A Night at the Opera
Ah, the Marx Brothers. It seems “Duck Soup” and this film are their most acclaimed films, and now I have seen both of them! What to come now? I hope that my (partial) enjoyment for these films will not ruin my impression of the others.
All in all, I found this one to be brilliant. Like with almost every funny film relying upon chaining one funny scene to another, there are some better scenes and there are some worse. This film obviously suffered from the atrociously high amount of ridiculous singing. It’s a shame for the actors because they actually could sing, and it was painful to see that they had to sing so the film studio could sell off their songs – it’s like these harem anime where musical aspects (either in the form of one special episode or as a recurring theme throughout the show) are worked in to boost the CD sales. I also have never seen “Il trovatore” so the opera experience of the film is not all too great either.
The best music of the film was when the Marx Brothers were playing the piano… But why the heck were there tons of gypsy children on deck? How random?
That is not what you are supposed to like about the film, after all. It’s also not about the happy end (which is so unnecessary that it should not be a problem that I am spoiling it here). The film is indeed mostly about the interaction between the Marx Brothers themselves, creating a few scenes which were funny beyond belief. They might be staple scenes, but since I have not seen all that much of them, I thoroughly enjoy them as something nice and fresh and inherently funny.
In the end, I am not sure whether I’d call myself a Marx Brothers fan – I certainly am a Monty Python fan even if they did a lot of stuff I found utterly boring and downright silly. But hey, there are at least 3 more of their films out there waiting for me…