A Night at the Opera
1935
Sam Wood
Group D is in the house (opera house) one last time to write about a film they chose. Let's see how the Marx Brothers fared under their harsh scrutiny.
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Gloria
— Some of it seems dated, but a lot of it held up—even if the jokes/visual gags were dumb, they were very funny
— The delivery of a lot of it reminded me of theater vs. modern acting
— The romantic subplot seemed random. Was it really needed in the movie?
— The actual opera singing was gorgeous
— The choice of putting a comedy on top of something as melodramatic as Il trovatore was great
— I love the "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" gag
— Okay, I like the romantic subplot just for the ironic juxtaposition of "Miserere" with reuniting Rosa with Ricardo
Rating 4/5
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Sam
Very much leaning into the "does not have to be a coherent essay" prompt to get this on paper. This is not my first Marx Brothers rodeo. It's been a minute though, so it took another minute to adjust myself to the patter here. I remember very much liking Duck Soup. This feels like a similar send-up: the Marx Bros. like to take the piss out of stuffy peeps.
I love that the Marx Brothers are relentlessly antagonistic to anyone they deem not worth their time—the widowed heiress, the opera director, and the acclaimed singer. And then they are devotedly loyal to anyone they deem worth it—the lovers at the center.
It's probably a needlessly hipster opinion to say real Marx-men prefer Chico to Grouch, but here I am. Groucho's one-liners and general vibe annoyed me. Whereas Chicho is moving the ball forward with his little side hustles and dazzling piano play. Harpo is fun too. Regardless, the movie cooks the most when the three bros are in a scene together. I laughed out loud at the heightening around the tiny ship room, the moving the hotel room furniture, and the escape from the ship jail.
There's no reason to be here for the plot. I was increasingly entertained, even by the obligatory musical numbers. Though only from the Brothers themselves. That said, a 1920s opera singer doing a big number next to a big bowl of spaghetti made me chuckle.
3.5
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Sean
This was my first Marx Brothers movie, and I wish I liked it more than I did. Don't get me wrong, it was funny, but my expectations were not met.
My main issue with this was how annoying Groucho is. Considered one of the best comedians and funniest of all time, I expected his percentage of jokes that land to be higher, considering he tells about three jokes per minute. His wordplay is witty, but it didn't work for me. I laughed out loud a few times during A Night at the Opera, but never once at Groucho's eyebrow raising, knowing quips.
I think the funniest people and characters are the ones who don't know they're funny or who don't try to be funny. This seems to be Groucho's schtick. "Look how funny I am." Sorry, doesn't work for me.
Chico and Harpo are more my style. Some of Chico's lines had me laugh the hardest. Loved when he's recounting the trip across the ocean to America while posing as one of the great aviators. Very funny!
The first time I lol'd was this exchange between Chico and Groucho. Chico's delivery is perfect. Again, his character isn't trying to be funny, just responding honestly.
Grouch: "You know that America is waiting to hear him sing?"
Chico: "Well, he can sing loud, but he can't sing that loud."
I imagine I would have laughed harder or been more excited had I seen this movie in a movie theater. There's a lot to look at, and some of the set pieces are super fun. The end in the theater was a favorite of mine, and I think I enjoy the antics of the Marx Brothers when all three of them are working together as unstoppable agents of chaos. They're like three chimps let loose at a party. It's a joy to watch and when I think Groucho is best utilized.
My favorite scene was the piano and harp playing on the boat. I watched A Night at the Opera free from distractions, but that was when I found myself most engaged. I felt like one of the children watching Harpo play music, entranced and enjoying the magic of his funny and amazing musical skills.
Everything but the singing and Groucho's whole schtick worked for me. I read that some people rank their Paramount-produced movies higher than this and their later works. Looking forward to seeing Duck Soup with an open mind. I'm ready to laugh!
3.5 out of 5 pukes
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Joe
I was curious if the comedy from 90 years ago was going to translate to today. I'm not talking about "aging poorly" in a "WOKE COMMIE LIBTARD" way. More so just the idea that comedic sensibilities of audiences were different a century ago. Shit that my great-grandfather was laughing at in theaters is not necessarily something I'm going to be laughing at as I watch bootleg copies in haunted cubicles in 2025. That's just the cycle of life, the cycle of comedy. The hit rate on the jokes was about what I expected.
I spent the whole movie thinking that this was my first experience with the Marx Brothers, and that maybe it was a matter of needing to understand their rhythms and tropes and style in order to mine the full amount of humor from their routines. Then, after the credits rolled and I did my customary Wikipedia scroll, I realized that this was actually the second Marx Brothers movie I've seen, after Duck Soup. The only problem with watching Duck Soup was that I was fucking loaded when I watched it.
See, this is where it's too easy to track the chronology, due to being too online. My Letterboxd says I watched it on November 24, 2022. That means that it was my last wet Thanksgiving. I suppose I had a dozen or so IPAs at the in-laws' house, and then, what, watched 90 minutes of comedy while my wife put three kids to bed? Including a one-month-old? Or wait, was Sophie sleeping in the living room with me under the cool calming sounds of Groucho Marx being an asshole? Sorry, none of this is important re: my sober (albeit somewhat sleepy still, but for different reasons) experience with A Night at the Opera in 2025. I'm just trying to give context. It was my first Marx Brothers experience, this movie, regardless of what my Letterboxd says.
And damn, it probably would've been helpful to see Duck Soup, like see it and retain anything about it, because it was the previous movie in the filmography before A Night at the Opera. Interesting that this movie's reputation is that it was a "new Marx Brothers." Apparently, they were a lot zanier prior to this, and the chaos came at the expense of the plot. I was going to say for this movie that I thought the "plot" elements (love story, whatever the fuck was happening with contracts) were the weak links, and that maybe it should have just been all jokes. I guess that's what Duck Soup was. Someone will have to tell me about that one sometime.
Interesting too that my review was (ostensibly) about Groucho, and how "everyone in the room is playing the straight man except one single guy who is landing all the zingers, while the straight men don't even notice." Apparently this was something I liked last time? Because I don't know if I liked it this time. It felt discombobulating that Groucho could just say any put-down that he wanted and everyone ignored him. It would have felt more true to life is someone, at least once, was like, "Yo dude, do you ever shut the fuck up?!"
As I alluded to above, there will be no moral handwringing with this film. It is a comedy and should be treated as such. Harpo was just as violent with his mallet as the Man was in Sunrise with his knife, but there's one film out of those two where the violence concerned me. All in good fun here. I actually kinda liked when the movie stopped dead to let the comic relief agent Harpo Marx play the harp with no jokes attached. The juxtaposition of him in that moment and him in the rest of the movie was fascinating, and I think that was the intention.
As I alluded to above, there will be no moral handwringing with this film. It is a comedy and should be treated as such. Harpo was just as violent with his mallet as the Man was in Sunrise with his knife, but there's one film out of those two where the violence concerned me. All in good fun here. I actually kinda liked when the movie stopped dead to let the comic relief agent Harpo Marx play the harp with no jokes attached. The juxtaposition of him in that moment and him in the rest of the movie was fascinating, and I think that was the intention.
I laughed less at the constant barrage of quips from Groucho (and maybe even got annoyed with them after a while, so rarely did they hit, due to any number of factors), and more at the big set pieces. The Stateroom scene was amazing physical comedy, and rightly canonized. I thought the bed-moving scene was pretty good, especially when the ante was upped with Harpo holding the bed like a door. The contract-ripping was good but perhaps overstayed its welcome (though the Sanity Clause gag probably made it worth it). I guess the physical comedy worked better than the wordplay for me? There's something in there about physical comedy being timeless but wordplay being tied to a specific time, I'm sure.
As I said, the love story and all its associated operatic singing totally dragged the film, but I was thinking that maybe this is the real way that the comedy aged poorly—or not just the comedy, but the idea of a major motion picture, and what such an artform would entail. Audiences in 1935 were probably way more willing and able to enjoy and appreciate the operatic singing in a comedy. It was all entertainment. Seeing a film in the theater in the mid-'30s was a big deal. It was a fucking event! Why shouldn't the Marx Brothers pull out all the stops? Comedy and drama, side-by-side! I get it. I thought it was a little much, but I wasn't the intended audience for this movie. I wasn't even born yet!!
As I said, the love story and all its associated operatic singing totally dragged the film, but I was thinking that maybe this is the real way that the comedy aged poorly—or not just the comedy, but the idea of a major motion picture, and what such an artform would entail. Audiences in 1935 were probably way more willing and able to enjoy and appreciate the operatic singing in a comedy. It was all entertainment. Seeing a film in the theater in the mid-'30s was a big deal. It was a fucking event! Why shouldn't the Marx Brothers pull out all the stops? Comedy and drama, side-by-side! I get it. I thought it was a little much, but I wasn't the intended audience for this movie. I wasn't even born yet!!
As a film-watching experience, I appreciate it more for anthropological reasons, as opposed to it being the laugh-riot that I was promised. I laughed a little bit. I appreciated A Night at the Opera from a historical perspective. I can see why this was popular, and is popular, and is important, both to comedies and to the film canon in general. I just selfishly wished that there was a little more for me, your average 21st-century man.
Sidenote: I am aware that a certain album by a certain band was named after this film, but I will not be commenting on that travesty at this time. Thank you for your consideration.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
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GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
Pretend the comment section is the Stateroom—everybody get in here!!
(NEXT TIME: um......... it's Cats)
13 comments:
Much appreciation for sticking to the film and not mentioning the album that is named after this one. Unless we're gonna talk about the song about the guitarist of that band wanting to fuck his car, that's the exception to the rule.
We can all agree, it seems: Groucho, shut the fuck up for a fucking second, bro!!!!
That being said, I keep coming back to "You'll have to start on the ceiling" as the best joke in this film.
"You'll have to start on the ceiling" was great and so is his exchange with Chico about the kids in Canada. Although it would've all been funnier without constantly moving his eyes and eye brow around. It all rang as someone who makes a joke and then asks, "did you hear that joke I just made?"
Also just noticed "The Funniest Picture in Ten Years" on the poster. I wonder if that's referring to any specific movie from 1925. Comedies from that year are Charlie Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" and Harold Lloyd's "The Freshman" -- both very funny, but funny movies were also released in the years between. Probably just a marketing thing or maybe a quote from some reviewer.
this is sean btw
You're bang-on with this assessment. Something I learned after watching The Naked Gun was that a rule for those filmmakers was "no joke on a joke." Meaning that the joke is enough, you don't have to attempt to make it funny on top of that joke, e.g. as you said raising eyebrows or whatever. The Naked Gun was funny because Leslie Nielsen('s character) was so fucking serious about it.
Maybe this was a rule that hadn't been invented yet in the 1930s.
It's probably a positive sign of the Marx Bros. style of comedy that I can't tell if it's supposed to be a joke or not. "Funniest movie of the last ten years, ya know, since they started making major motion picture comedies."
We didn't talk about vaudeville at all but all of their stuff is heavily influenced by the kitchen sink approach to entertainment. Joe touched on this a bit, and I think that lens is instructive. There's something to be said for the little breaks the musical numbers provide; gives us time to breathe a little.
Thanks for pointing this out. I don't know if I ever actually given the idea of vaudeville any thought at all, ever. When you said the word, I knew what you meant, but if I'm asking myself to define it, then I wouldn't really know what to say. So here's a definition:
"a type of entertainment popular chiefly in the US in the early 20th century, featuring a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance"
Definitely helpful to think about the movie in this way, you're right. I like the idea that movies were still trying to figure out what movies could be in the early parts of the 20th century. Maybe it didn't cross the Marx Brothers' minds that they didn't have to have an opera singer or one of the brothers play the harp, so attuned were they to the style of vaudeville.
It's like similar to Hollywood's transition away from being "theater productions on film" when you reach the '60s. This is the way it's always been... until it's not.
The dicthomy of Harpo being this silent terror with big scissors who then breaks out classicly trained harp songs or chico's charm while on the piano still holds up in a big way. Its not laugh out loud funny but so captivating and so foreign from our idea of comedy today.
I agree that this isnt a great Groucho movie. I do wonder if some of his stuff works better in Duck Soup or Horse Feathers, the alluded to Paramount movies which were really just straight transfers of their broadway shows. OR maybe just as the years go by Groucho will be the biggest victim of wordplay as mentioned. Innuendos come and go but tiny rooms last forever.
I appreciate that I wasn't the only one who felt this way about Groucho, and instead it actually ended up being a running thread throughout today's write-ups. Because that would've definitely turned into a "what the hell is wrong with me that I can't appreciate this" thing otherwise.
It's too early in the morning to go too deep on this, but I was thinking about the idea of their being "victims" in comedy. Who's making the joke and who is the target of the joke. I wonder if what we're all experiencing here is discomfort that Groucho never allows himself to be the target of the joke. Maybe there has to be a balance.
(Not that he doesn't experience hardship, but his reaction to that hardship is more or less winking to the camera like "ah man, I guess I lost this one, yuk yuk yuk")
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