My favorite Marx Bros. Film

Rating: 10/10 (31 December 2007)

It's hard to believe the most highly praised Marx Bros. film today, Duck Soup, was a disappointment at the box office. I believe it was Irving Thalberg who said the problem with Duck Soup was that it was too funny. Audiences weren't used to such fast paced comedy with little structure. I think there is an element of truth to this. Out of all of the Marx Bros. films with Paramount, Duck Soup is a contender for the weakest plot. However, I believe this is why it is praised so much today. It is sheer, unadulterated Marx Bros. anarchy, without the romance interludes or intrusive musical numbers. Some of the Brother's best material is in this film. There are too many hilarious jokes to mention, but the mirror sequence, Harpo's Paul Revere scene, and Groucho's opening song are priceless gems. A similar mirror sequence was featured in the now classic Harpo Marx episode of I Love Lucy. This film has aged better than all of the Marx Bros. movies. As Roger Ebert wrote in his book The Great Movies, many of the jokes in this film seem surprisingly modern. For example, Harpo has a tattoo of a dog house on his chest, and when Groucho meows like a cat, a real dog pops out of it and barks. I could easily see something like this happening in any comedy today, and it would be just as effective.
Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, the new dictator of Fredonia. Chico and Harpo play Chicolini and Pinky, two spies from Fredonia's enemy, Sylvania. The two countries go to war for reasons too silly to mention. Zeppo pops up every now and then. This was Zeppo's last film. He never really enjoyed making movies, and I believe it took some convincing to get him to do this film. Unfortunately he was always stuck playing the straight man, and he never got a chance to do anything funny. Zeppo actually was Groucho's understudy when they were on stage, and he supposedly got big laughs whenever he got the chance to play Groucho. Whether or not Zeppo could have been as famous as his other brothers if he had been given the chance will always be one of Hollywood's greatest mysteries.
Duck Soup ended the Marx Brother's contract with Paramount, and they went on hiatus for two years. Chico was able to negotiate a contract with MGM, and they made two more great films, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, before their careers took a major nosedive, from which only Groucho was able to recover.
It is said that there was a real town named Fredonia, and the mayor or town council sent a letter to the Marx Bros. complaining that the movie was ruining the image of the town. The Marx Bros. responded with a letter stating "change the name of your town, it's ruining our movie!"