Duck Soup

I really like the Marx Brothers brand of zany humor.

Recently I re-watched their movie Duck Soup and it reminded me of just how funny the brothers can be.

Duck Soup is my favorite of all the Marx Brothers films–at least of all the ones I’ve seen thus far (there are still some I have yet to watch). It’s also widely considered the best of their films by film critics.

One note for readers who aren’t native English-speakers: The title of the movie is not to be taken literally. Americans almost never eat duck soup. Instead, the phrase "duck soup" is a metaphor that refers to something that is very easy. If you say, "That’s just duck soup," you mean "That’s very easy" (not that many folks use this phrase much any more; presumably it dates to an era when more Americans went duck hunting).

The film was made in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. It shows the Marx Brothers at the peak of their form. (In fact, this was the last Marx Brothers film to feature Zeppo–the Marx Brother who served as "romantic interest" in their early films. After this, Zeppo stayed behind the scenes and let Groucho, Chico, and Harpo completely take over the spotlight.)

Among other classic bits, Duck Soup contains the famous "mirror gag."

In this scene, Groucho is confronted with Harpo (and later Chico) dressed exactly as he is.

They mimmic his behavior to an impossibly exact degree, creating the illusion that he is looking into a mirror when he is really looking at someone mimmicing him.

This was not the first or the last time the mirror gag would be used. It was previously used in a couple of silent films and was later used by Lucille Ball (with Harpo Marx) and on The X-Files.

In addition to physical comedy involving Harpo, there’s also a lot of wordplay involving Groucho and Chico. Recently here on the blog we were talking about the nature of comedy and the subject of wordplay came up as a form of (frequently) unhurtful humor that doesn’t presuppose that anyone is unfortunate. It can just be a game where we see how cleverly words can be bounced off each other.

The Marx Brothers were great at that. (Though some of their wordplay does contain barbs–particularly toward their regular leading lady Margaret Dumont–as well as occasional politically incorrect remarks since these films were made in the 1930s.)

I don’t remember when but I apparently saw this films as a boy.

How do I know that if I don’t remember it?

Because the film messed me up with respect to American history. We Americanistas all know of "the midnight ride of Paul Revere"–a famous event in our history in which the silversmith Paul Revere made a . . . uh . . . midnight ride and warned the countryside that British troops were coming in from Boston.

This occurred in 1775, the year before we threw off the shackles of Our British Oppressors (now Our British Best Buddies).

According to the story, Paul Revere was supposed to watch the tower of the Old North Church, where he would see one lantern if the British troops were coming by land and two lanterns if they were coming by sea. In HISTORY, he saw two lanters and rode off telling people that the British Redcoats were coming by sea, but in Duck Soup‘s re-enactment of the scene there’s a joke where Groucho sees three lanterns, and he declares that "They’re coming by land and sea!"

I saw that as a boy and that one image sank into my brain. The image of those three lanterns being lit stuck with me, and I thought I’d seen it in one of those stiff, formal "you are there" history reenactment films they’d show us in school.

I was in my twenties or thirties before I realized that this was A JOKE and not what really happened.

The film makes fun of all kinds of history–including the contemporary European history of when it was made. It features the fortunes of an imaginary European country named Fredonia, which is locked in conflict with the neighboring country, Sylvania. It deals with the problems of taxes and economics and national pride and self-defense that plagued the nations of Europe between the two World Wars.

Evil dictator Benito Mussolini thought it so closely reflected the events of the day in Italy that he BANNED the film, much to the delight of the Marx Brothers.

The movie is a regular history-slaw, which must have used just about every historical costume that Paramount Pictures had in their wardrobe department.

Despite the fact that Duck Soup is commonly regarded as the greatest of the Marx Brothers films (by me and others), it was for many years unavailable on DVD.

It was apparently released on DVD early on, but went out of print and was only available at insanely expensive prices (like $300 a disk!).

But it has recently been re-released and is now available again at HUMAN prices!

GET THE FILM ALONE.

GET IT AS PART OF A 5-DISK MARX BROTHERS SET FROM PARAMOUNT.