Some dismiss the Marx brother’s form of comedy as ‘low brow’ (just some gags with little substance beneath the buffoonery). I prefer to think of them, however, as masters of the lampoon. Their movies, while not direct social commentaries, speak to the arbitrariness and stupidity of real life, to which we can all relate. I love the Marx brothers’ comedy style. In fact, I probably laugh the hardest I ever laugh when watching their movies. Although my favorite of their movies is “A night at the opera,” Duck Soup is certainly not a disappointment.

Duck Soup has a similar feel to movies like airplane which operate in the ludicrous. Events so random and ridiculous all strung together poke fun at how hectic our lives sometimes feel, because after all, we all have those days where it just feels like nothing is going right. In an ultimate exemplification of Robert Burn’s poem “To a mouse,” the brothers find themselves stuck with an overly simple plan to carry out in an incredibly convoluted situation, culminating in an unexpected and arbitrary end with no particular significance. This plot idea is oddly beautiful, speaking to the fact that life goes not to where we expect, but to a culmination guided by the hand of chance and kismet.

On top of their comedic skills, it often goes unnoticed that Zeppo and Harpo are actually very talented musicians. The usually get a little feature in each of the movies where the happen to stumble upon a harp or piano and begin playing. In each movie Harpo usually played some variation of a beautiful handle piece or older. He has the style and finesse of someone who had been well classically trained on the instrument. Zeppo, by contrast has significant virtuosity on the piano, and has a more “street performer” style when it comes to his instrument. Often times, in the movies, his music scene would come in some bar where his raucous playing style was brought out. He was best known for his musical jokes that he would input in his playing. Whether it was playing with atypical fingers, or quoting parodies of other songs, he demonstrated both technical mastery and comedic excellence in his playing.

Comedy has definitely changed in the past 84 years.  It is difficult to put something like Duck Soup in the same category as any of The Hangover’s or Superbad.  And that’s not to say it’s any better or any worse, but one noticeable difference between the weathered comedy I saw at Cornell Cinema and many of the newer comedies I’ve seen is tempo.  In one of the first scenes of Duck Soup, as soon as Groucho Marx makes his way on screen, he proceeds in a rapid fire of witticisms, many of which are direct insults.  It seemed like the main feature of the comedy was the comedy itself and that the movie’s plot had been built around that fact.  In contrast, I view a lot of modern funny movies as movies that have comedy built into them.  The funny things said and the funny actions performed go with the flow.  Groucho, and later Harpo and Chico, lead the movie with their antics.

Something comedy often does, true in the past and today, is make fun of controversy/ sensitive topics.  It did seem that Duck Soup had its fair share of comments/jokes directed at women.  I appreciate when humor occasionally borders along the edges of inappropriate to make a point.  For example, a comedian may make light of his own personal struggle with drug addiction.  He can still ultimately give the audience a new perspective on what it’s like to be addicted to drugs all the while making them laugh due to how the subject matter has been delivered.  I did not feel the Duck Soup jokes directed at gender, and some I believe at race, had reoriented my views or given me any additional insight.  I do not think they were maliciously placed necessarily, but are instead from a time where they might be viewed as commonplace and therefore viewed as acceptable.  I do think it’s important to still be able to make fun of serious situations, especially in a world that, as a general trend, is increasing its politically correctness.  But at the same time, there’s is a difference between something novel that may rub you the wrong way, and something hackneyed that seems more a cheap source of laughs, especially when it is viewed as offensive by a certain group of people.

Duck Soup did have its funny moments.  Even though some of the other humor used was classic gag humor commonly used in old cartoons, it still seems funny because of its innocence.  Some things simply don’t take a very deep level of thought and are able to evoke what seems like a more natural, unabashed laugh out of the audience.  All around, I recommend seeing the film as it can offer laughter, while still giving the viewer at least a small window through which to view 1933 in America.

Some of the things that I found most interesting in watching the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup were the ways in which the style of humor was similar to and different from more modern works.  The first scenes were fairly straightforward, and unfortunately timeless, political satire.  An entirely unfit, crude man named Firefly becomes the president of Freedonia by happenstance, and immediately sets about offending people and breaking his own decrees.  Soon though, the movie began heavily emphasizing a slapstick style of comedy that I can’t say I entirely understood at first.  The spies Pinky and Chicolini are hired by a rival country’s ambassador to help bring down Firefly, and their hopeless inefficiency and irreverence accounts for a large amount of the comedy in the movie.  However, the first time I watched Pinky quietly take a pair of scissors to his boss’s cigar and spread glue on the back of his pants, I thought to myself, “What an odd movie.  I understand that this is intended to be funny.  Is this what people thought was funny in the 30’s?”

Somehow, though, by the seventh time I watched Pinky cut somebody’s cigar/hat/pockets in half, it had become hilarious.  By the time the two spies have infiltrated the house Firefly is staying in, I was dying laughing. At this point there are two imposters and the real president all wandering around dressed in exactly the same nightgown and hat, just barely avoiding one another, and the spies’ attempts to avoid detection are incredibly entertaining.

There was a point, I suppose, when wordless physical humor had to be the dominant form of comedy in movies because movies were silent.  Hence the immense popularity of people like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.  The inclusion of Pinky (the mute nuisance) seems to be a nod to this history, and wonderfully demonstrates how even if a movie has words, humor can be achieved entirely without them.

On the other hand, the kind of humor I’m most accustomed to is based almost entirely in words.  Something like Douglas Adams or A Christmas Story comes to mind: though the situation may be absurd, the humor come across primarily through detailed and witty description of that situation.  That’s the entire premise of standup, too.  A “comedian”, today, is a person who stands up on a stage and makes people laugh just by speaking — like the opposite of a Charlie Chaplin, or in this case a Pinky.

Slapstick is something I associate with the likes of Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry.  I honestly can’t say that I’ve seen a whole lot of slapstick outside of cartoons.  Specifically, old cartoons.  Is slapstick something that has simply declined in popularity with time?  Or is it still around, but declines in popularity with the age of the audience?  I suppose this could be answered by examining the style of humor in  kids’ cartoons being produced today, which unfortunately I don’t know much about.

Even the verbal humor that was present in Duck Soup struck me as a bit unfamiliar, in that it was based almost entirely in puns.  Some of these came across well, but I suspect that many others may have gone over my head because I lack the cultural knowledge of a person in the 30’s.  In fact, some of the physical jokes have lost necessary context over the past 85 years as well.  For instance, there’s a scene in which the camera pans across a pair of women’s shoes at the foot of a bed, then a pair of men’s…and then four horseshoes.  The camera then cuts to a man asleep next to a horse while the woman is in a different bed.  I laughed, because it was absurd.

Apparently though, at the time this wasn’t an absurd joke.  It was deliberate and pointed mockery of the Hays Code: a set of rules established by the organization that became the MPAA, governing the content of movies to ensure that they were not morally offensive or crude.  The Hays Code was in place from 1930 to 1968, and one of its decrees was that a man and a woman could not be shown in a bed together.  Hence, the man, the horse, and the woman in another bed.  I did actually know about the Hays Code, but as someone who isn’t living in the 1930’s, it didn’t come to mind at all.

Overall, Duck Soup was an entertaining film that provides an interesting snapshot of comedy in the 1930’s.

(An additional note with no connection to the above, but which I found entertaining: There is a scene in which Chicolini and Pinky taunt a lemonade seller by stealing his hat, which turns into an increasingly ridiculous game of hat-swapping between them.  Immediately, I felt like I’d seen this scene before.  Three men haphazardly swapping hats…  This bothered me for days, until I remembered that I have seen it — in Waiting for Godot, published 1953.  Was it a deliberate reference to Duck Soup?  Wikipedia’s footnotes tell me that indeed it was!)

Last week, Rose House Graduate Resident Fellow Esmeralda took a group of six curious students to the Cornell Cinema to watch one of the classic Marx Brothers films called Duck Soup. As we got to know a little bit about one another before the movie, it was clear that we were all there because this event fit well with our schedule and we were all interested in seeing what was so famous about the Marx Brothers. Personally, the name was one that I would easily admit to having heard before, but before that day, I would not have been able to comment on it at all.

The movie began with a scene in which the country of Freedonia was deciding on whether or not to make Firefly, Marx brother Groucho, leader of the country in order to receive aid from Mrs. Teasdale, a very wealthy woman who’s finances are essential to the government. As the movie goes on, it shows the adventures that the Marx brothers go on, each playing a separate role, until in the end Freedonia is saved, for the most part. Without a doubt, this movie was a classic comedy production, there was a point that I found myself laughing uncontrollably due to the sarcasm and constant quarreling amongst the actors. My favorite brother was Pinky, famously known as Harpo, for he played a completely silent character but found himself in the oddest of scenarios. I certainly enjoyed a large amount of light-hearted laughs and found the sexual innuendos and stereotypes to be quite amusing and appropriate to the time the movie was produced.

As to why the movie was called Duck Soup, I thought it was because for a large part of the movie, and in particular, in the final battle scene,  the four brothers seemed helpless and immediately the phrase ‘We are sitting ducks’ came to mind. No matter what they did, it seemed that bad luck always came their way, [spoiler alert] and only a miracle led to the end of the war and the victory of Freedonia. I think that this old-time film is one that many people may enjoy and certainly all can learn from. It says a lot about the time in which it was created, with black and white pictures, no actors of color, the degradation in a woman’s purpose and abilities, and what was funny back in the day.

I am really glad that I attended this event, for I was given the opportunity to meet more of my fellow Rose Scholars and also enjoy one of my favorite pastimes, movie-watching. I am interested in watching the other two Marx Brothers films; I think there is only three total. All in all, this movie experience was one of a kind, my first black and white film ever watched, and it reminded me that there are various ways to learn about the history of our country

Shameless plug: Cornell Cinema screens old and newly released movies on a regular basis. All students should check it out at some point during their Cornell experience.

What I found most surprising about Duck Soup was how much I actually enjoyed it. Most comedy is difficult to appreciate outside of the time and place where it was originally conceived. English subtitles for Japanese romantic comedies often alter jokes entirely because the translators know that the original joke will be lost on viewers from another culture. I rarely find myself laughing when listening to comedians like Jim Gaffigan and Louis C.K., whose stand-up jokes generally revolve around fatherhood. However, the jokes in Duck Soup, despite being written more than 84 years ago, still had a whole theater of modern moviegoers in fits. I think this is the result of two factors. First, the Marx Brothers’ comedy routines do have some sort of universal appeal that can transcend the barriers of time and social context. Their use of straightforward wordplay and physical comedy, along with the lack of pop culture references, result in a style that can be enjoyed by almost any viewer. Second, I think our current cultural context is close enough to the culture in which the film was created for us to enjoy it. We’re in the same country, speak the same language, have the same expectations for/criticisms of our leaders, and understand the same historical references. And yes, I’ll admit it: While the original audience for the movie found Rufus T. Firefly amusing because he reminded viewers of Mussolini, modern viewers still find the character relevant because of Donald Trump.