The Inspector General (1949 film)

The Inspector General is a 1949 American Technicolor musical comedy film directed by Henry Koster and starring Danny Kaye, Walter Slezak, Barbara Bates, and Elsa Lanchester. Original music and lyrics are by the associate producer Sylvia Fine, who was married to Danny Kaye, with Johnny Green credited for musical direction and incidental score. The film is loosely based on Nikolai Gogol's play The Inspector General . The plot is re-located from the Russian Empire into an unspecified corrupted region of a European country that suddenly finds itself under the supervision of the First French Empire.

Georgi, a naive and kind-hearted member of a band of Gypsies is kicked out by their leader Yakov after revealing to some villagers that the elixir they were peddling was fake. Tired and hungry, he wanders into the small town of Brodny. Whilst trying to eat from a horse's feedbag, he is arrested as a horse thief and sentenced to hang the next day.

Brodny is run by a corrupt Mayor whose underlings are all his equally corrupt relations. They are frightened when they learn that the Inspector General, an emissary appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte to weed out corruption, is in their region and known to come in disguise. They mistake Georgi for the Inspector, and they coddle him whilst trying to make him leave as soon as possible. Georgi reunites with Yakov, who poses as his advisor and reveals the suffering the Mayor inflicted on the townsfolk. To buy back a church organ the Mayor bought with the people's tax money and then sold to another town, Yakov convinces Georgi to collect bribes, but Yakov privately negotiates with the Mayor for a much larger sum. Meanwhile, the mayor's wife falls for Georgi, hoping he will whisk her away from her inattentive husband—though Georgi has fallen in love with Leza, the mayor's kitchen maid, who inspires him to be a good person and rescue the town.

At a party in his honor, Georgi narrowly avoids being exposed by a friend of the real Inspector General. The Mayor and his cronies plot to have Georgi killed, and they lure him to a barn for a woodcutter to murder him. Instead, Yakov learns of the plot beforehand, knocks Georgi unconscious, poses Georgi with his head through a hole in a table (as if he had been decapitated), and the Mayor pays him. Georgi awakens, stops Yakov from absconding with the money, and flees with Leza instead.

The real Inspector General arrives, and Georgi is arrested when he returns with Leza and the church organ. Yakov picks the Inspector's pocket for his credentials, briefly saving Georgi's life, but Georgi refuses to have the real Inspector executed and admits his true identity. Moved by his honesty, the Inspector gives Georgi the Mayor's chain of office and names him the new Mayor of Brodny, while telling the prior mayor "We'll put something else around your neck." Yakov becomes the new chief of police, Leza and Georgi become a couple, and the town celebrates Georgi's official appointment.