However there are plans by the rival state Sylvania to foment trouble in the state with a view to invading. Her choice is the ‘fearless fighter’, Rufus T Firefly (Groucho Marx). Mrs Teasdale agrees to give Freedonia money on one condition – that there is a change of leader. The state is bankrupt and begs for financial aid from the wealthy Mrs Teasdale (played by Margaret Dumont, a regular actress in Marx Brothers movies, and often called the Fifth Marx Brother). The action takes place in the fictional country of Freedonia. To describe the plot of Duck Soup is to concentrate on its least important part, but I’ll give a brief summary. Having said that, my personal opinion is that each one of the Marx Brothers’ five Paramount movies was better than the last one.
#MUSIC FROM DUCK SOUP MARX BROTHERS MOVIE#
It would be two years before the Marx Brothers returned to the cinema with A Night at the Opera, a movie that reined in some of the brothers’ antics, and perhaps that break was a good thing for their popularity. Perhaps the problem was only that the Marx Brothers had made a movie every year since 1929 and audiences were ready for a break. While box office sales were disappointing compared to those of Horse Feather, it was still the 6 th highest grossing movie of 1933.
#MUSIC FROM DUCK SOUP MARX BROTHERS FULL#
It is full of surrealist humour and musical numbers, and there is certainly nothing depressing about its content. In any case, it is debatable that Duck Soup offers any cynical message about the world of the 1930s.
You Can’t Take It with You and My Man Godfrey come to mind. However many 1930s comedies managed to combine escapist fantasy with a sharp look at the contrasts between the world of the wealthy and the world of the less well-to-do. This idea was certainly shared by Preston Sturges and, it became the premise of his movie, Sullivan’s Travels. This theory rests on the assumption that audiences want only to be entertained during times of woe, and that they do not wish to be reminded of how bad conditions are. There are even a number of reasons given for this failure, with some critics speculating that perhaps the film was simply too cynical for audiences who were feeling the blues of living through the Great Depression. It is said that Duck Soup was a flop, in contrast to the previous Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers, which was the most successful movie of 1932 in terms of box office sales.
0 kommentar(er)
