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Flashback: A Night at the Opera (1935) – Marx Brothers’ anarchic MGM comedy

Unlike their previous films, A Night at the Opera is a lavish production that marries the Marxes’ anarchic humour with straight musical numbers and a proper story

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The Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935).

Few people have ever been able to deliver a one-liner with the skill of Groucho Marx, and the verbal barbs in 1935’s A Night at the Opera remain incisive today. What’s more, this lavish MGM production provides large-scale props for Harpo Marx to deploy in surreal acrobatic gags that are as hilarious as they are bizarre.

Humour usually dates as fashions change, but A Night at the Opera demonstrates the longevity of the Marx Brothers’ unique brand of humour.

The Brothers – here a trio, rather than the quartet of their earlier movies – were already major stars by 1935. Brilliantly funny films such as Animal Crackers (1930) and Horse Feathers (1932), made for Paramount Studios, were anarchic and anti-authoritarian, and became popular hits. But their previous work, Duck Soup (1933), a political satire now considered a classic, performed less well at the box office.

A Night at the Opera came about because Irving Thalberg, head of MGM, a studio known for its lavish productions, suggested they make some films together to revive the Brothers’ career. The Brothers’ inexpensive Paramount works traded on processions of gags set within a slim storyline. Thalberg’s idea was to increase the production values so the films looked more glamorous, and set the jokes in fully wrought stories that included big musical numbers, and a bit of romance.

Three Marx Brothers star in A Night at the Opera.
Three Marx Brothers star in A Night at the Opera.
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