Our first film from 1930 was the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers. The kids had, years ago, seen 1933's Duck Soup, so they had some sort of idea of the type of humor they were about to see. This was the Marx Brothers' second movie, and, like 1929's The Cocoanuts (their first), Animal Crackers was based on a stage play in which they'd earlier appeared -- which is immediately apparent, since the movie is presented very much like a play, with actors facing forward and often speaking less to each other and more to an unseen notional audience. As with all of the sound pictures we've seen to date, the technology is a little creaky and the audio muddy, making subtitles occasionally helpful. The stage version was written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, though only the latter received credit for the screenplay. One of the strengths of the movie is that beneath the Marx Brothers' anarchism is a decently well-plotted farce, which one could imagine being staged straight-forwardly. It involves a famous painting to be exhibited by Arabella Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont.) Meanwhile her daughter (Lillian Roth) and an aspiring painter (Hal Thompson) want to replace the painting with a copy to prove his talent, while two other women want to replace the painting simply to embarrass Dumont. Of course, the Marx Brothers engage with the plot only as a launching-off point, and rarely do much to service it -- but the fact that it exists provides a certain structure to the movie, and helps keep it from being a series of unrelated comedic bits.
The Marx Brothers play four of the attendees at the party at which the painting is to be unveiled. Their comedic characteristics are so well known that it seems absurd to detail them, but the twin poles of Harpo and Groucho are established early on for an audience for whom their comedy was still relatively new. Immediately upon Groucho's first appearance, he begins his barrage of insults, wordplay, and non-sequiturs. Similarly shortly after Harpo arrives, he grabs a gun and begins shooting at people, not maliciously, but simply as an unpredictable agent of chaos. Chico is somewhere in between these two poles, more closely aligned with Harpo plot-wise, though his comedy is more verbal, like Groucho, but less hostile and more passive-aggressive. Margaret Dumont truly nails the thankless role of straight woman, both in setting up jokes and keeping the plot moving. It also occurred to me on this watching that she does a great deal of work in normalizing the brothers' behavior -- reacting and queuing the audience to react as if the brothers have said something slightly rude or off-putting, rather than completely crazy. At this point in the Marx brothers' film career, Zeppo was also present. A decade younger than the other three, and without as distinctive a persona, he still has some strong scenes, including the dictation scene with Groucho late in the movie.
It is a cliché that comedy dates badly, and the vast majority of comedy from this era either isn't to my taste at all (e.g. the Laurel and Hardy shorts from last week,) or is, from my perspective, pleasant and borderline amusing, but not actually laugh-inducing (e.g. much of Harold Lloyd.) The Marx Brothers, for me, are in another category; though a lot of the material is old-fashioned, or at times even incomprehensible due to then-current references, there are also moments that genuinely make me laugh. The rapid pace and variety of jokes is part of what I like, and additionally there is a lot of fourth-wall breaking and contention with the structure of the movie, which seems to anticipate Monty Python and a type of comedy that became more popular decades later (on which I'm sure the Marx Brothers were a direct influence.) I also like the lack of sentimentality and neediness, which is in contrast to Chaplin, for instance.
It is definitely true that this film is quite dated however. One of the reasons that the pace of jokes is so important is that many of them fall flat. (Groucho in fact explicitly acknowledges this, saying directly to the camera at one point, "Well, all the jokes can't be good. You've got to expect that once in a while.") In addition to the technology issues mentioned above, there are a number of not-so-great musical numbers, including one about an hour in, between Roth and Thompson, followed by Harpo playing the harp, which together nearly kill the momentum of the movie. Additionally Groucho's nominal character is an "African explorer," who arrives in a palanquin carried by black actors in ostensibly traditional African dress, which is followed by some jokes on the same subject that exhibit approximately the same level of sensitivity.
So in short, I wouldn't fault anyone who found this film too alien or off-putting to truly enjoy, but for me the Marx Brothers, particularly as represented in this film, are among the very few comedians of this era that I find genuinely funny.
Next week we'll skip ahead to our first film from 1932, the Marx Brothers fourth film Horse Feathers. This happened to be showing at the Alamo in Ashburn shortly after we saw Animal Crackers, so we decided to see it slightly out of sequence.
