 "Arguably their finest film. This is as good as it gets."-Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide Arts patron Mrs. Claypool intends to pay pompous opera star Lassparri $1,000 per performance. Hey, maybe that's why they call it grand opera! Grand comedy, too, as Groucho, Chico and Harpo cram a ship's stateroom and more than wall-to-wall gags, one-liners, musical riffs and two hard-boiled eggs-all while skewering Lassparri's schemes and helping two young hopefuls (Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones) get a break. To save the opera, our heroes must first destroy it. And they must also gain ocean passage as stowaways, pull the wool (if not the beards) over the eyes of City Hall, shred legal mumbo-jumbo into a Sanity Clause, pester dowager Claypool (Margaret Dumont) and unleash so much glee that many say this is the best Marx Brothers movie. Seeing is believing. Cast Notes: Groucho Marx (Otis B. Driftwood), Chico Marx (Fiorello), Harpo Marx (Tomasso), Kitty Carlisle (Rosa Castaldi), Allan Jones (Ricardo Baroni), Walter Woolf King (Rodolfo Lassparri [as Walter King]), Sig Ruman (Herbert Gottlieb [as Siegfried Rumann]), Margaret Dumont (Mrs. Claypool), Edward Keane (Captain), Robert Emmett O'Connor (Henderson [as Robert Emmet O'Connor]). User Comment: dencar_1 from United States, 6 April 2005 o Though some claim that either Horse Feathers or Duck Soup was the greatest Marx Brothers opus, A Night at the Opera has to be Marxdom's signature film. The witticisms and riotous madcap from playwright George Kaufman (The Man Who Came To Dinner; You Can't Take It With You) is evident everywhere in the some of the team's finest composition of wit and physical comedy. After taking over MGM studios in the 1930's, big-wig Irving Thallberg pulled the Marx Bros. aside and told them, "You know, you guys are missing only one thing in your pictures: you never help anybody." After OPERA, the Marx Brothers' scripts always revolved around either an attempt to get a romantic couple together or became an effort to save an institution from going under, i.e., The Big Store; A Day at the Races; Horse Feathers; The Big Circus. Margaret Dumont is established once and for all as Groucho's perfect romantic staple and a Marx Bros. movie just doesn't seem right without her. Sig Rumond appears to have been created in a Marx Brothers comedy factory and serves sensationally as the urbane Marx antagonist vying for Dumont's favors, though upended time and time again by Groucho. A young Kitty Carlisle and Allen Jones provide the romance and music--though many audiences never realize how fine an operatic voice Carlisle had in those days. So many hilarious and classic routines fill A Night at the Opera that the movie offers itself as a study in Komedy 101: the unforgettable "contract" bit between Chico and Groucho (Chico can't read). As they try to sign an agreement about the rights to manage singer Allen Jones, they tear clause after clause off the paper until Chico finally asks: "What's this?" "Oh," replies Groucho, "that's just a sanity clause." Chico bursts out laughing. "Oh, you canna' fool me; there ain't' no sanity Klaus!..." The crowded state room scene where Groucho, Chico, and Hapro stow-away in a tiny cubicle and the shoebox crams with more and more people until Mrs. Claypool (Dumont) opens the door and everyone spills out...The hotel scene where Detective Henderson tries to nail the brothers for stowing-away and everyone races back and forth between suites, furniture is switched, and Henderson is left wondering if he's nuts... But it is the film's finale during a live performance at the New York opera house that is perhaps the comedy team's grandest movie climax. The police, still after Harpo for stowing away, try to arrest him during a live performance. He breaks through the theater's backstage, swings over the proscenium like a trapeze artist, and, at one point, tears off the dress of one of the singers. "Well, now we're finally getting somewhere!" Groucho opines from the audience. What a shame A Night at the Opera is not on television more often. Young people should be treated to comedy as it once was when laughter depended upon uproarious wit and a brand of physical comedy perfected by comedians through years of refining their craft in vaudeville. A Night at the Opera is nothing less than an American comedy classic. Summary: Marx Bros. Masterpiece. Trivia:
IMDb Rating (08/16/07): 8.0/10 from 9,223 users
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