For once, ‘straight man’ Zeppo gets some good feed lines as Spaudling’s secretary Jameson, especially during the hilarious ‘letter dictation’ scene. The plot involves a famous painting, due to be exhibited at a country house, being stolen and copied. Here Groucho is Captain Spaudling, one of Groucho’s best characterisations, and we see Margaret Dumont, the Marx Brothers’ stooge, cast as a patron of the arts and subject to Groucho’s attempts to woo her for her money, and subject of Harpo and Chico’s verbal and physical assaults. Their second film is a vast improvement on their technically ropey and stagey debut, The Cocoanuts, and has many comic highlights. It’s always handy to have your finger poised over the fast forward button! All of their films are currently available on DVD, but the following titles belong in any comedy fan or film buff’s collection… Animal Crackers (1930) One thing that films from both periods suffer from is the studios’ insistence on working tedious romantic subplots and ‘straight’ musical interludes. In these later films, it’s often painful seeing the brothers tamed by constraining formats and puritan censors. Whereas the early films were written for Groucho, Chico and Harpo’s mostly unchanging personas, the later films saw the brothers being shoe-horned into stock plots by MGM – 1938’s Room Service was based on the 1937 play of the same name by Allen Boretz and John Murray and considered by many as the worst Marx Brothers film. The later films, specifically after the commercial peak A Night At The Opera, saw the Marx Brothers’ anarchy become diluted by the studio system. The brilliant humour writer SJ Perelman contributed to two of their funniest films, Animal Crackers and Monkey Business. However, they feature some of their finest scripts, and the closest on-screen realisation of pure Marx humour. The direction often belies the films’ theatrical origins and the infancy of cinema technique.
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Their early films upcycled jokes, routines and plots from their stage shows and the long-lost radio series Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel. In other words, their mission is that of many great comedians – rebelling against stuffy elitist attitudes, injecting a healthy dose of anarchy into well-ordered institutions, championing the cause of the underdog (and true love), and refusing to take anything too seriously. In many of their films, they usually play underclass freeloaders attempting to break into elite circles – the art world, property, politics, academia – on a mission to affront strait-laced snobs and their lackeys, pulling the rug from under high society by mocking its traditions and exposing its snobbery. The Marx brothers’ appeal was their attitude and their latitude – Épater la bourgeoisie. I was brought up on Marx Brothers films and, although their films are inevitably dated, made when cinema was in its infancy, it is amazing just how much of their dialogue and how many of their routines still mindboggle, impress and amuse almost a century later. In cinema terms, the Marx Brothers are comedy originals – although by the time of their first film, they were stage veterans – as their entrance in film coincided with the beginning of talking pictures. ❉ An appreciation of the quickfire comedy and anarchic spirit of the Marx Brothers.Īfter Karl and before Howard, there was Groucho and his brothers.