Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey) (Patreon)

82/100

At least second viewing, last seen...no more recently than 1995 (I began logging repeat viewings the following year), quite possibly not since the mid-'80s! Whenever it was, I distinctly remember disagreeing with the consensus opinion that it's the Marx Brothers' greatest film (my vote: A Night at the Opera), and balking specifically at the received notion that less structure = more anarchy = "pure" Marxism = nirvana. That's true in some respects, to be sure—certainly I don't miss Zeppo's usual romance and corresponding flowery duets, which undeniably hamper the previous Paramount films. But folks also often express relief at the absence of Chico and Harpo's musical solos, and those I do kinda miss, to be honest. Not so much per se (though Chico's goofy piano style reliably makes me smile) as for the necessary respite they provide. Duck Soup is hilarious, but it's also, even at under 70 minutes, a tad exhausting; "too many jokes" makes me sound like Joseph II in Amadeus, but Groucho's pace of one-liners verges on relentless, and arguably demands the occasional breather. Those needn't necessarily be musical, I should note, nor expository—a sustained comedy routine, like the mirror bit*, can serve much the same purpose, even as it gets plenty of laughs. That masterpiece aside, though, the proper routines here are comparatively weak—nobody cites the sidewalk-vendor stuff as classic, and those scenes are so divorced from Freedonia as a concept that they seem to belong in a different movie altogether. (Had you shown me one out of context last year, I'd have guessed that it's from The Big Store, which I've never seen. Duck Soup wouldn't have occurred to me.)

As is sometimes the case when it comes to the canon, I'm expending an absurd amount of energy justifying my "contrarian" position on a film that I adore...just not to the degree that most cinephiles do. (It still got a higher rating than literally everything I've seen from 2018–2020.) Over in the Dept. Of Duh, I'd observe that it features a hefty percentage of Groucho's finest zingers, my personal favorite being "I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows 'til you come home." (Silver medal: Dumont's "gala day" becoming "a gal a day.") One could make a strong case that the mirror gag, glorious though it is, gets too much attention at the expense of Chico and Harpo's doorbell-ringing routine, which left me convulsed (perhaps because I didn't remember it at all and so wasn't anticipating its progression). And of course this is the one Marx Brothers movie that flirts with political satire, though the martial finale seems less cutting to me than does Rufus T. Firefly gradually talking himself into an outraged frenzy during a monologue about his desire to reconcile with the ambassador. ("And I feel sure he will accept this gesture in the spirit in which it is offered. But suppose he doesn't? A fine thing that'll be!") I should also note for the record that I've not yet seen any of the later, reputedly mediocre Marx Brothers films, so I have no concept of what their act looks like when it's running on fewer than 100% of its cylinders; with the possible exception of The Cocoanuts (which I watched almost 30 years ago, and recall as being very stagebound), it all seems more or less marvelous. Just saying that were I Mickey at the end of Hannah and Her Sisters, feeling suicidal, I'm not confident that this is the movie to rescue me from my despair. 

* To which I happened to see two TV homages over the past year—Harpo himself reprising it with Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, and David Duchovny performing a particularly silly variation opposite Michael McKean on The X-Files. Didn't know the latter was coming and was not prepared.