A Night at the Opera

So interesting to watch a few 1930s comedies in a row, and it was especially interesting to watch this Marx Brothers film right after The Thin Man. Where The Thin Man felt distinguished, suave, and modern, the Marx Brothers feel like they would have been old-fashioned even at the time. The humor here is wall-to-wall: every line is some kind of punchline, but in a way that is divorced from any sort of context. It’s just one zany thing after the next, in a way that doesn’t allow any of the humor to breathe. There’s ultimately no point to any of it–no weight, no consequences–and it ultimately felt exhausting to watch. There were a few nice sequences here: I particularly liked the contract scene (“the party of the first part”). And of the three brothers, I thought Chico was relatively skilled at just slowing down and not being quite so manic. Perhaps it was just Groucho that I couldn’t quite grok.