Snow White and The Wizard of Oz from the same period, this type of fairy tale depends on an innocence that has long since vanished, but I think it still works its magic today and is better than all the computer-generated children’s films of the last twenty years combined. Michael Powell, who was only one of many directors who made different sections of the film, attributes its true authorship to the genius of Sabu and the vision of its great producer, Alexander Korda."