West plays a saloon keeper in New Yorks Bowery who is involved with various criminals in the neighborhood. As Lady Lou, West is pursued by two local entrepreneurs and her fiancé is just released from jail, but she is hardly in need of a man as she inhabits lavish quarters above her establishment, replete with servants and an impressive collection of diamond jewelry. Lou, however, is smitten by her new neighbor, the head of the Salvation Army mission (Cary Grant). Her initial appraisal of the younger mans attractiveness is part of Hollywood legend. To Grant she utters the famous line Why dont you come up sometime, see me. As a demonstration of her affection (and power), she uses some of her considerable hoard of diamonds to purchase his mission and make him a present of it. In the end, Grant is revealed as a detective who promptly takes all the crooks into custody, but imprisons Lou quite differentlywith a wedding ring. A classic Hollywood comedy, full of naughtiness and good humor. RBP
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1930s
DUCK SOUP (1933)
U.S. (Paramount) 70m BW
Director: Leo McCarey
Producer: Herman J. Mankiewicz
Screenplay: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby
Photography: Henry Sharp
Music: Bert Kalmar, John Leipold, Harry Ruby
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont, Raquel Torres, Louis Calhern, Edmund Breese, Leonid Kinskey, Charles Middleton, Edgar Kennedy
Released in 1933, this madcap comedy is the crowning glory of the comic team of the Marx Brothers, a New York phenomenon who honed their performing skills through vaudeville and went on to take Broadway with a series of comedies including The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers. More than original performers, their timing was perfect in more ways than one: sound technology was taking over films just as they peaked on the stages of New York and looked for new audiences to conquer.
Among the five films made in Paramounts New York studios by the brothersGroucho, Harpo, Chico, and ZeppoDuck Soup is the last to feature all of them (Zeppo, the youngest brother and the groups straight man, went on to be an agent and inventor). Its crammed with visual and verbal gags, most of which are as fresh and funny today as they were in 1933. As with so many classics, Duck Soup enjoyed less-than-vigorous box-office traffic. It did so badly, in fact, that Paramount cancelled the Marx Brothers contract
soon afterward, causing them to head west to Hollywood and MGM, where A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races were made.
Duck Soup is only 70 minutes long, but it packs in a seemingly endless string of virtually anything that might get a laugh, from jabs at Paul Revere and snide asides about then-current musicals to unexpected use of stock footage and astonishingly inventive physical sketches like the three-hat routine, perfected by the brothers on stage over the years, and the famous mirror sequence. This routineimitated by comics ever sincefeatures Groucho, dressed in nightgown, nightcap, moustache, and cigar, meeting himself (Harpo as an identical image) in a doorway.
The plot, as such, involves Groucho as the dictator of the state of Freedonia. Named Rufus T. Firefly, his patron is the wealthy Mrs. Teasdale, played with ineffable dignity and grace under pressure by Margaret Dumont, again the perfect outrageous foil and the subject of most of Grouchos forcefully memorable putdowns. If the physical gags and Grouchos inimitable dialogue style were their own, the scripts had expert input from many great comedy writers, among them S.J. Perelman. More than a great physical comedy act, the Marx Brothers were comedians lucky enough to have witty dialogue and keen observation, another reason why Duck Soup has survived whereas the films of, say, the Ritz Brothers remain unrevered.
Sylvanian Ambassador Trintino (Louis Calhern) wants Freedonia for his own and so pays Harpo and Chico to be his intelligence agents. This slender plot line is strong enough to support some of the best comedy sequences ever filmed, and offensive enough to some to count as surrealist satire. Benito Mussolini banned the film in Italy because he took Grouchos role as a personal attack; nothing could have pleased the brothers more. Again, before the films release, a small city in New York called Fredonia complained about the use of its name as well as the additional e; the response from the Marx Brothers camp was reassuringly predictable: Change the name of your town, its hurting our picture. KK
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1930s
QUEEN CHRISTINA (1933)
U.S. (MGM) 97m BW
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Producer: Walter Wanger
Screenplay: S.N. Behrman, H.M. Harwood
Photography: William H. Daniels
Music: Herbert Stothart
Cast: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, Elizabeth Young, C. Aubrey Smith, Reginald Owen, Georges Renavent, David Torrence, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Ferdinand Munier
Venice Film Festival: Rouben Mamoulian (Mussolini Cup nomination)
Rouben Mamoulians re-creation of the seventeenth-century Swedish court provides Greta Garbo with a perfect vehicle to dominate the screen. The historical Christina, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, was a reclusive aesthete who eventually abdicated in order to have a life of her own and change her Lutheranism for Catholicism. Garbos version, by way of contrast, is an alluring mixture of masculine and feminine qualities. Learned, resolute, she is also sexually experienced, even aggressive, yet committed to her independence.
The plot (which seems to have borrowed a good deal from screen versions of Englands Elizabeth I) centers on her counselors demand that she marry Charles of France, which angers her and her consort, the burly Count Magnus (Ian Keith). Fleeing the courtand the restrictions placed on her as a womanChristina dresses like a man and encounters, by chance, the Spanish ambassador, Antonio (John Gilbert, whom Garbo was romancing at the time). What follows are comic scenes of sexual disguise, as Christina begins to fall deeply in love with Antonio, and deep eroticism. When Antonio is killed protecting her honor, Christina abdicates, achieving the solitude that, because of her rank and personal qualities, seems her fate from the beginning. Garbos performance in the role is inspired, helped by the glamorizing touch of Mamoulians camera. Well-conceived art design, editing, and music make Queen Christina sensational viewing. RBP
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