Cast:
Groucho Marx (Otis B. Driftwood), Chico Marx (Fiorello), Harpo Marx (Tomasso), Kitty Carlisle (Rosa Castaldi), Allan Jones (Ricardo Baroni), Margaret Dumont (Mrs. Claypool), Sig Ruman (Herman Gottlieb), Walter Woolf King (Rodolfo Lassparri), and Robert Emmet O'Connor (Sergeant Henderson) Directed by Sam Wood.
Review:
In fairness, Sam Wood does sound like a name I've covered before. But so it goes. Wood actually was a real estate broker in his young years in California before the growing industry of film for the 1900s eventually became something worth investing time into, starting as a movie assistant and eventually assistant director, most notably with Paramount Pictures for a number of years. He became a director by the turn of the 1910s with Wallace Reid. His efficient nature in getting films done landed him several opportunities to direct for a variety of places over the next two decades, although his longest tenure ended up being with MGM, where he worked in both silent and sound productions starting in 1927. In the middle of his tenure there, Wood ended up as the one directing a key assignment with the Marx Brothers because Irving Thalberg needed a dependable guy to direct the group (now consisting of Groucho, Harpo, and Chico), who had recently departed Paramount Pictures after five features because of contractual disputes that boiled over with Duck Soup (1933). The resulting success led to Wood directing the next Marx movie with A Day at the Races (released in 1937 months after Thalberg's death). For the Marx Brothers, they worked with MGM further on with At the Circus (1939), Go West (1940), and The Big Store (1941). Wood moved on to a wavering list of noted work, most notably with Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) before he became a freelance director for the remainder of his career and life, which led to films such as Our Town (1940), Kitty Foyle (1940), and Kings Row (1942). During production of Ambush (1950), Wood died from a heart attack at the age of 66 in 1949. Incidentally, both of Wood's Marx movies served as loose inspiration for the 1992 movie Brain Donors.
With this film, certain parts of the routines were basically workshopped with live stage performances that the brothers did on the road that was performed around the country prior to filming, with Wood traveling with the group from city to city to watch the audience reaction to the gags. The writing credits went to James Kevin McGuinness for the story, George S. Kaufman & Morrie Ryskind for the screenplay while gagman Al Boasberg contributed uncredited dialogue. If Thalberg's idea that the brothers would be best served by having a solid framework to hold up a grab-bag of jokes, well, he probably had a point. Basically, you get a good chunk of Marx mayhem with a handful of gags that come and go with solid efficiency depending on just how much you love seeing a group of oddballs casually loop in and out of affairs that either come off as trivial or just about the right sort of absurd. Obviously, the stateroom sequence is a key highlight of the film in that high-desired quality of rhythm and setup, although I would say the scene with the group trying to evade trouble involving furniture-moving is a nice favorite. Admittedly, the aspects involving Carlisle and Jones is the weakest part of the film, particularly since Dumont is such a solid straight presence anyway. But Groucho is Groucho in terms of just slinging lines full of zip with efficient nature that manages to evoke the charm within conman routines. And of course, there is the usual bumbling from Chico and the not-exactly silent Harpo. As a whole, it isn't hard to see why the Marx Brothers thought A Night at the Opera was one of their favorite films, as it manages to zing on a consistent level with its humor and execution to where one is immediately chuckling with its trio of stars with warm familiarity regardless of how many Marx movies you've seen.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
