More Turkey than Duck
We recently watched this, on Amazon Prime, paying £3.50 for the privilege. I felt robbed. I thought it might be worth watching, chiefly on account of believing Woody Allen is or was a fan.
The Wikipedia page on the film notes that it was a bit of a disappointment at the time, commercially, and opened to mixed reviews. But, apparently, it has subsequently been reevaluated: ‘Duck Soup is now widely considered to be a masterpiece of comedy and the Marx Brothers’ finest film.’
Really!? I’m quite surprised. At just over an hour, it’s quite short. It’s certainly very slight. But it doesn’t feel short. There are segments – dreadful segments – where it decides it’s a musical, and others where it’s just a plain ol’ hokey talkie movie.
I have to confess that I found it awfully boring. Very rarely even remotely funny. And mostly just annoyingly dated.
It really hasn’t aged well.
Apparently Groucho himself said, regarding the ‘significance’ of it’s alleged political satire; ‘What significance? We were just four Jews trying to get a laugh.’ That’s how it looks to me.
It has always struck me that the best of Laurel & Hardy are the skits; attempts to ‘long-form’ their comedy into full-length films mostly come out turgid. Partly this is due to the dilution of their comedy with filler material, poor supporting acting, and the perceived need to embed the zaniness into some kind of coherent plot.
I think all of the above are happening here. And the sense of being very underwhelmed and disappointed reminds me of reading Voltaire’s Candide.
There are some good lines. Groucho, unsurprisingly, getting practically all of them. But his relentless schtick grows wearisome. And there are even some funny physical clowning bits, mostly for Harpo. Zeppo’s straight-man role, as Rufus T Firefly’s hapless adjutant, is such that it feels like a Marx Bros trio circus outing, with Groucho, Harpo and Chico as the clowns.
How this has ever made any lists of the ‘top 100’ or ‘best ever’ bewilders me. I note that Peter Sellers nicked a few gags: for example, he has Inspector Clouseau repeat the ‘cracking the safe/radio’ scene, for example. Ironically I prefer his version of the joke. I think it’s much better executed.
Hitchcock coined the rather splendid term McGuffin, as a suitably intriguing yet clearly contemptuous name for the ‘engine’ of a film’s plot. The ‘plot-driver’ here, with Groucho as the aforementioned leader of Fredonia (Rutles P. Wildebeest, or summat), going to war with neighbouring Sylvania, doesn’t seem to me worthy of the slightest attention. After all, that’s what the makers of the movie accord it.
It’s all so silly and nonsensical it seems far more a vehicle for wisecracking and buffoonery than even the remotest attempt at meaningful satire. Released in 1933, when America was deep in recession and depression, and with fascism running rampant around the globe, it looks to me much more like escapist fluff than satire.
Rarely has a film I’d hoped to enjoy dragged so slowly, despite being so short, that I’ve abandoned it. Well, I bailed out of Duck Soup…
(And this despite the fact we were actually eating duck soup that very same evening!)