A Night at the Opera
September 4, 2006
"A Night at the Opera"
Directed by Sam Wood
1935
For the Marx Brothers, this is basically where it all started to go wrong. Having left Paramount in favor of MGM, their films began to lose their anarchic edge. The writing became sappier, the plots more coherent (and subsequently blander) and often the brothers were pushed to the edge of the story to make room for romantic leads and duller-than-dishwater musical numbers. Third wheel Zeppo had been finally dropped from the films, but he was replaced with an increasingly bland string of straight men. While still fondly remembered, "A Night at the Opera" is one of the hardest of their films to watch. There is still enough of that comedic genius to make it one of their classics, but the filler level is high and basically any scene not involving the Brothers is almost groan inducing (Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle's romantic scenes are like some kind of strange anti-comedy, sucking all the joy from anything around them). Even the praised "Stateroom" scene can barely make up for the atrocious musical number ("Cosi-Cosa") Jones does a few minutes later. Cut out the crap and it's one of their best films. Unfortunately, the crap is still there and it was only downhill from then on. (One special note on the currently available print of the film: During World War II, the film was cut to remove as many references to Italy as possible, which is kind a bitch since the entire first half hour or so of the movie takes place in Milan. The most noticeable cut is near the beginning of the film, in which an entire sequence was removed. All in all it's about three minutes shorter than it was upon its 1935 release. Since the original negative was cut, rather than just individual prints, the film can probably never be restored.)
[ Back to Review-o-Matic menu ]
This page is part of www.zombieunderground.net. If you're not seeing a menu on the left, please click here to reload.
Everything on this site is the © author (please see the "About" section).