BEFORE: It's finally here, big movie #2K, and I should probably be thrilled, but instead I'm just sort of strung out and exhausted. Not from watching movies, although I'm sure staying up so late every night doesn't help, but really work's been a bear dealing with the release of CHEATIN' in theaters across the U.S., and doing the necessary publicity and promotion work, also working out my boss's travel schedule for making appearances at screenings across the country. I'll finally have a chance to catch up on some accounting work and other projects while he's gone, provided there aren't too many daily fires to put out.
This is going to wrap things up for my Marx Brothers chain, I wish I could say it's been a blast, but mostly it's been pretty blah. Call me crazy, but I'll take a modern-day comedy, as crappy as they are, over one made in the 1930's. These films definitely had their time, but that whole era no longer exists - plus there's the inherent sadness that comes from watching images of dead people on the screen. Sure, their work lives on, but it's sort of like watching ghosts. Moderately amusing ghosts.
THE PLOT: Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Great Dictator" (Movie #1,887)
AFTER: Definitely the best of the bunch as far as Marx Brothers films go - and I'm not sure I can exactly quantify why, but it's something to do with this film being just pure nonsense from start to finish. In other films like "Horse Feathers" or "A Day at the Races", we see the boys in more realistic situations like a school or a sporting event, very regulated places that get infected with their brand of controlled chaos. But putting them in a fictional country with no rules, essentially setting them wild, that's another story.
Just to think there's a country where someone can be appointed president on a rich woman's say-so, well that kind of contradicts the "Free" in "Freedonia", doesn't it? And Rufus T. Firefly's decrees are contradictory, right from the start - laying down unreasonable laws (in song, of course) about chewing gum and taxes, graft and marriage. Of course, Zeppo's in tow as Firefly's right-hand man, the same position he held in Capt. Spaulding's employ.
The other two brothers show up (together, as usual) as spies for Sylvania, assigned to get the dirt on Firefly. And of course they go directly from selling him peanuts to being members of his cabinet. What better way to keep an eye on him?
This film is perhaps most famous for the "mirror" sequence, where Chico and Harpo dress in similar nightclothes as Groucho's character, and when they're spotted, they pretend to be his reflection in a mirror, so he doesn't realize that an enemy spy is in the room. This highlights an interesting aspect of the four brothers - if you take away the wigs, hats, glasses and greasepaint, supposedly they all looked very much alike. That probably explains why they wore the distinguishing wigs and hats in the first place. Zeppo even worked as Groucho's stand-in during the power outage scenes in "Animal Crackers", allowing them to keep shooting the film on a day that Groucho wasn't available.
So here they put the old family resemblance to good use - when you dress Harpo and Chico up in similar nightgowns, and give them fake glasses and greasepaint moustaches, of course they're going to look like Groucho, enough to pass as his own reflection. But I do have a NITPICK POINT about the scene - it's set up with the breaking of an actual mirror, and there's glass all over the floor. Mere seconds later, Groucho arrives and naturally mistakes the disguised Harpo for his own reflection, because there was a mirror there before (and conveniently, an identical looking room on the other side). But where did all the broken glass go? There certainly wasn't enough time to clean it all up.
I'm sorry, I know it's a comedy and should be therefore taken as the stuff of nonsense - but these are the little things that bother me. This is also the film that Woody Allen is seen watching in "Hannah and Her Sisters" when he's depressed and suicidal and needs cheering up. God, what does that say about me, if this film cheers up Woody, but it's not doing the same for me? I mean, I enjoyed it all right, it's a funny film, but it wouldn't even crack into my Top 10 list of favorite comedies. To each his own, I guess.
Also starring Margaret Dumont (also carrying over from "Animal Crackers"), Raquel Torres, Louis Calhern (last seen in "Notorious"), Charles Middleton (last seen in "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House").
RATING: 5 out of 10 burning hats
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