Duck Soup (U.)
1933. Directed by Leo McCarey.
Starring Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo, Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern and Edgar Kennedy. 68 mins.
Duck Soup is the film that a depressed and suicidal Woody Allen in Hannah and Her Sisters sees after he has wandered randomly into a cinema and which restores his faith in life. Watching it didn't really restore anything for me, but it was the most concentrated injection of joy I have experienced in the last few months. It is at least as funny as you remember it, maybe just a bit funnier.
This is the one where Groucho is elected president of the small republic of Freedonia and then plunges it into war with the neighbouring Sylvania, for whom Chico and Harpo are employed as spies. It is now generally accepted to be their best work, being the funniest, fastest, most irreverent and most loved of their films. It's also, crucially, the one with no musical interludes. (There are some brief songs but they are funny and don't bring that film to a crashing halt like the harp numbers do in most every other one of their films.)
Duck Soup is often cited as a great anti-war satire but such is the spirit of irreverence that even that principle is cut down. Groucho frequently breaks the fourth wall by addressing his quips directly at the audience but the film breaks the other three regularly with its casual disregard for narrative coherence and consistent characterisation. Harpo and Chico start off spying for the rival Sylvania but flip their allegiances a number of times, while Groucho changes side in the course of a monologue. He'll start out with an insult for Dumont, pitch woo and then flip back to a cruel putdown. The film will casually drop what may appear to be a cutting satirical point – Groucho to Harpo as he sends him off on a suicide mission, “remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are,” but will then race on to a piece of slapstick nonsense, without stopping to admire its cynicism. It may be about the absurdity of military conflict but comedically it is an expression of Total War. Everything is pulled apart, only the belly laughs remain.
1933. Directed by Leo McCarey.
Starring Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo, Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern and Edgar Kennedy. 68 mins.
Duck Soup is the film that a depressed and suicidal Woody Allen in Hannah and Her Sisters sees after he has wandered randomly into a cinema and which restores his faith in life. Watching it didn't really restore anything for me, but it was the most concentrated injection of joy I have experienced in the last few months. It is at least as funny as you remember it, maybe just a bit funnier.
This is the one where Groucho is elected president of the small republic of Freedonia and then plunges it into war with the neighbouring Sylvania, for whom Chico and Harpo are employed as spies. It is now generally accepted to be their best work, being the funniest, fastest, most irreverent and most loved of their films. It's also, crucially, the one with no musical interludes. (There are some brief songs but they are funny and don't bring that film to a crashing halt like the harp numbers do in most every other one of their films.)
Duck Soup is often cited as a great anti-war satire but such is the spirit of irreverence that even that principle is cut down. Groucho frequently breaks the fourth wall by addressing his quips directly at the audience but the film breaks the other three regularly with its casual disregard for narrative coherence and consistent characterisation. Harpo and Chico start off spying for the rival Sylvania but flip their allegiances a number of times, while Groucho changes side in the course of a monologue. He'll start out with an insult for Dumont, pitch woo and then flip back to a cruel putdown. The film will casually drop what may appear to be a cutting satirical point – Groucho to Harpo as he sends him off on a suicide mission, “remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are,” but will then race on to a piece of slapstick nonsense, without stopping to admire its cynicism. It may be about the absurdity of military conflict but comedically it is an expression of Total War. Everything is pulled apart, only the belly laughs remain.
