The 50 Movie Starter Kit by Ty Burr

Author:Ty Burr [Burr, Ty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-80494-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

24. Duck Soup (1933)

The author’s connection with this Marx Brothers classic is personal. It was the favorite movie of my father, who died when I was ten without my ever really getting to know him, and when it turned up on TV one night when I was fourteen, my mom (who knew I was hungry for connection on this score) noodged me to stay up to watch it. To say I fell for it hard is an understatement; in a very real way, Duck Soup is why I write about movies. I had never seen anything like it before—the celebrated mirror sequence, the crude black-and-white insanity, each brother doing his own thing while ruthlessly undermining the notion of good government and civic duty. The film was a flop in 1933 but found favor with college audiences during the 1960s, when doubting our elected leaders was a national pastime. The movie is blissfully nonsensical while making a deeper kind of sense.

For one thing, it asks us to consider Groucho Marx as the president of a country, an idea as patently ridiculous to him as it is to us. (This, and only this, is what separates him from an actual politician.) Upon his installation, Groucho sings “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” and does a merry jig, leers at the available women, and double-talks Margaret Dumont, the magnificent straight woman/human battleship who represents everything unironic in the Marxian universe and thus everything that must be mocked and attacked.

Harpo and Chico play spies, sort of, the silent Harpo indulging in a running duel with a lemonade vender (played by Edgar Kennedy, a beefy character actor whose specialty was the “slow burn”) while Chico hands out terrible puns in his ice cream Italian accent. (It’s the only Marx Brothers comedy without musical interludes by these two, and, honestly, that’s an improvement.) Zeppo, the dud fourth brother (although apparently the funniest in real life), stands around with less to do than usual; after this, he threw in the towel and became a highly successful Hollywood agent.

As hilarious as it is, Duck Soup is something of an intentional mess. You sense that the boys are so uncommitted to movies that they’re happy to tear this one down as it happens to them. No wonder the audiences stayed away—there’s no Chaplinesque pathos here. Perhaps that’s why their Paramount films still feel so modern, and why their subsequent work at MGM, which saddled them with young lovers and actual plots, has badly dated.

Admittedly, this movie creaks too. If you’re coming to early-’30s comedy for the first time, you’ll have to adjust your sails, but understand that even in their day, the Marxes didn’t play nice. By the end, after Groucho has started a war just for the hell of it (and how that must have hurt to audiences watching as Europe fell apart) and the movie itself has come down around the characters’ ears, you may realize that the Marxes don’t really need us, which is kind of a thrill but also rather insulting if you’re open to being insulted.

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