Review of A Night at the Opera (1935) by Miguel S — 07 Apr 2010

If "A Night at the Opera" is not the greatest comedy of all time, well... then it's pretty darn close. The Marx Brothers first movies were a series of zany, crazy visual gags with a thin as possible story just to justify moving from one gag to the next.

But when they moved to MGM in 1935, they were given by Thalberg something that they never had: a quality studio team working for them. Opera is then a film with a strong and feasible story behind it, which ultimately gives the gags more coherence and makes the movie much more enjoyable.

Furthermore, it was directed by Sam Wood, who shortly would do uncredited work for "The Good Earth", "Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind", and go on to direct two sublime masterpieces: "Goodbye Mr.

Chips" (1939) and "Kings Row" (1942), for me two movie in the top 20 or 30 of all time. "A Night at the Opera" is classic Marx Brothers, even so. Groucho has never been better as the wisecracker who is courting Margaret Drummond, a patron of the opera, for her millions.

This gives the excuse for some opera and backstage scenes, where Harpo and Chico are stage-hands. The bad guy is the opera's lead singer, who is in love with the girl, also lead singer, who by her turn loves the good guy, Baroni (played by Allan Jones), a choir singer waiting for a break.

The good-guy-romantic-lead was for the first time not played by the 4th Marx Brother, Zeppo, who couldn't act and was not funny, so his absence is also an asset to the picture. Little more to say, the plot is all there, simple and unobtrusive.

They go to America for the new opera season, which gives rise to great transatlantic ship scenes. Once on the other side of the Atlantic they plan to give Baroni a singing chance on the opening night and all hell breaks loose.

Also to note that Sig Ruman, who plays the german-accent-owner of the opera company is superb, as a constant victim of the plots of the Marx brothers. The favourite comic scenes are so much that one can stay here forever describing them.

The contract signing scene ("the party of the first part should be known on this contract as the party of the first part"), the aviators speech ("we were flying halfway across the Atlantic and guess what, we had forgotten the airplane"), the hiding from the police scene in the bedroom, and mostly, the room scene in the boat, where about 30 people fill a tiny little room.

.. Hilarious. Favourite line: "Don't worry, that's on every contract, that's what they call a Sanity Clause" "Aha, you canta folla me [italian accent], there aint no Santy Clauss".

The Marx Brothers never repeated the success of this movie in their subsequent career. "A Night a the Opera" still remains their milestone, hilarious from start to finish. If you don't know the Marx Brothers and their screen personas, this is the best way to start.

If you do, I guarantee this will beat all their other movies. At times is just sheer comic perfection. And it is backed by a great cast and a solid enough plot. I can only add that this is the first and only movie I saw twice in less than 24 hours.

I saw it for the first time on a Friday night many years ago, and saw it again the very next Saturday morning. I just had to. And from then on, many times have I seen it again...