Duck Soup
“These are the laws of my administration…”
Beaten down by the Depression and not at all accustomed to blatant
political satire, audiences and critics didn’t quite know what to do
with Duck Soup, a 1933 madcap farce. Neither did Paramount,
which wasn’t exactly getting rich off the brothers Marx, who had a
five-picture deal there at the time. But nowadays, we know exactly what
to do…watch it as much as we can (there’s a lot of comedy packed into
these seventy minutes) and crack up again and again.
To stave off bankruptcy and potential revolution, rich dowager Mrs.
Teasdale (Margaret Dumont, a Marx movie frequenter) agrees to donate
twenty million dollars to her country’s coffers—but only if Rufus T.
Firefly (Groucho) is appointed as Freedonia’s new president. She’s
tired of all the corruption in politics, and she carries a bit of a
torch for him besides. At his inaugural ball, Firefly shows up late and
then bursts into a song about all the ways he hopes to abuse his power.
And at his political functions—a cabinet meeting (sweepingly doing away
with business both old and new) and a Mrs. Teasdale tea party—he
gleefully dispenses puns, insults and all around anti-politics.
While Firefly wreaks havoc, the evil Trentino, an ambassador from
neighboring country Sylvania, is scheming to win Mrs. Teasdale’s hand
and her money, so that he can usurp Firefly’s throne and reign over all
the land. He orders his two best spies, Pinky (Harpo) and Chicolini
(Chico), to gather discrediting dirt on his nemesis. Of course, in the
course of this duo’s vaudevillian reconnaissance, they are chosen as
important members of Firefly’s administration, they famously torment a
helpless lemonade vendor, and Pinky famously imitates Firefly as he
vogues wildly in front of what he thinks is a real mirror.
Firefly and Trentino huffily declare war on each other, after which
the four Marx brothers and assorted Freedonia citizenry join together
for the gleeful ditty “The Country’s Going to War.” Firefly swaggers
around headquarters in an array of military ensembles, and the war
machine rages (well, clunks) on, dispensing bullets to the rump and
fruit to the noggin.
None of the usual Marx Brothers romance angles or harp solos
here…just classic gags, classic banter and shrewd satiric jabs at
little things like politics, government institutions, the legal system,
despots, warmongers and your everyday lemonade vendor. Made in the
years that Hitler and Mussolini were rising to power, and in a world
that was no stranger to war, they were topical targets indeed.
But politics aside, Duck Soup has always been, first and foremost, a comedy. And along with the classic A Night at the Opera, it is considered by most to be the Marx Brothers' best.
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