Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera
(Sorry I cannot hear you. ph. doctormacro)
I have no soul. Or at least I have a shriveled one. There is a saying that comedy is timeless and there is another saying in my circle of friends saying that it is not. Nonetheless, I did not find most of “Duck Soup” funny, and so is half of the Marx Brothers movies anyway. They are kind of overrated compared to Katharine Hepburn or Cary Grant, etc.
There are a few scenes I like, Harpo’s telephone scene in Rufus T. Firefly’s office and the mirror scene. It probably took a lot of choreographing to do the latter, as one brother tries to outwit the other. It kind of scares me that Harpo is probably my favourite Marx Brother, showing his intelligence without saying a word. Well Zeppo’s the hot one, of course, whose last credit I think is this movie.
I have seen two or three of their movies and I think this is the first one where I realized that Groucho’s mustache is painted over. It did not look painted over in “Skidoo.”
What I did not like the racist joke about ‘ how darkies were born.’ I do not care about ‘it was like that then.’ Cut it.
“A Night at the Opera” is probably better because it shows us another dimension skipped over in the other films – their adorable side. The piano and harp scene with Chico and Harpo, entertaining the children – I can watch another five to ten minutes of that. This side of them, as well as the strong supporting cast, takes the heat of their quasi-class conscious screwball material so their screwball material actually stands out. It is also funny that the working class Marx Brothers tells Lasparri that Ricardo’s signing is “real singing,” taking opera criticism into their own hands, and we without cynicism take their word for it.
This is an excuse to show my rudimentary knowledge of opera, and by rudimentary I mean Italian, but the Miserere scene in “Il Trovatore” is the second most miserable scene since any part of “Madama Butterfly.” The movie only uses a bit of that sadness to add to the romantic tension between Rosa (Kitty Carlisle) and Ricardo, as well as the struggle of achieving their dreams. Side note that Kitty Carlisle kind of reminds me of Norma Shearer and she interprets the song in the stage-like way that Shearer does. They also sing ‘Miserere’ in their encore, but they look happy, as they celebrate their stardom in America. The movie is still about the Marx Brothers but you can hardly call this romance a B-story.
(I’m kinda busy)
Okinawa Assault 