A Night At The Opera

After the draining experience of watching Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, I decided a comedy was in order. I chose A Night at The Opera, starring Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx. It is a mad cap film that barely has a plot, but is so fast paced I hardly noticed. Most of the film takes place on a ship ride from Italy to New York, where Groucho is working for a man bringing over a very famous Italian opera singer to debut in New York. Groucho finds three stow a ways in his luggage in the form of Chico, Harpo, and Ricardo, an aspiring Opera singer chasing after the girl. The rest of the film is the four of them plotting to get Ricardo in the Opera while avoiding the cops who are after them. The film is very funny and filled with crazy stunts and non-sequitors through out.This is the first Marx Bros. movie i have seen and they are like The Three Stooges if the Stooges got along. This was also the first film that dies not feature Zeppo Marx, who left the group after their previous film flopped. The dialogue is sharp through out and I was surprised at how many blatant sexual references and jokes were made for a film released in 1935. That is one of the things I am learning with this project. I had always imagined old movies being boring, stuffy, or chaste. The are actually just as Risque as movies today, some even more so. I feel very lucky to be discovering all of these classics.