Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, and Groucho Marx in Duck Soup

Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern, Raquel Torres, Edgar Kennedy, Edmund Breese, Leonid Kinskey, Charles Middleton. Screenplay: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman, Nat Perrin. Cinematography: Henry Sharp. Art direction: Hans Dreier, Wiard Ihnen. Film editing: LeRoy Stone. Music: John Leipold; songs by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby.

The best of the Marx Brothers' movies, largely because it's nonstop nonsense. There are no breaks for a harp solo by Harpo or cute piano playing by Chico. There's no "real-life" romantic subplot like the ones Irving Thalberg inserted into the movies the Marxes made when they moved over to MGM. (This was the last movie they made at Paramount.) The songs are all excuses for goofy production numbers. This is the one with Harpo and Chico running a peanut stand and tormenting Edgar Kennedy as the lemonade seller. This is the one with the mirror routine involving Groucho and Harpo (and eventually Chico) in nightshirts and nightcaps. This is the one in which Groucho (aka Rufus T. Firefly) exhorts the troops with "Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did." (The temptation to quote is irresistible.) The woman in question is, of course, Margaret Dumont, sailing stately through the turbulent sea of Groucho's puns, insults, and double entendres. For once she has a match in enduring the brothers with aplomb: Louis Calhern takes everything they can dish out and keeps plowing ahead. Duck Soup was not particularly well-received at the time, but it has grown in favor since the sentimentality that weighed down later films like A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935) and A Day at the Races (Wood, 1937) has gone out of style. If I had to pick the funniest film ever made, and thank god I don't, it might be this one.

The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948)

The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948)

Cast: Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready, Rita Johnson, Elsa Lanchester, Harold Vermilyea, Dan Tobin, Harry Morgan. Screenplay: Jonathan Latimer, based on a novel by Kenneth Fearing. Cinematography: Daniel L. Fapp, John F. Seitz. Art direction: Roland Anderson, Hans Dreier, Albert Nozaki. Film editing: LeRoy Stone. Music: Victor Young.

The Big Clock is a satisfying blend of suspense and comedy of the kind often called "Hitchcockian," which usually means it would probably have been even better if Hitchcock had directed it. But since he didn't, it's worth admiring what director John Farrow and screenwriter Jonathan Latimer did with the material provided them by Kenneth Fearing's novel. Fearing had worked at Time magazine when Henry Luce was head of that publishing empire, so it's clear that he had Luce in mind when he created the imperious Earl Janoth, played with mustache-stroking glee by Charles Laughton in the film. So there's a substratum of satire on publishing moguls like Luce -- a breed that still exists in our day, embodied by Rupert Murdoch. (And still attracts satire, viz., HBO's Succession.)  The plot centers on another Hitchcockian trope, the Wrong Man. In this case, the object of suspicion is George Stroud, editor of one of Janoth's properties, a true crime magazine called Crimeways. Ray Milland plays Stroud, a hard-charging journalist who feels trapped in Janoth's empire. Eventually, through a well-set-up series of coincidences, Stroud finds himself investigating a murder in which he becomes the chief suspect, even though it was actually committed by no less than Janoth. There are domestic complications, too, involving Stroud's wife, a thankless role nicely played by Maureen O'Sullivan. The victim is Janoth's mistress, with whom Stroud has become involved because she suggests she has dirt on Janoth that Stroud can use to his advantage. The film handles all of these plot snarls with finesse, one of the rare instances in which knowing whodunit from the outset doesn't detract from the suspense. Censorship blunts some of the edges: In the novel, Stroud's marriage was less happy and his involvement with the victim more intimate. Janoth's bisexuality was also more explicit in the source -- in the film it's suggested when we see Janoth receiving a massage from his bodyguard, played silently by Harry Morgan, who remains a brooding presence in the background of other scenes. The film is enlivened by a gallery of mostly comic secondary characters, including Elsa Lanchester as a giddy artist whose works Stroud for some reason collects.

Sally (John Francis Dillon, 1929)

Sally (John Francis Dillon, 1929)

Cast: Marilyn Miller, Alexander Gray, Joe E. Brown, T. Roy Barnes, Pert Kelton, Ford Sterling, Maud Turner Gordon, E.J. Ratcliffe, Jack Duffy, Ethel Stone, Nora Lane. Screenplay: Waldemar Young, Andrew Percival Younger, based on a play by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. Cinematography: Devereaux Jennings, Charles Edgar Schoenbaum. Art direction: Jack Okey. Film editing: LeRoy Stone. Music: Leonid S. Leonardi, Jerome Kern.

Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)

Beulah Bondi in Make Way for Tomorrow

Lucy Cooper: Beulah Bondi
Barkley Cooper: Victor Moore
Anita Cooper: Fay Bainter
George Cooper: Thomas Mitchell
Harvey Chase: Porter Hall
Rhoda Cooper: Barbara Read
Max Rubens: Maurice Moscovitch
Cora Payne: Elisabeth Risdon
Nellie Chase: Minna Gombell
Robert Cooper: Ray Mayer
Bill Payne: Ralph Remley
Mamie: Louise Beavers
Doctor: Louis Jean Heydt

Director: Leo McCarey
Screenplay: Viña Delmar
Based on a novel by Josephine Lawrence and play by Helen Leary and Nolan Leary
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Art direction: Hans Dreier, Bernard Herzbrun
Film editing: LeRoy Stone
Music: George Antheil, Victor Young

As the music ("Let Me Call You Sweetheart") swelled, and the train taking her husband to California pulled out of the station leaving Lucy Cooper alone on the platform, I muttered, "Please end it here. Please end it here." And so Leo McCarey, bless him, did. He could have, as the studio wanted, moved on to a mawkish conclusion, pulling a sentimental rabbit out of the hat in which their children relented and found a place where Barkley and Lucy Cooper could live together, but thank whatever gods preside over cinema, he didn't. I knew, before my reading confirmed it, that Yasujiro Ozu must have seen Make Way for Tomorrow -- or as seems to have happened, his scenarist Kogo Noda did. This is one Hollywood picture from the '30s and '40s that has its head on straight, keeping its heart in the right place. The film gives us complex, fallible characters instead of sugary and vinegary stereotypes: The elder Coopers are as much to blame for the predicament in which they find themselves as their children are for not finding a satisfactory way to resolve it. As an aged parent, one who once faced the problem of an aged parent, I find the film's willingness not to lay blame on anyone refreshing: Barkley Cooper should not have allowed himself to get in the financial difficulty in which he finds himself; he and Lucy should have come clean to the offspring about their money difficulties long before they did. And though it's easy to see the children as hard-hearted and selfish -- the film does tilt a little more in that direction than it might -- what we see on the screen makes clear that housing Lucy and Barkley is a little harder than it ought to be. She seems oblivious to the burdens she puts on George and Anita, and he is a cantankerous handful for Cora and Bill, refusing to follow the doctor's instructions. McCarey and his wonderful cast handle all of this superbly, with McCarey not only stubbornly refusing to provide a conventional movie ending, but also withholding some information a lesser director would have made much of, such as what Rhoda did when she disappeared that night, or what Barkley said to his daughter on the telephone when he informed her that he and Lucy weren't coming to their farewell dinner. (I think it's better that we don't know what he told her to do with that roast she was planning to serve.) A small, surprising treat of a movie.