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Directed by: Leo McCarey Starring: the Marx Brothers JOIN THE ARMY AND SEE THE NAVY! Along with Animal Crackers, Duck Soup is the best of the Marx Brothers film work. It contains a lot of their most memorable bits (the mirror pantomime, the trial), funny songs and brilliant satire. The film was banned in a few countries by politicians who thought that it bore a little too much resemblance to their own governments. It even had difficulty finding acceptance in America (which was currently suffering under the Great Depression), where the public found it insulting in the face of their misfortune. It was also the last of the group’s films to feature Zeppo Marx. The story is pretty simple: A crackpot politician (Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly) comes into power of the bankrupt nation of Freedonia, which he quickly transforms into an authoritarian state. He decides to declare war on a neighboring country, and slowly runs his government into the ground with his complete inability to manage the country. quote:I will not stand for anything that's crooked or unfair Unlike other Marx Brothers’ films, there aren’t any musical breaks by Harpo or Chico, and all of the singing is integrated into the narrative. There are some bits that seem like they were forced to fit into the narrative and have no real bearing on the story (the lemonade stand act, though it’s funny enough to forgive), which creates the same sort of disruption. The humor in the film varies from sharp political satire to screwball, which helps keep the film light and not to serious. There are also elements of surrealist like humor at play, similar to what you find in a Bunuel film like L’age D’or. Like almost all of their movies, the Marx brothers all play the same characters they always play, but Groucho has Margaret Dumont to play off of, who is the perfect victim to his style of humor (she’s also in Animal Crackers). Duck Soup is also more interesting than their earlier films on the filmmaking level, which were filmed like a recording of a theatre production, with the camera lying static, covering a large stage-like frame. It’s no Citizen Kane, but it’s nice to see them adjusting to the medium, rather than just doing their old acts in front of a camera and calling it a movie. RATING: 4.5 PROS: funny, political CONS: some bits seem out of place ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023969/
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May 6, 2004 02:30
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 05:36 |
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