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 Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)

The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)

Cast: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Alexander D'Arcy, Cecil Cunningham, Barbara Vance, Esther Dale, Joyce Compton. Screenplay: Viña Delmar, based on a play by Arthur Richman. Cinematography: Joseph Walker. Art direction: Lionel Banks, Stephen Goosson. Film editing: Al Clark.

Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)

Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)

Cast: Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charles Ruggles, Roland Young, Zasu Pitts, Leila Hyams, Maude Eburne, Lucien Littlefield. Screenplay: Walter DeLeon, Harlan Thompson, Humphrey Pearson, based on a novel by Harry Leon Wilson. Cinematography: Alfred Gilks. Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Odell. Film editing: Edward Dmytryk.

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.