An Antique Treasure of One Really Zany Movie
Added 9/27/2009
Sadly, Hollywood lost all of the original and production prints. This DVD apparently was assembled from a tape, itself assembled from damaged remnants. As an artifact, it reveals the almost humorously primitive film technology of early 1929. There's atrocious editing, and film quality varies wildly even within the same scenes. It's suspected that many original portions are missing. In any case, it's still grand fun, if for nothing else than a look at a plot right out of Victorian theater and a number of scenes in which on-film cuties are caught looking at the cameras. It's hard to tell today, but in '29 this was a landmark film: all-talking from beginning to end, one of the first movies with full-length audio and Paramount's very first 100% talkie. It's a fairly faithful filming of the Marx Brothers' huge Broadway stage success, done during weekdays at Paramount's Astoria, NY studio while the Marx's played their next Broadway hit at night. You can even see bits where the actors get their lines confused. The absurdist humor, though borrowed heavily from Vaudeville, was revolutionary in its day. Some of the old routines (the Viaduct and auction bits) no longer work, but there are still plenty of laughs to go around. The comedy bits set patterns for every future Marx film: rooms with multiple doors and weird entrance/exit schemes (culminating in a Night at the Opera), Chico/Groucho non-logic (later perfected in the Tootsy-Frootsy bit in A Day at the Races), musical numbers from Harpo and chico, and the earliest appearance of the priceless Margaret Dumont. Most supporting roles are taken by stage/radio stars. One of the jewel thieves is Kay Francis, a popular actress who made dozens of films and earned a symbolic star in the concrete of the Hollywood Walk of Fame (it's hard to tell here, but Kay had a speech impediment that earned her the nickname, "the wavishing Kay Fwancis"). Her partner in crime is Cyril Ring who played in many silent and sound films and finally entered the screen writing business. The hotel detective, Basil Ruysdael, was a radio, stage and film mainstay for many years, later appearing in hits like "Prince Valiant", "The Last Hurrah", Perry Mason episodes, and a voice in "1001 Dalmations". The ultimate fascination is the heartfelt but truly klutzy script by George S. Kaufman and really corny music from Irving Berlin, both of whom would later offer much, much better material. The antique choreography right out of the original play's staging is by Erna Kay, a Broadway veteran who has no other film credits -- but you'll see plenty in these comically antique production numbers that set the tone for the dance extravaganzes of the 1930's. Even with poor quality media, which is often dreadful, you can still sense the initial impact made by the Marx Brothers, who in the late 1920's took the comedy world by storm and turned it, in their inimitable way, upside-down and inside-out.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Can't speak for the transfer but...
Added 8/1/2009
this film delivers incredibly in the live big screen setting. I just saw it on vacation at a classic film screening and the reactions of the crowd were priceless. These types of reactions are only achieved nowadays through gross out effects and the marx brothers achieved it by being zany. It's entertaining, funny (of course), and the dancing girls presentation makes a lot more sense in this setting showing the gaudy nature of the proceedings. Transfer-wise the print was very hit and miss with faded reels and the like and the sound wasn't too good in spots, but wasn't enough to ruin the impact of the film. A great first film for the brothers.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Bought it for a friend...
Added 2/16/2009
Don't know anything about it, all I know is he had trouble finding it, and this vendor had it for cheap...it worked out well.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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I have never been as big a fan of The Marx Brothers as I have been of other great comedy teams, be it the verbal brilliance of Abbott & Costello, the pathos laden antics of Laurel & Hardy, nor the violent slapstick of The Three Stooges. The reason is because the team's success or failure basically falls all on the shoulders of its lone truly brilliant member, Groucho Marx. The first film to feature the zany antics of the brothers was the 1929 talkie film of their 1926 Broadway comedy hit, The Cocoanuts. They did, however, self-finance an earlier silent film called Humorisk, which was a critical disaster, in its lone showing, and of which no known copies seem to exist. In a sense, the heart of the brothers' act in all their films is not when the three (or four, including the forgettable Zeppo, who plays a hotel desk clerk in this outing) brothers interact, but when Groucho interacts with anyone in the film, most especially the sublimely stolid Margaret Dumont.
It's not that the other brothers are not without talents, but they are simple old time vaudevillians who, sans their genius brother, would have been minor role players in film. Gummo, who never appeared in a single film, wisely chose a behind the scenes role; Zeppo retired after the team's fifth film, Duck Soup, never had an ounce of comic heft; Chico was a generic ethnic humorist who, without the team would never have lasted- even his piano playing is crude and uninspiring; and Harpo, despite his mimetic brilliance, and often soulful harpsichording, was simply a one trick pony with many antecedents. Groucho, the character, was without antecedent or descendent. Is it any wonder that the only one of the brothers to trot out a second act in Americana- that most difficult of bows, was Groucho?
In short, he IS the Marx Brothers and they are Groucho, Groucho, Groucho (and Groucho, in the first five films). This can be seen from the very first through last scene of The Cocoanuts. The hour and a half long film, directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley, from the George S. Kaufman play, adapted by Morrie Ryskind, and scored by Irving Berlin, is often derogated in comparison to later classics like the aforementioned Duck Soup, A Day At The Races, or A Night At The Opera, but despite all the waxing over those later films, The Cocoanuts is quintessential Marxist humor. Just as all of the other great comedy teams merely played slight variations of their personae, so do the Marxes in this and later films, which, to a degree, can be seen as one long running gag show, punctuated with silly plot asides, like this film's stolen necklace and wan musical interludes. Yet, this film kicked off the whole Marx schtick, even if it is rough, and at times we can hear snippets of stray dialogue that was not supposed to be in the plot, or one of the boys looking at the wrong camera, or other actors deliberately speaking into hidden microphones, or extras who mug for the camera, but it is still chock with some classic gags and lines.... Groucho always gets the best lines, and does the most with them. His scene of professed love to Margaret Dumont, where he swoons over coming home from a hard day's work to her as a waiting wife, of course, gives way to a revision with him as the waiting husband with her coming home from work. Only Groucho could have pulled off such a scene without turning off the audience, and his likeability as a cad is what propelled the film to great heights, critically and financially, and made the brothers stars, whereas most of the routines where Harpo and Chico play off of each other is time worn schtick that isn't even up to the typical gags the Three Stooges used.
The Cocoanuts is a crude but effective comedy, but without Groucho, it would have been long forgotten. The third or more of the film that is wholly dependent upon his presence is the backbone of the film, and clearly all the boys' later producers recognized this fact, if not in the boys' salaries, certainly in screen time and billing, for Groucho Marx was the Marx Brothers. The others were merely his foils, and the props that Groucho used to climb to superstardom. To deny that reality is to miss out on why the Marx Brothers are still relevant, for it is Groucho's sexual innuendos and political jabbery that still appeal to viewers today, long after Harpo's inane mugging, and Chico's now often cringe-inducing ethnic humor has fallen to disrepute. Fortunately, The Cocoanuts highlighted the right brother, and the world of film comedy has had no reason to cringe since.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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A milestone in eternity even if typical of their time
Added 4/28/2008
The four brothers are probably some of the most important American actors that made the transition from the old silent movies to the new talkies, form the old camera to the new camera, from the old primitive editing technology to the new technology, without speaking of microphones and lighting and so many other elements that will become the sound stage. The first element about these four brothers is that Harpo will remain silent. He will not use any words. He only uses some noises, a horn or a harp, his namesake, and some grunts or grumbles. He kept from the old silent movies the body language that was so typical in all actors who had to express their words with their flesh and bones. The other brothers are of course in language and Groucho is the one who is always using words as if they were traps and tricky snares. With Chico he makes a superb couple and they line up some marvelous linguistic imbroglio, like "viaduct" and" why a duck?" I also like among many others "stucco" and "stuck on", or "flower-beds ... pansies ... short pansies and long pansies ... some early bloomers." They also use anything they can think of to make a pastiche out of it, to turn it into some kind of hilarious quite crazy caricature. We can think of Fitzgerald all the time in this film, the very happy and crazy 1920s before the depression, with the Charleston and all the rest of it, including the alcohol free parties. We have to think of the musicals that were so famous in Broadway and that Fred Astaire was going to transform into a genre of its own for the cinema. The Marx brothers were precursors in 1929. The derisive use of Carmen's famous melodies exploited here with completely innocuous words that become meaningful by being innocuous was of course going to become a very classic method to make music funny and to capture the amused and amazed interest of the audience with all comedians. The content of this film is of course so shallow that you will not get a headache trying to find a meaning. A poor hotel manager, and owner, in Florida is going through an economic crisis and he is saved by small events like a necklace being stolen in the hotel, an investigation carried out by the clowns of the show, a social climbing marriage defeated by love, etc. A fairly entertaining film even if it has probably a little aged. The humor is too much of the practical type, though the linguistic level is more vivacious, and the shallowness of the plot is typical of a time when it was necessary to forget the underside of reality before the depression and the famished masses after the depression.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
2 out of 4 people found this helpful.
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An Antique Treasure of One Really Zany Movie
Added 9/27/2009
Sadly, Hollywood lost all of the original and production prints. This DVD apparently was assembled from a tape, itself assembled from damaged remnants. As an artifact, it reveals the almost humorously primitive film technology of early 1929. There's atrocious editing, and film quality varies wildly even within the same scenes. It's suspected that many original portions are missing. In any case, it's still grand fun, if for nothing else than a look at a plot right out of Victorian theater and a number of scenes in which on-film cuties are caught looking at the cameras. It's hard to tell today, but in '29 this was a landmark film: all-talking from beginning to end, one of the first movies with full-length audio and Paramount's very first 100% talkie. It's a fairly faithful filming of the Marx Brothers' huge Broadway stage success, done during weekdays at Paramount's Astoria, NY studio while the Marx's played their next Broadway hit at night. You can even see bits where the actors get their lines confused. The absurdist humor, though borrowed heavily from Vaudeville, was revolutionary in its day. Some of the old routines (the Viaduct and auction bits) no longer work, but there are still plenty of laughs to go around. The comedy bits set patterns for every future Marx film: rooms with multiple doors and weird entrance/exit schemes (culminating in a Night at the Opera), Chico/Groucho non-logic (later perfected in the Tootsy-Frootsy bit in A Day at the Races), musical numbers from Harpo and chico, and the earliest appearance of the priceless Margaret Dumont. Most supporting roles are taken by stage/radio stars. One of the jewel thieves is Kay Francis, a popular actress who made dozens of films and earned a symbolic star in the concrete of the Hollywood Walk of Fame (it's hard to tell here, but Kay had a speech impediment that earned her the nickname, "the wavishing Kay Fwancis"). Her partner in crime is Cyril Ring who played in many silent and sound films and finally entered the screen writing business. The hotel detective, Basil Ruysdael, was a radio, stage and film mainstay for many years, later appearing in hits like "Prince Valiant", "The Last Hurrah", Perry Mason episodes, and a voice in "1001 Dalmations". The ultimate fascination is the heartfelt but truly klutzy script by George S. Kaufman and really corny music from Irving Berlin, both of whom would later offer much, much better material. The antique choreography right out of the original play's staging is by Erna Kay, a Broadway veteran who has no other film credits -- but you'll see plenty in these comically antique production numbers that set the tone for the dance extravaganzes of the 1930's. Even with poor quality media, which is often dreadful, you can still sense the initial impact made by the Marx Brothers, who in the late 1920's took the comedy world by storm and turned it, in their inimitable way, upside-down and inside-out.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
Can't speak for the transfer but...
Added 8/1/2009
this film delivers incredibly in the live big screen setting. I just saw it on vacation at a classic film screening and the reactions of the crowd were priceless. These types of reactions are only achieved nowadays through gross out effects and the marx brothers achieved it by being zany. It's entertaining, funny (of course), and the dancing girls presentation makes a lot more sense in this setting showing the gaudy nature of the proceedings. Transfer-wise the print was very hit and miss with faded reels and the like and the sound wasn't too good in spots, but wasn't enough to ruin the impact of the film. A great first film for the brothers.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Bought it for a friend...
Added 2/16/2009
Don't know anything about it, all I know is he had trouble finding it, and this vendor had it for cheap...it worked out well.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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