90. A Night At The Opera (1935)

Directed By Sam Wood

Synopsis

A couple of lovers want to make it big in the New York Opera, but a more famous Tenor is dashing their dreams. Chico, Harpo and Groucho attempt to make them replace Lasspari in the New York Opera production of Il Trovatore.

Review

The Marx Brothers frankly do very little for me in this film. This was their first part with MGM after leaving Paramount. This provoked a change in the attitude of the characters due to production demands. Basically The Marx Brothers lost everything that I found appealing in them. There is very little surrealism, with the only notable scene being the butterfly that leaves one of the aviator's beards. There is very little anarchy and it was replaced by crap.

The film loses itself in musical interludes which are usually boring, when the two lovers sing to each other when the boat is departing I just wanted to slash my wrists. Chico's piano scene was the only one which was actually exciting and quite funny.

There is this myth that humor is universal... it is universal only at a very basic point, when you don't expect much from humor, when you don't want wit but just off-colour jokes and circus clown crap. And I have to admit they worked for me when I was a kid, and I think that I might have loved the Marx Brothers had I watched them as a child. I think most reviewers who adore these films have seen them as children and are blinded by nostalgia at how basic the humor in them is. This is a fine thing, it happens to me with many things, I love all Peter Seller's Pink Panther films because I saw them as a child religiously, but I am pretty sure that if I was watching them today for the first time they wouldn't do to much for me.

So, it is my loss that I was brough up in a country where no one knows or cares for the Marx Brothers. But they don't do anything for me today. And frankly the film was quite dull. I laughed outloud in The Thin Man, It Happened One Night, Love Me Tonight and in all the Buster Keaton's and even Oliver and Hardy... The Marx Brothers make me crack a smile from time to time, and made me laugh a couple of times in Duck Soup... this was just a bit shit. The studio's demand for less anarchic characters ruined all the appeal that The Marx Brothers had for me. Buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

4/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

At the suggestion of producer Irving Thalberg, the film marked a change of direction in the brothers' career. In their Paramount films, the brothers' characters were much more anarchistic: they attacked (comically) anybody who was so unfortunate to cross their paths, whether they deserved it or not. (Usually, they did deserve it.) Thalberg, however, felt that this made the brothers unsympathetic, particularly to female filmgoers. So in the MGM films, the brothers were recast as more helpful characters, saving their comic attacks for the villains.

Though some Marx Brothers fans were appalled at these changes, Thalberg was vindicated when the film became a solid hit.

One of the few genuinely funny scenes: