USA 93m Dir: Sam Wood Key Cast: The Marx Brothers
For some reason, the Marx brothers just don't seem to be for me. I wasn't keen on Duck Soup and I wasn't keen on A Night at the Opera either.
This film marked a change for the Marx Brothers. It was the first of five films they made for MGM after leaving Paramount Pictures and the first after Zeppo had left the act. It also saw a slight change in style. Whereas in the previous films the focus had been on getting out fast-paced jokes as quickly as possible, the new style had more of a narrative and the brothers portrayed more sympathetic characters.
The plot here sees Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho) inadvertently signs the wrong opera singer under contract with manager Fiorello (Chico). As Driftwood sails to New York city he discovers the singer Ricardo, Fiorello and the rival singer's dresser (Harpo) stowed-away in his trunk. Together they try to hide on the ship and then sabotage the opening night of the opera so that Ricardo gets his big moment.
I definitely thought this was a better film than Duck Soup. Though it is still largely a series of sketches sewn together into a plot, the plot is at least much more cohesive. The characters are more likeable too- in Duck Soup they are pretty horrible but here Groucho isn't so rude and Harpo isn't so irritating to everyone around them. The new style has the Marx brothers firmly as the heroes and that definitely adds something to the scene.
There are several comic moments which work really well here. The first is an excellent line about a contract where Groucho mentions an insanity clause Chico replies "You can't fool me, there ain't no Sanity Claus(e)". There's also a great visual moment when Groucho's room aboard the ship is tiny and more and more people start entering it until there are fifteen people literally squeezed into the tiny cabin.
On the whole though, I didn't find the film that funny. I don't really care for Groucho's brand of nonsensical one-liners, Chico doesn't really have a great deal to do here and Harpo, the silent one, doesn't even have as much slapstick humour to play with- instead he gets an action sequence which is very impressive but no particularly funny.
Humour is a question of taste and some people take to some styles of humour better than others. I've enjoyed various comic performers from the 20s and 30s but the Marx Brothers just don't do it for me.
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