The Marx Brothers
The first thing which disappears when men are turning a
country in to a totalitarian state is comedy and comics. Because we are laughed
at, I don’t think people really understand how essential we are to their
sanity. Groucho Marx
In this quote, Julius Marx - aka Groucho – suggests that comedy
is a serious business, both for its potential to dilute the power of
influential people, and its ability to wrench us from our draconian lives in to
a realm of hysterical freedom. And no one was better at cutting folks down a
peg or two and getting away with it so delightfully as the Marx Brothers.
As Joe Adamson points out in his book on the Marx Brothers films*, writing about comedy is a dubious and potentially dangerous project, carrying with it the threat of destroying what it purports to celebrate. He indeed criticises the films vociferously, albeit with a constant thread of respect for the stars themselves. Personally, I believe The Marx Brothers were the funniest and most talented comedic group to exist on this planet and, although these movies were from a very long time ago, it is truly timeless, very silly and very clever entertainment. They are described chronologically as below however, I have highlighted potential good ones to start with for first timers. Enjoy.
The Cocoanuts (1929)
A creaky start but bear with because it eases in to classic
Marx Brothers soon enough. Highlights are Harpo generally - little moments like
him inexplicably ‘rowing’ his way out of a scene, motormouth Groucho, and
Chico’s “Why a duck?” Also, the Brothers in fancy dress and Harpo’s grimaces of
disdain at a bunch of boring speeches. The statuesque Margaret Dumont is
tormented by the boys from this first movie and intermittently onwards,
providing just the right amount of pomposity and outrage to be the perfect foil
in every Marx Brothers outing she played in.
Animal Crackers (1930)
As good as they ever did but even better. Highlights are
Harpo shooting at clocks, birds and high-class ladies’ hats in his underwear,
Groucho’s beautiful dancing and reluctant wooing of rich women and party
attending, as well as Chico’s piani-playing disrupted by Harpo and derided by
Groucho, on top of jokes and idiocy so bad as to cause intense agonies in
Groucho. Margaret Dumont highlight is wrestling with Harpo before settling down
to a ridiculously played game of bridge.
Monkey Business (1931)
*A good place to start!* - My personal favourite. Monkey Business
stands out as pure, unadulterated Marx Brothers, barely interrupted by musical
interludes or side stories and featuring the four as themselves rather than
characters. The pace and energy whipcracks from the start and even the love
story is kept concise with Zeppo as hero. The film opens with a perfect
scenario for fast-paced troublemaking – one on board a fancy cruise liner with
the brothers as stowaways. They cause just as much trouble on land but save the
day after a ferocious roll in a haybarn. The first of two to feature Thelma
Todd as a slinky blonde who excites the amorous attentions of Groucho.
Horse Feathers (1932)
This one takes quite a time to get going, but from Harpo and
Chico’s disastrous attempt at kidnapping to a haphazard football game, it ends
up a very Marx Brothers riot. In fact, it’s as if the film begins as a fairly
routine playing out of classic vaudeville but eventually remembers it’s a film
and erupts out of its confines. As such, the magic of editing displays more
fulsomely the joys of Harpo and Chico sawing themselves through floors and the
spectacle of a garbage chariot galloping the brothers through a college
football game to touch-down.
Duck Soup (1933)
*A good place to start!* Not so well received at the time - causing
the Brothers to jump ship to MGM and change tack - but since reclaimed by
intellectual types as arguably their greatest, most complete achievement. Now considered
a timeless political satire, it also features some of their best comedy that doesn’t
have anything to do with world leaders who are tyrannical buffoons (although
that is gleefully excellent), namely the famous mirror sequence and Groucho
getting to know Harpo via his tattoos – totally weird and completely hilarious.
A Night at the Opera (1935)
*A good place to start!* The point where the mischievous Marxes were
somewhat tamed for the mainstream, something considered intolerable for purists.
However, for others and those who love them unconditionally, this new era
required little patience to ride out the straight bits in time for the
irrepressible and unchanged nonsense that continued. Either way, A Night at the
Opera still competes with Duck Soup as their highest rated and, as is often the
case, the best scenes are side tracks and have very little to do with the plot
at all. In another one famously known as the stateroom scene, an interlude of extreme
inconvenience occurs when Groucho’s ridiculously small room on a cruise ship (yes,
a cruise ship again) becomes ludicrous when lots of people enter it. According
to Adamson, making Marx Brothers movies was never an easy process, and provided
headaches for anyone trying to do a proper job, sensibly. There was also a lot
of laughter involved too though, and this is revealed in the genuine joy on the
faces of children surrounding Chico playing piano in his originally inimitable
way. Another highlight is a scene when the renegades run rings around a
detective by moving furniture from one room to another, and the sabotage of an opera
performance in the finale is impressively acrobatic from Harpo and pleasingly
anarchic generally.
A Day at the Races (1937)
Although considered a letdown after A Night at the Opera,
there are some very special moments in this one. It might seem regrettable not
to exploit the original idea more fully - sending up the current obsession at
the time with Freudian treatments that unleashed a cavalcade of quacks – but we
have to live with the fact that numerous rewrites ended up with Groucho as a
horse doctor posing as a human doctor to not really link horse racing with a
sanitarium. Nevertheless, the boys do get to torture the ever game Margaret
Dumont in a medical examination scene alongside other hilarious highlights: Groucho
tormenting his adversary – ‘Mr Whitm-o-o-ore!’ - via telecommunication; Chico
and Harpo preventing Groucho’s corruption at the hands of a blonde floozy via
such methods as dressing like Sherlock Holmes and wallpapering overzealously; Harpo’s
pretence as a grand concert pianist that results in a spectacular destruction
of the instrument, rebirth as a harp and his concluding catapult in to an
artificial lake after over-spinning his stool. Again, the finale rewards any
patience needed in a hard-working demonstration of concerted chaos when the
heroes ensure that their best horse wins. Of special note is the Gabriel scene
– depending on your personal viewpoint, it’s patronising and then offensive; or
on the other hand, an impressive showcase of black American talent, including
some of the most exhilarating and eye-popping lindy hop you could hope for on
film, ending with a hilarious punchline that mocks the practice of blackface
rather than endorses it…
Room Service (1938)
The worst one? Adamson points out that this is not really a
Marx Brothers film at all in that it was conceived as a play without them and
someone had the bright idea of shoehorning them in to it and putting it on
film. There are some nice gags around how to escape from paying a hotel bill
and some madness involving a turkey, but overall, it’s a tough watch for
diehards only. Harpo rescues it as he often does, just by being his sweet self
and injecting humorous chaos in to even the limpest of scenarios.
At the Circus (1939)
Imperfect but a far stronger return to form after Room
Service, even if the romantic couple are appalling and in it too much, and
there is a pointless repeat of the Gabriel scene from A Day at the Races that is
offensive. Some unmissable sequences though, including Groucho’s song and dance
tribute to Lydia the Tattooed Lady, and the interrogation of a Little Person who
is actually a chain-smoking child. The finale also has its merits – Harpo on an
ostrich; Groucho holding off Margaret Dumont’s posh guests while a circus is
set up in her garden and the classy composer she hired is sent floating in to
the sea. It then slips in to not wholly unfunny farce when a ‘gorilla’ runs
rampage and Dumont ends up on the end of a trapeze chain gang.
Go West (1940)
Groucho charges this one on to make a ride as bumpy as the
stagecoach he takes a hitch on as watchable as possible, helping it to moments
that make it worth the effort, most of all the spectacular train scene at the
finale. His spoof of the standard sexy saloon/nightclub singer routine is good,
with Groucho moving tables to keep himself relevant to Lulubelle’s attentions
and antagonising the sorrowful old booze hound cliché. The boring lovers seem
positively hostile that their bids for stardom are burdened by Marxes, and the
Native American scene reaches new heights of cringey stereotyping. However, in
the same scene is a particularly beautiful solo from Harpo, who fashions his
instrument from a loom no less. A talking point is the argument that the
brothers were tamed to the point of loser-dom during the MGM years - a
counterpoint is that, here for example, their very failure to achieve the
machismo of standard western genre behaviour is confirmation of themselves as contrary
outsiders of the mainstream, even while working within it – ‘gunslinging’ has
never been feebler or sillier.
The Big Store (1941)
The last film for MGM is slickly produced if fundamentally
flawed, although the Marxes are as watchable as ever when not smothered by the daft
straight story it’s built on. The beginning kicks off well with Groucho and Harpo
introduced as the sole two members of a shammy detective agency, busier cooking
breakfasts in their desks than any actual business, and the finale kicks us
back out with a crazed chase through the titular department store - including
on roller skates, an anarchic and cartoonish extension of Chaplin’s antics in
the same setting in Modern Times. It otherwise fails to exploit the potential
of the situation, but as always there are side issues that are very funny, like
Groucho’s hideously shedding fur coat and motor car with problems. ‘Tenement
Symphony’ is a sickly song even if with the good intentions of paying tribute
to the working-class background of an up-and-coming smoothy singer, as well as alluding
to a subtext of the Brothers’ own roots, but Chico and Harpo’s piano duet is a
delight. Indeed, the latter is a good example of something special about the
Marxes – sheer individual talent and well-rehearsed routines combined with the
familiarity of familial bonds – overall, there is always a sense of the common
rancour between siblings reconciled by brotherly love, which is then
de-sentimentalised by their expertise as entertainers, keen advocacy of irony
and shared fondness for gleeful rebellion.
A Night in Casablanca (1946)
Probably the funniest thing about A Night in Casablanca is
the exchange of letters between Groucho and Warner Brothers with regards to the
film’s title. WBs were antsy about the use of the place name, accusing the MBs
of infringing copyright (a Humphrey Bogart movie you might have heard of and
that was made just 2 years previously). Nil desperandum though - Groucho’s
ripostes wore them down and the king of nonsense set the straight guys
straight. As for the film, it passes the time inoffensively just not
uproariously. Very little stands out and for a Marx Brothers movie featuring
Nazis, it seems like a missed opportunity to really stick it to ‘em. However, highlights
are Harpo’s shoe shining technique and the brothers ‘helping’ the Nazis pack
their suitcases. The slinky femme fatale – whose cigarette holder is long but
not as long as Harpo’s – has a vaguely interesting character journey, and the
romantic couple are headed up by B movie actor Charles Drake and are two of the
least annoying in an MB movie. The finale is a mildly amusing but sputtering
aeroplane scene, especially as compared to the raucous and inventive hilarity
of the train scene in Go West which it half-heartedly apes.
Love Happy (1949)
Actually, this might be the worst one, and probably
not even worthy of diehards. The magic of the Marxes is threadbare here, with
Harpo featuring heavily as the film was indeed intended to revolve around him,
but even so his usual brilliance is seriously diluted. It’s a missed
opportunity to showcase his surrealistic mime poetry as Chaplin (the original
tramp clown) had been able to create for himself in more sentimental fashion.
In fact, the enforced sentimentalism that occurs here renders Harpo a bit weird
and even creepy at times, robbed as he is of his trademark vagabond verve.
Ironically, commercialism provides the stand out scene in the film - the
product of a very early example of product placement, brought in because the
producer was running out of cash, Harpo leaps from one neon advertising sign to
another as he escapes his enemies in a sequence suggestive of what could have
been with a more assertive premise, one that would have exploited the visual
over hokey plots and complete lack of verbal wit. Groucho, for whom we would
normally rely on for the latter is largely absent, other than a pointless
detective role that voiceovers a story no one cares about. Even more pointless
is a very early and brief appearance from Marilyn Monroe who slinks in and out
of a scene as a sexpot. Again, even Marilyn diehards needn’t waste their time.
Chico is dreadful and all in all it’s a tale of wasted talent – it also
features Paul Valentine who was excellent in classic film noir Out of the Past,
and Vera-Ellen, an exceptional dancer and one of the stars of Gene Kelly’s On
the Town and blockbuster White Christmas. Sadly, a symptom of the Hollywood
machine was that while it provided silver screen wonders, it also had a habit
of wildly mismanaging them.
The Marx Brothers have never been in a picture as
wonderful as they are. - Cecilia Ager
This might be true, however, even the lousiest Marx Brothers
film makes me laugh and each one is a record of the unique talents and twitchy camaraderie
of 3 - sometimes 4 – brothers with wit to spare and a delightful embrace of anarchy
and antagonism that we are woefully short of in this day and age. And although
they were increasingly tamed through the MGM years, they were always inimitable
enough not to be entirely smothered and, in fact, even in some of the worst
ones, their moments of anarchic brilliance arguably shine through even more
when placed in and amongst the slog of some very bang average to offensive
mediocrity.
In Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody Allen’s existential crisis
is brought to an end when he walks in to a movie theatre and watches Duck Soup.
Countering his desperate pursuit for a meaning to life, he realises that life
is worth living just for these experiences more than anything else. In fact, one
of my own many existential crises was soothed when I myself sat down and
watched Duck Soup for a severalth time on my 40th birthday. [And
whaddya know, Groucho had the same birthday as me]. Ultimately, I strongly urge
anyone to watch these crazy, talented wise/dumbasses poke fun at a stupid world
and maybe it will bring meaning to you too. Give me Marx Brothers after-world,
so I can laugh eternally.
*Groucho, Harpo, Chico and sometimes Zeppo by Joe Adamson
1973
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