Marx Bros. Duck Soup Arguably Their Best Film
Landmark Comedy Takes Shots at Upper Class, Politicians, War Machine
Jun 5, 2009
Critics love the film.
Pauline Kael called it “their greatest movie” (5001 Nights at the Movies, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982).
Duck Soup, according to Roger Ebert, marked “a turning point in their movie work. It was their last film for Paramount and the last in which all of the scenes directly involved the brothers.
“When it was a box office disappointment, they moved over to MGM, where production chief Irving Thalberg ordered their plots to find room for conventional romantic couples (see A Night at the Opera), as if audiences could only take so much Marx before they demanded something mediocre…” (The Great Movies, Broadway Books, New York, 2002).
Leo McCarey Directed the Ultimate Marx Bros. Film
Critic Danny Peary noted that director Leo McCarey “presents the Marx Brothers at their best, at their ‘Purest’ – at their most consistently rude and irreverent, delivery a nonstop series of gags over the film’s breakneck-paced seventy minutes.
“The Marx Brothers’ humor is derived to a great extent from the cumulative effects that their unremitting insults (Groucho), puns (Groucho and Chico), invasions of privacy, destruction of property (Harpo), and general annoyances (Groucho, Harpo, Chico) have on the pompous boors and wealthy hypocrites who populate their world” (Cult Movies, Dell Publishing, 1981).
A huge credit goes to screenwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, plus gagmen Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, who punched up the script.
Margaret Dumont Appears in Fifth of Her Seven Marx Films
The cast includes Marx stalwart Margaret Dumont as the dimly rich (and richly dim) socialite Gloria Teasdale; smooth-talking Louis Calhern as the scheming diplomat from a neighboring country; and Leonid Kinsky as Trentino’s lackey. (Kinsky probably is best remembered today as Sascha, the “crazy Russian” working at Rick’s Café Americain in Casablanca.)
This was the last film to star “The Four Marx Brothers.” After Duck Soup, Zeppo left the act to become a talent agent.
Ebert rightly explains that trying to describe the plot is an exercise in futility ”since a Marx Brothers movie exists in moments, bits, sequences, business, and dialogue, not in comprehensible stories.”
Tale Set in Mythical European Country of Freedonia
Still, here’s an overview:
In the tiny European backwater of Freedonia, rich widow Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) will only fund the bankrupt government if Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) is installed as dictator. Firefly arrives at his own welcoming reception by firehouse pole, amidst cheering partisans and an absurd flourish of palace guards and ballerinas (spreading a path of rose petals). During all this, the crowd sings the national anthem, “Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave and free…”
Firefly is a con man whose real interest is Mrs. Teasdale -- or at least, her money. His rival for her affections is the two-faced Ambassador Trentino (Louis Calhern) of nearby Sylvania.
Trentino plans to take over Freedonia by marrying Mrs. Teasdale. He dispatches his mistress, hot young Latina dancer Vera Marcal (Raquel Torres), to compromise Firefly.
Chico and Harpo Play Inept Double Agents
Trentino’s incompetent spies, Chico and Harpo (as Chicolini and Pinky), become double-agents. But true to this kind of Marxism, they really side with no one, although Chicolini is protective of his cohort.
What happens next is… uh, who cares? As Ebert noted, Marx films are all about the insults, one-liners and sight gags. Among the latter:
- The running gag of Harpo on a motorcycle, chauffeuring Groucho in the adjacent sidecar. Groucho never gets to his destination.
- Chicolini and Harpo torturing a street vendor, played by the movies’ slow-burn king, Edgar Kennedy.
- The amazing mirror routine, often credited to vaudeville’s Schwartz Brothers, in which the pajama-clad Firefly (Groucho) and identically-dressed Pinky (Harpo) mimic one another across a missing mirror in what should be an Olympic event – Synchronized Miming.
There are the film’s nearly uncountable insults and one-liners. Among them:
- "This is a gala day for you," Mrs. Teasdale tells Firefly on his arrival. "Well," he replies, “a gal a day is enough for me. I don’t think I could handle any more.”
- The minister of finance delivers a report, expressing the hope Firefly finds it clear. “Clear? Huh! Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report.” Turning to his assistant, played by Zeppo, “Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head or tail out of it.”
- Firefly to Mrs. Teasdale, after proposing marriage: "Married! I can see you right now in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove."
Remarkable Sequences Cap Film
The film also includes two of the greatest comedy sequences ever shot: Chicolini’s treason trial, which segues into the war with Sylvania. The latter is capped by the Marxes pelting Mrs. Teasdale with fruit as she belts out the national anthem in operatic grandeur, “Hail, Hail Freedonia,” thus bringing the ridiculousness full circle at the fade out.
The film skewers patriotism, political intrigue, hopeless vanity and mindless ambition – and does so at a breathtaking pace. A few cultural references are dated, but the ideas here are timeless. If you only see one Marx movie in your life, this is the one to choose.
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