A Night at the Opera (film)

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A Night at the Opera (film)
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1993.

A Night at the Opera is a 1935 American comedy film starring the Marx Brothers, and featuring Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones, Margaret Dumont, Sig Ruman, and Walter Woolf King. It was the first of five films the Marx Brothers made under contract for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after their departure from Paramount Pictures, and the first after Zeppo left the act. The film was written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind from a story by James Kevin McGuinness, with additional uncredited dialogue by Al Boasberg. The film was directed by Sam Wood.

Why It Rocks

1. Even though the Marx Brothers are no longer the leads -- serving as comic relief to the musical romance between Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones -- they still delivered plenty of frenetic fun.
   • Some of the comedy team's most famous routines are featured here - the crowded shipboard stateroom scene, the contract-tearing scene between Groucho and Chico, the rearranged furniture and bed-switching sequence to elude a private detective, the operatic finale (a lavish production number) with Harpo swinging Tarzan ape-like on stage flyropes in tune to Verdi's music, and sprinkled throughout - Groucho's zippy one-line insults and flirtations with his perennial nemesis - Margaret Dumont.
2. By returning the Marxes to their roles as clowns in clown costumes they would no longer appear threatening to moviegoers. Whereas in their Paramount films, the Marxes were far closer to the con men, sullen immigrants and wily hoboes that Depression-era Americans faced on a daily basis, here in this film they were stripped of their menace, of the possibility they could cheat or rob innocents. Here and for the rest of their careers, they'd only cheat and rob themselves and occasionally buffoonish villains. They're just another comedy act.
3. With a tremendous script and an established formula Marxes followed in picture after picture. Setting the Marxes loose in the world of opera was both a brilliant inspiration and a compromise. Before their targets included viewers themselves, or at least anyone who wanted to make a killing in real estate, thought colleges provided education, and believed in the role government took in society. In this film, the Marxes would be lampooning a genre of music and a high-society caste that mainstream moviegoers felt deserved ridicule but knew next to nothing about.
4. By bringing their comedy sequences, musical numbers, and plot line (a love story) up to higher standards, the plot would end up becoming less anarchic, and the plot would be more solidly believable than the typical Marx Bros. film at that point. It consists of many well-refined, polished scenes of classic romantic comedy and dialogue, flowing together smoothly with the story and the characters of the brothers, and timed to take into account reaction time for laughs. It was designed to appeal to female audiences, with less zany, surrealistic, and uninhibited behavior exhibited by the brothers.
5. Due to studio restrictions from MGM, the Marxes could only mock a specific opera: the kind sung by antagonistic characters. The antagonists are given considerable screen time singing bland love songs and a sort of bowdlerized from of opera arranged to be palatable for novice listeners.

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