.jpg "marx brothers animal crackers")
I’ve often debated with other aficionados as to which film is the Marxes best and my opinion and preference has often changed over the years (my personal favourite is Horse Feathers but then again it doesn’t have Margaret Dumont, their greatest foil), but I happily agree that Animal Crackers provides some of their most delightful arrangements with each brother getting incessant illumination.įor the unfamiliar and unschooled, take note that Animal Crackers is the anarchic apogee of the Marx Brothers, with each one getting their moment in the spotlight. Sanity was out, logic was out, creative lunacy was in.” “When I started to write comedy, it was the Marx Brothers influence that moulded my style. George Kaufman, one of the writers of the play Animal Crackers (and also The Cocoanuts) once got devotedly distracted in a backstage interview during a Marx Brothers performance, submissively saying, “I’m sorry, it’s just that for a moment there, I thought I heard one of the original lines!” Chandler (Louis Sorin, who almost breaks character but somehow holds it together) with hilarious results that crazily crumbles the fourth wall. Spaulding having an off-the-cuff exchange with the rascally Roscoe W. This familiarity with the material gave a confidence to the brothers that had them straying from the script constantly but winningly, as in Groucho’s Capt.
MARX BROTHERS ANIMAL CRACKERS FULL
Their efficiency and work ethic was astounding, and by the time it came to film Animal Crackers the troupe knew it inside and out, along with a full grasp on what gags got big laughs. When the production would wrap each evening the Marxes would motor across town to Broadway where they were performing the stage version of Animal Crackers to sold out crowds. In the previous year, while working on their debut film, The Cocoanuts (also excellent, but, as with many early talkies, is plagued with some technical obstacles which results in a much more stagey and confined film), which they shot during the day at Astoria Studios in New York. He may have butted heads with the boys throughout filming but he certainly honoured their comedic instincts, particularly with the material. Suffice it to say, Heerman never worked with the Marxes again, though he often spoke respectfully of them (though rarely in connection to Animal Crackers, which ended up being one of Heerman’s biggest hits). It was Heerman’s feelings that the paint was unconvincing, Groucho refused, quipping “The audiences never believed us anyway!” Heerman even attempted to get Groucho to trade in his greasepaint moustache, which worked fine on Vaudeville and Broadway, for a more convincing false one. Heerman had his hands full with the Marx Brothers, famously he told of having a “jail cell” constructed just off set to help corral the Marxes, who were often hard to reign in. But it was Animal Crackers, directed by Victor Heerman, that cemented their brand of coordinated chaos and ironic anarchy, at least to the world stage. Soused in the show business tradition, the history of the Marxes is itself as entertaining, lively, and distinct as their long and storied careers. It might be easy then, to disregard or flat-out forget that some of the cleverest comebacks and fast-paced farce that the world ever saw commenced with the Marx Brothers back in the dirty thirties.ĭepression-era audiences were trading quips and much needed chuckles from these shining siblings-Chico, Groucho, Harpo, and Zeppo (eldest brother Gummo was out of the act by the time they stormed the silver screen) - who first fine-tuned their dizzying act in Vaudeville and later, Broadway. It’s not that I think modern comedy is unduly overworked or self-important (though the likes of the Wayans Brothers and Adam Sandler do get me a tad tense and more than a little tired), indeed so much au courant comedy is as triumphant as it is ticklish (Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone’s Popstar, and Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople are all hot-off-the-fire and hilarious).īut I do find that much of today’s contemporary comedic landscape often defaults to gross-out gags and shopworn shock tactics as opposed to satire and sharp wits. Spaulding (Groucho Marx)Īnimal Crackers, the second feature starring the Marx Brothers, released in 1930, is over eighty years old now, and it still leaves me hard-pressed to find many films that afford such amusement, banter, satire (high-society is pitilessly spoofed), and joy as it does. “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
0 kommentar(er)
