Duck Soup

Duck Soup (in Spain as Sopa de ganso; in Latin America as Chance Heroes) is a 1933 American comedy film directed by Leo McCarey, starring the Marx Brothers, produced by Paramount Pictures, and written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. It is one of the best known feature films by the Marx Brothers, along with A Night at the Opera.

Duck Soup is a slang phrase meaning "a piece of cake" or "something easy to make". previous Marx Brothers films: Animal Crackers (The Marx Conflict), Monkey Business (Freshwater Gunslingers) and Horse Feathers (Horse Feathers).

Plot

Groucho is Rufus T. Firefly, a strange character who becomes president of Libertonia, after the former president is removed from office due to problems in the administration and disagreements with the local aristocrats, in particular, the wealthy widow Gloria Teasedale (Margaret Dumont).

There are threats of war with the neighboring country, Sylvania, and although it tries to make peace, Rufus, in hilarious situations, rejects it.

The ones in charge of spying on him, as in many of his films, are Chico and Harpo; Chicolini and Pinky (the Italian and the mute). They do everything they can, paid by the rival country, to kidnap it or steal its war strategies.

But in the end, after Chicolini's delusional treason trial, they are persuaded to join Libertonia's army. They win the war in situations too absurd to review here.

Comment

Notable in this film are the performance of the four brothers (Zeppo also appears), as well as the dialogues and "special effects". To delve into Marxian theories, this film is necessary as a base. There are double meanings with sexual allusions, issues censored for many years in this film (because we must remember that it was from the thirties). What's more, even musicals are funny, and that's worth noting. This was achieved, perhaps, by the creative freedom that the Marxes still enjoyed. When they joined MGM they drastically decreased their intervention, becoming mere actors. In short: an opportunity to appreciate the beauty in the expression and the pure Marxian humor.

Cast

Zeppo, Chico, Harpo and Groucho in a picture of the claim.

• Groucho Marx
• Harpo Marx
• Marx boy
• Zeppo Marx
• Raquel Torres
• Edmund Breese
• Leonid Kinskey
• Louis Calhern
• Margaret Dumont

Reception

The film did not garner critical or box office favor at the time, leading to the departure of the Marxes from Paramount Pictures. This could be because Groucho's musical presentation is very similar in this film and in The Conflict of the Marxes and Horse Feathers, so the audience could believe that the film was a rehash.

Years later, Arthur Marx, Groucho's son, described producer Irving Thalberg's assessment of the film's failure during a radio interview, recounting: "[Thalberg] said the problem with Goose Soup is that there are a lot of jokes in it, but there is no story and there is no one to root for. You can't support the Marx Brothers because they are a bunch of quirky guys. You have to put a love story in your film so that there is someone to root for and you have to help the lovers get together".

The City of New York complained about the potential negative implications the film could have, through its portrayal of it through the fictional "city of Libertonia. The Marx Brothers, in their usual sharp style, retorted: "Change the name of your town: It hurts our movie."

Over time, the film's reputation has been rehabilitated. The supposedly necessary love story, later included in several Marx Brothers films, is often seen as an intrusion, with the early films seen as "pure" comedy. Goose Soup is now seen as a classic political farce. The American Film Institute included it in number 85 of the best American films of the 20th century, as well as the fifth best comedy, for which it has been selected for conservation. It is also always in the top 250 movies on the Internet Movie Database.

Famous scenes

• In the “scene of the mirror”, Pinky (Harpo), dressed as Rufus (Groucho), tries to convince him that it is his own image reflected in a non-existent mirror, while the Rufus musket makes thousands of nonsense to unmask it. There is a precedent of this same scene in the film Seven years of bad luck (1921), French comic Max Linder. This scene has been later versioned in many other films and series. Harpo himself made a version of it again in an episode of the American series Love Lucy.

• Another scene shows a woman's bedroom where we see a pair of men's shoes pulled, another couple of women and finally four horses. After this, we see Harpo sleeping in bed with a horse.

• In the scene where the city of Sylvania is observed, the real city is Loja in the province of Granada (Spain).

• In a scene of the film, while Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) awaits the Sylvania ambassador to make peace, he begins to imagine that at best when he extends his hand, he will reject it by making him ridiculous. When the ambassador of Sylvania, Groucho, enraged by the possible banishment, really arrives, he receives it with a slap and declares the war.

• It is worth noting the three scenes in which the president of Libertonia tries to leave the parliament on a motorcycle with Pinky (Harpo). In the first two the president rides on the sidecar, marching the mute only with the bike. In the third, the president tells him that he does not intend to chop this time and that he will be the one who takes the bike, then disposed to boot it; the scene ends with Pinky leaving on the sidecar and with Rufus standing on the bike without getting to boot it.

• In this film, Chico Marx does not play the piano, nor Harpo the harp, although the latter makes an amago of playing the harp on the strings of a piano.

Legacy

Benito Mussolini banned the film in Italy, considering it a personal insult. The Marx Brothers were very satisfied with this. The thing is even more curious if one takes into account that Charles Chaplin's film The Great Dictator was not totally banned, but rather the scenes in which it was censored. featured Napoloni (who was a caricature of Mussolini) and his wife Rachele.

The image of Sylvania that appears at the beginning of the film corresponds to the city of Loja in Granada. As a tribute to this, said city has given the name of Mirador de Sylvania to the point from where the photograph was taken.

Accommodations

Chicolini and Pinky. Chile 2015.

In July 2015 in Chile, the theatrical adaptation of the film was released, this adaptation was shorter than the original film, but it conveyed the story and the concept.

It was directed and starred Camila Herrera as Ruffus (Groucho Marx), together with the acting surprise, Leandro Cabrera in the character of Pinky (Harpo Marx), all this under the framework of a theater festival of adaptations of outstanding films of history, among which he competed with La Strada or Corpse Bride, by Tim Burton, among others.