What can we say? Apart from the obvious. And that's to say that "Duck Soup" is the most brilliant of all the Marx Brothers' films, their finest masterpiece, the zenith of their unmistakable delirious and exhilarating comedy. It's a movie so full of visionary inventions, laugh-out-loud moments, memorable one-liners that you simply can't help but it burst into laughter.
It's a movie so full of genius and so ahead of its time (it even anticipated Chaplin's "The Great Dictator") that even if back in the days, maybe because of this precise reason (and maybe because its cynicism may have not been the most well receivable sentiment in the midst of the Great Depression), it was kinda ignored or criticized or marginalized, it can still be seen today and it can still resonate and - let's say it again - make you laugh your guts out while, at the same time, make you reflect upon certain matters (for example about the sadly never-out-of-fashion warmongering craziness of the powers-that-be.)
The Four Brothers, their gagmen and screenwriters, and the director expertly and wonderfully mix together anti-militarist satire, physical comedy and - of course - the usual unforgettable Groucho's one-liners, producing a caustic, chaotic, grandiose, wild and fast-paced roller-coster of a movie, that never shies away from launching sarcastic gibes left and right, in so doing banning any pretense of political correctness (if we are to use an anachronistic definition.) That's a good thing: because, clearly, political correctness, moralism and prudery are the death of satire. And what we have here is the pinnacle of satire: to this day it's still quite impressive to see just how fine and refined and hard-hitting the satirical comments are in this 1933 movie.
Produced in a period when the most obnoxious and devastating tragedies of the 20th century were to some degree yet to come, "Duck Soup" is interwoven with slight allusions to the likes of chemical weapons, mass slaughters, future apocalyptic wars to be provoked by the hate and irrationality of delirious rulers (especially proto-fascist rulers...) and their cohort, exceptionalist, jingoistic and extreme rhetoric brought to their most awful ("Hail, Hail Freedonia", so much a land of "the brave and the free" to throw itself head and toes in a stupid and preventable war.) What we have said puts this movie on the same level as the Chaplin's one but also, for example, on the same level as Kubrick's unforgotten masterpiece "Doctor Strangelove".
The freshness and novelty, and the infallible pace, owe something to the ability of McCarey who - in contrast with previous and even subsequent Marx Brothers' movies - "decides to get rid of most of the standard and expected vaudevillian musical moments, to give more room to Harpo's pantomimes, to restrain Groucho's logorrhea, and to ultimately confer the story a surreal and zany style" (F. Di Giammatteo) devoid of any useless time wasting gibberish and packed with a never-ending string of comic inventions more often than not crazy and hilarious (two examples: the mirror scene, which echoes Max Linder's "Seven Years Bad Luck", and the absurd visual gag concerning a certain peculiar "presidential vehicle" that's able to "travel while never getting anywhere").
There's really not much there left to say: at this point I can only repeat myself. "Duck Soup" is the apotheosis of cinematic comedy, specifically of the Marx Brothers' peculiar blend of it. It's an all-around masterpiece of social-conscious satire and entertainment. It's a masterpiece, period. An unmissable milestone.
Duck Soup = Dope Soup, everyone!
It's a movie so full of genius and so ahead of its time (it even anticipated Chaplin's "The Great Dictator") that even if back in the days, maybe because of this precise reason (and maybe because its cynicism may have not been the most well receivable sentiment in the midst of the Great Depression), it was kinda ignored or criticized or marginalized, it can still be seen today and it can still resonate and - let's say it again - make you laugh your guts out while, at the same time, make you reflect upon certain matters (for example about the sadly never-out-of-fashion warmongering craziness of the powers-that-be.)
The Four Brothers, their gagmen and screenwriters, and the director expertly and wonderfully mix together anti-militarist satire, physical comedy and - of course - the usual unforgettable Groucho's one-liners, producing a caustic, chaotic, grandiose, wild and fast-paced roller-coster of a movie, that never shies away from launching sarcastic gibes left and right, in so doing banning any pretense of political correctness (if we are to use an anachronistic definition.) That's a good thing: because, clearly, political correctness, moralism and prudery are the death of satire. And what we have here is the pinnacle of satire: to this day it's still quite impressive to see just how fine and refined and hard-hitting the satirical comments are in this 1933 movie.
Produced in a period when the most obnoxious and devastating tragedies of the 20th century were to some degree yet to come, "Duck Soup" is interwoven with slight allusions to the likes of chemical weapons, mass slaughters, future apocalyptic wars to be provoked by the hate and irrationality of delirious rulers (especially proto-fascist rulers...) and their cohort, exceptionalist, jingoistic and extreme rhetoric brought to their most awful ("Hail, Hail Freedonia", so much a land of "the brave and the free" to throw itself head and toes in a stupid and preventable war.) What we have said puts this movie on the same level as the Chaplin's one but also, for example, on the same level as Kubrick's unforgotten masterpiece "Doctor Strangelove".
The freshness and novelty, and the infallible pace, owe something to the ability of McCarey who - in contrast with previous and even subsequent Marx Brothers' movies - "decides to get rid of most of the standard and expected vaudevillian musical moments, to give more room to Harpo's pantomimes, to restrain Groucho's logorrhea, and to ultimately confer the story a surreal and zany style" (F. Di Giammatteo) devoid of any useless time wasting gibberish and packed with a never-ending string of comic inventions more often than not crazy and hilarious (two examples: the mirror scene, which echoes Max Linder's "Seven Years Bad Luck", and the absurd visual gag concerning a certain peculiar "presidential vehicle" that's able to "travel while never getting anywhere").
There's really not much there left to say: at this point I can only repeat myself. "Duck Soup" is the apotheosis of cinematic comedy, specifically of the Marx Brothers' peculiar blend of it. It's an all-around masterpiece of social-conscious satire and entertainment. It's a masterpiece, period. An unmissable milestone.
Duck Soup = Dope Soup, everyone!