The Marx Brothers were set adrift by Paramount in 1933 after making arguably their best satiric comedy DUCK SOUP. For two years they rarely worked together (an exception was a briefly heard radio show called FLYWHEEL, SHYSTER, AND FLYWHEEL about crooked lawyers which had Groucho and Chico - unfortunately, like their silent film HUMORISK, the recordings of the show no longer exist*). Zeppo left the team, to pursue a career as a movie agent. Chico and Harpo did some band touring.
[*The scrips have survived, and been published.]
Then Chico made a valuable contact - he played cards with Irving Thalberg, who was almost as powerful a figure at MGM as Louis B. Mayer. Thalberg decided to sign the brothers to a contract where he'd be their producer. The contract was a unique one - it promised the brothers a percentage of the gross of the first two films, which was a rarity in Hollywood acting contracts. The contract also enabled the brothers to perform their material from the film live on stage. This enabled them to hone material as they did in vaudeville and on Broadway. They were lucky in the writers for this first film (George S. Kaufman, Morris Ryskine, and Al Boasberg). And they had a good cast, including their old "female" Marx Brother Margaret Dumont.
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA has (since it appeared in 1935) been accepted as one of the best Marx vehicles, and ties with DUCK SOUP as their supreme work. It's detractors say that it had too many points that would bring down the Brothers later films after A DAY AT THE RACES, such as the love story that is tied to the plot and the fact that the brothers are frequently brought to a low point from which to rise with all their power against their opponents. The latter seemed to "humanize" them too much. Actually the love stories had been part of their movies since THE COCONUTS, and in HORSE FEATHERS and DUCK SOUP the villains did momentarily trounce the brothers. As for humanizing the brothers, their antics at the opera here and the race track in A DAY AT THE RACES are so devious and strenuous you find them comic supermen in both films. It is the tragedy of the post 1938 years (after ROOM SERVICE) that Mayer simply did not care to help them as Thalberg had done.
The plot of the film is how Otis P. Driftwood (Groucho), an agent for Mrs. Claypool (Dumont) (trying to make a splash in society) arranges to have her meet Herman Gottlieb (Ruman), the head of the Metropolitan Opera, while they are in Italy. Ruman is willing to have Dumont finance the season of the Met, and is trying to sign up one Rodolfo Lasspari (Walter Woolf King) as his new tenor. King is a good tenor, but an egotist and bully, constantly beating his servant Tomasso (Harpo). He has been trying to get his soprano Rosa Castaldi (Kitty Carlisle) to take an interest in him on a social basis. But Rosa is in love with a junior tenor in the chorus, Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones). Ricardo's friend Fiorello (Chico) is his agent, and manages to hoodwink Driftwood into contracting to get Ricardo to be the lead tenor at the Met, while Gottlieb manages to get a contract with Lasspari. The plot follows how the characters get to America by ocean liner (Ricardo, Fiorello, and Tomasso as stowaways), how the stowaways and Driftwood run afoul of the law by a public hoax, how Driftwood and Rosa both lose their positions at the Opera, and how the Marxes get their revenge on Gottlieb, the New York Police, and Lasspari in the concluding twenty minutes of the film.
Pauline Kael once described the conclusion as: "The Brothers do to IL TROVATORI what should be done to Il TROVATORI." It is a worthy target as far as popular operas go. Verdi's music is wonderful as ever in that opera, but the storyline is so complicated and ridiculous (about a missing nobleman's son, and the rivalry of the surviving son with a gypsy for the love of the heroine) that people tend not to consider it among their favorite Verdi operas (not like, say AIDA or RIGOLETTO). It's improbable plot involving stolen children and gypsies is shown for what it is when (in demolishing the production) Harpo causes various backdrops to rise and fall, including a pushcart on an American street and a battleship's gun turret to fall behind the gypsy woman's campfire! You just cannot take it seriously.
The conclusion is wonderful, but so is the double talk of the contract negotiations between Groucho and Chico (later repeated with Ruman), the great stateroom sequence (written by Al Boasberg), the City Hall greeting by the Mayor to the three Russian aviators, and the wonderful almost surreal sequence where Police Sgt. Hennesey (Robert Emmett O'Connor) goes between two rooms and a fire escape to find beds flying from one to another, and to find an old woman and a man with a strange beard and mustache reading a paper at the end (Harpo and Groucho - Chico pretending to be a chair underneath Harpo)- believing he has managed to enter the wrong apartment! The singing by all three leads (King also had a decent voice) is fine, with Jones and Carlisle given a first rate tune ("Alone") for their duet in the departure sequence. Jones has a decent follow-up with "Cosi, Cosa", turned into a major production with Harpo, Chico, and the "immigrant" passengers singing and dancing to it.
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA remains a first rate comic masterpiece, and a fine addition to the Marx Brothers' work in general.
[*The scrips have survived, and been published.]
Then Chico made a valuable contact - he played cards with Irving Thalberg, who was almost as powerful a figure at MGM as Louis B. Mayer. Thalberg decided to sign the brothers to a contract where he'd be their producer. The contract was a unique one - it promised the brothers a percentage of the gross of the first two films, which was a rarity in Hollywood acting contracts. The contract also enabled the brothers to perform their material from the film live on stage. This enabled them to hone material as they did in vaudeville and on Broadway. They were lucky in the writers for this first film (George S. Kaufman, Morris Ryskine, and Al Boasberg). And they had a good cast, including their old "female" Marx Brother Margaret Dumont.
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA has (since it appeared in 1935) been accepted as one of the best Marx vehicles, and ties with DUCK SOUP as their supreme work. It's detractors say that it had too many points that would bring down the Brothers later films after A DAY AT THE RACES, such as the love story that is tied to the plot and the fact that the brothers are frequently brought to a low point from which to rise with all their power against their opponents. The latter seemed to "humanize" them too much. Actually the love stories had been part of their movies since THE COCONUTS, and in HORSE FEATHERS and DUCK SOUP the villains did momentarily trounce the brothers. As for humanizing the brothers, their antics at the opera here and the race track in A DAY AT THE RACES are so devious and strenuous you find them comic supermen in both films. It is the tragedy of the post 1938 years (after ROOM SERVICE) that Mayer simply did not care to help them as Thalberg had done.
The plot of the film is how Otis P. Driftwood (Groucho), an agent for Mrs. Claypool (Dumont) (trying to make a splash in society) arranges to have her meet Herman Gottlieb (Ruman), the head of the Metropolitan Opera, while they are in Italy. Ruman is willing to have Dumont finance the season of the Met, and is trying to sign up one Rodolfo Lasspari (Walter Woolf King) as his new tenor. King is a good tenor, but an egotist and bully, constantly beating his servant Tomasso (Harpo). He has been trying to get his soprano Rosa Castaldi (Kitty Carlisle) to take an interest in him on a social basis. But Rosa is in love with a junior tenor in the chorus, Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones). Ricardo's friend Fiorello (Chico) is his agent, and manages to hoodwink Driftwood into contracting to get Ricardo to be the lead tenor at the Met, while Gottlieb manages to get a contract with Lasspari. The plot follows how the characters get to America by ocean liner (Ricardo, Fiorello, and Tomasso as stowaways), how the stowaways and Driftwood run afoul of the law by a public hoax, how Driftwood and Rosa both lose their positions at the Opera, and how the Marxes get their revenge on Gottlieb, the New York Police, and Lasspari in the concluding twenty minutes of the film.
Pauline Kael once described the conclusion as: "The Brothers do to IL TROVATORI what should be done to Il TROVATORI." It is a worthy target as far as popular operas go. Verdi's music is wonderful as ever in that opera, but the storyline is so complicated and ridiculous (about a missing nobleman's son, and the rivalry of the surviving son with a gypsy for the love of the heroine) that people tend not to consider it among their favorite Verdi operas (not like, say AIDA or RIGOLETTO). It's improbable plot involving stolen children and gypsies is shown for what it is when (in demolishing the production) Harpo causes various backdrops to rise and fall, including a pushcart on an American street and a battleship's gun turret to fall behind the gypsy woman's campfire! You just cannot take it seriously.
The conclusion is wonderful, but so is the double talk of the contract negotiations between Groucho and Chico (later repeated with Ruman), the great stateroom sequence (written by Al Boasberg), the City Hall greeting by the Mayor to the three Russian aviators, and the wonderful almost surreal sequence where Police Sgt. Hennesey (Robert Emmett O'Connor) goes between two rooms and a fire escape to find beds flying from one to another, and to find an old woman and a man with a strange beard and mustache reading a paper at the end (Harpo and Groucho - Chico pretending to be a chair underneath Harpo)- believing he has managed to enter the wrong apartment! The singing by all three leads (King also had a decent voice) is fine, with Jones and Carlisle given a first rate tune ("Alone") for their duet in the departure sequence. Jones has a decent follow-up with "Cosi, Cosa", turned into a major production with Harpo, Chico, and the "immigrant" passengers singing and dancing to it.
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA remains a first rate comic masterpiece, and a fine addition to the Marx Brothers' work in general.