DIRECTING ANARCHY:
By Matt Barry. |
When
watching a Marx Bros. movie, one rarely takes note of the direction.
Even in their finest work, it almost
seems like the
director’s chief function involved keeping the brothers within the
frame. This isn’t to say that the team didn’t work with some very
talented comedy directors over the course of their career-Norman
McLeod, William A. Seiter, and Charles F. Reisner (who’d started with
Chaplin) all took turns at the reins on different films. Sam Wood, a
fine dramatic director, helmed two of their best movies, “A Night at
the Opera” and “A Day at the Races”. And “The Cocoanuts” was
co-directed by Robert Florey-a director of interesting if offbeat
movies, whose films have been written about, especially by William K.
Everson, as some of the more interesting B pictures.
The popular idea of directing “comedian”
comedies
seems to be that, for even many of the best comedy directors of the
30s, their task often seemed to include little more than stepping back
and letting the comedians perform their material before the camera. It
would be more accurate to say that the best directors never tried to
overshadow the comedians with their own distinct styles, and instead
possessed the ability to recognize what worked best for the unique
performance styles of the comedians they were working with. The
direction of “A Night at the Opera”, for instance, is perfectly in
keeping with the stylistic and formal requirements of the film, and
achieves a kind of “invisibility” as a result. To paraphrase a common
statement about film craftsmanship, if it’s good comedy direction, you
won’t notice it. The directors recognized that their chief task was to
showcase the comic talents of their performers as best as possible, and
to shoot the films in such a way that the performance aspects were
maximized, while suppressing visual or technical flourishes that would
have called attention away from the performer.
It is interesting then, to look at “Duck
Soup”,
which is perhaps both the best and, at the same time, one of the most
atypical of the Marx Bros. films. Where it differs from their other
work can begin to be understood by examining the impact the
director-Leo McCarey-had on the shaping of the film. Unlike McLeod or
Seiter, McCarey was a distinct filmmaker with a unique approach to
comedy. He had a knack for finding the comic potential in seemingly
ordinary situations, and really knew how to milk a comedy sequence for
its full potential. “Duck Soup” was made just before he would go on to
do a series of both popular and critical successes-films like “The
Awful Truth”, a comedy of re-marriage starring Cary Grant and Irene
Dunne; “Love Affair”, a superb romantic picture with Charles Boyer and
Dunne again; the Bing Crosby vehicles, “Going My Way” and “The Bells of
St. Mary’s”, and of course, his remake of “Love Affair”, this time
called “An Affair to Remember” and memorably featuring Cary Grant and
Deborah Kerr.
McCarey had gotten his start in comedy at the Hal Roach studio, where
he wrote and supervised many of the early Laurel and Hardy comedies. It
was McCarey who claimed to have had the idea of teaming the two after
noticing how well they worked together. He would go on to provide
stories, as well as supervise, a number of their films through the end
of the silent period. McCarey’s work with Laurel and Hardy provides a
very interesting glimpse at the influence he had on his one film with
the Marx Bros. For starters, there’s the title, which itself was the
title of the 1927 Laurel and Hardy short, and was also the first real
glimpse of the kind of on-screen chemistry the two would have in future
films.
It’s tempting to watch parts of “Duck
Soup” and see
the kinds of routines that could have worked in a Laurel and Hardy
film. There are three major sequences in the film that are worth
examining in light of McCarey’s involvement in the film: the sequences
with lemonade vendor Edgar Kennedy (which consist of two separate
scenes in the film), the scene in which Harpo and Chico break into Mrs.
Teasdale’s house to steal Freedonia’s war code and plans (or, as Chico
later confesses under oath during his trial for treason, “a code and
two pair of plans”), and the mirror routine, which is a moment of pure
physical comedy, a rare thing in a Marx Bros. picture.
The “lemonade vendor” sequences find
Harpo and Chico
working as peanut vendors who set up their stand near Edgar Kennedy,
who is minding his own business and trying to sell lemonade. Chico is
trying to get information out of Harpo regarding top secret government
plans that he was supposed to find out, and becomes frustrated with
Harpo when he doesn’t speak, which, as Allen Eyles notes, is “a very
curious suggestion that he normally does”.1 The
argument
escalates and Harpo finally runs afoul of Kennedy when his hands finds
its way first into one of his customer’s pockets, and then into
Kennedy’s! Upset that their fighting is driving away his customers,
Chico attempts to explain the situation to him, and demonstrates the
extent of his argument with Harpo by kicking Kennedy in the backside as
an example of their fighting tactics. Next, Kennedy confronts Harpo,
whose silence only causes him more frustration. After both Kennedy and
Harpo lose their hats during a brief scuffle, Harpo helpfully replaces
his own hat onto Kennedy’s head, and we’re off on the “exchanging hats”
routine that Laurel and Hardy did so well. When Kennedy finally can’t
take anymore, he pushes Chico off-screen, while Harpo fills up his horn
with lemonade, squirting it into Kennedy’s face. Finally, Kennedy takes
the horn, sticking it down the front of Harpo’s trousers and emptying
the last of the lemonade into his pants. Harpo uncomfortably walks off,
whistling, and finally takes Kennedy’s hat (knocked off his head by
Chico once again kicking him in the pants), and places it inside their
peanut roaster, setting fire to it.
This sequence is interesting to compare
with the way
it would have been handled by Laurel and Hardy. Glenn Mitchell suggests
that Edgar Kennedy was probably cast in the film at McCarey’s request,
and notes that this is especially obvious as he “engages Harpo and
Chico in the type of leisurely, exchanged violence McCarey had
pioneered at Roach.” 2 If the scene had featured
Laurel and
Hardy, they would have certainly been far less aggressive than Harpo
and Chico. It’s impossible to imagine Hardy being as aggressive as to
kick Kennedy on the backside to “demonstrate” why he was frustrated
with Laurel. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine Laurel picking pockets or
antagonizing Kennedy, at least not intentionally! One can, however,
imagine Hardy being on the receiving end of the retribution for one of
Laurel’s actions.
The next scene with the lemonade vendor
finds
Kennedy, now in a new straw hat, antagonizing Harpo by stealing some of
the peanuts from his cart. Harpo responds by knocking the peanuts out
of Kennedy’s hand, and finally burning his new hat in the roaster. In a
fit of anger, Kennedy tips the entire cart over! With a sense of smug
satisfaction, he returns to his lemonade stand, and is perplexed when
his long line of customers begin to leave in disgust. He then turns
around and discovers the reason: Harpo soaking his feet in the serving
tub of lemonade! Kennedy responds with a simple “Oh!”, as he puts his
head down in absolute desperation and resignation, which suggests he
recognizes this as one battle that’s not worth continuing. The last
shot is filmed in a long shot, which allows the audience to see the
source of the customers’ discomfort (Harpo standing in the tub of
lemonade) before Kennedy does, which allows the audience to anticipate
his final reaction of surprise and resignation. In shooting the scene
this way, McCarey is not only heightening the impact of Harpo’s
mischief, but is also maximizing the comic payoff of Kennedy’s famous
“slow burn” take. This scene is also easier to imagine being played by
Stan Laurel, as Kennedy’s character provokes the response this time
around. Laurel was never above being aggressive, but that side of his
character only came out in reaction to others’ antagonism.
The scene in which Harpo and Chico
burglarize Mrs.
Teasdale’s house was compared by Glenn Mitchell to the Laurel and Hardy
short, “Night Owls”, in which they botch an in-home burglary. Whereas
Laurel and Hardy try to be successful at carrying out the burglary but
fail due to incompetence, Harpo and Chico set about wreaking havoc for
no apparent reason. 3 When a co-conspirator,
staying in the
house as Mrs. Teasdale’s guest, tells them not to make a sound, Harpo
immediately spots a large clock, running a few minutes slow by his
calculations, and after checking it against the alarm clock he’s
carrying, sets it to the right time, setting off a loud chime. Next, he
picks up a figure of a duck, which turns out to be a music box that
starts up playing its tune. Setting down his alarm clock, it begins
ringing. Not more than a minute into the burglary, Harpo has already
succeeded in creating a cacophony. Rather than attempting to do
anything about it, he instead begins to dance about to the tune of the
music box, and even plucks the strings of an open grand piano like a
harp! Chico pulls his away from the piano, causing the lid to fall shut
with a crash. It’s easy to see the McCarey (as well as the Laurel and
Hardy) influence on the staging of this scene. Once again, it’s
tempting to speculate how Laurel and Hardy would have played it. One
can imagine Hardy going to great lengths to stress to Laurel the
importance of keeping quiet, then turning around and crashing into
something himself, at which point Laurel would “shush” him, and Hardy
would respond with “Don’t ‘shush’ me!”
Finally, the mirror sequence shows a strong influence of silent comedy,
though it’s a routine that Laurel and Hardy would not have performed.
Aside from the obvious difference of their physical appearances, the
scene is a kind of visual nonsense, something of a game that Groucho
and Harpo play. Groucho knows that it is not his reflection he is
seeing in the mirror. But rather than just reaching out and grabbing
the impostor, he turns it into game, to see if he can outwit Harpo and
catch him off guard, exposing the charade. Eyles notes that the scene
had been performed by other comedians before the Marxes, most notably
by Chaplin in “The Floorwalker” (1916) and Max Linder in “Seven Years
Bad Luck” (1921). He suggests that the scene is so effective precisely
because it is treated as a game between Groucho and Harpo, and that
because of Harpo’s skill in mimicking every one of Groucho’s actions,
as well as the brilliant construction of the scene, “it never becomes
dull or repetitive”. 4 The fact the scene is
played in an
entirely silent ambience stresses the physical and visual component.
The entire charade is treated as such a game that, at one point,
Groucho “allows his ‘reflection’ a three-dimensional presence by
momentarily changing places” with Harpo. 5 The
scene is so
brilliantly constructed that the viewer almost forgets about the
suspense of the deception, to say nothing of the actual circumstances
that have led up to this scene in the film’s narrative, and instead are
all too happy to take a few minutes to appreciate the precise and
clever visual and physical comedy of the scene. It’s a tribute to Leo
McCarey that he was able to integrate such a scene so successfully into
the world of verbal comedy that the Marxes inhabited and made their own.
As these examples attest, McCarey had a
strong
influence in shaping “Duck Soup” as a film, and it’s a testament to his
skill that he was able to weave his style so successfully with that of
the Marx Bros. to create what many viewers and critics consider to be
their masterpiece. Other directors with whom the team worked,
especially men like Norman McLeod, William A. Seiter and Charles F.
Reisner, were equally adept at directing comedy, but worked in such a
way that their styles were essentially “invisible”, and as a result
were always able to bring out whatever qualities worked best to
showcase the talents of the particular comedian they were working with
at any given time. Leo McCarey, a distinct comic artist in his own
right, was able to integrate his style in a noticeable but effective
way, and contributed strongly to what is considered one of the finest
examples of screen comedy ever produced.
End Notes:
1. Allen Eyles, "The Complete
Films of the Marx Bros." (Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press. 1992), 132.
2. Glenn Mitchell, "The Marx Bros.
Encyclopedia" (London, BT. Batsford Ltd. 1997), 84.
3. Glenn Mitchell, "The Marx Bros.
Encyclopedia". 85.
4. Allen Eyles, "The Complete Films of
the Marx Bros." 132.
5. Glenn Mitchell, "The Marx Bros.
Encyclopedia". 85.
The Marx
Brothers The Age of Comedy
Copyright © Matt Barry, 2010. Used by Special Permission.