A Night at the Opera

MGM tried to soften the anarchic appeal of the Marx Brothers by adding audience-pleasing romances to their comedy: an endeavour that was only very slowly able to erode the brothers' outrageous humour. A Night at the Opera, the first and most successful MGM Marx work, is, according to Groucho, ‘the best of our films’ and has - not only because of the immortal cabin scene - Chaplin and Brecht, Ionesco and Dalí as unreserved fans. Guy Alombert on the Marx Brothers: ‘Relentless poetry, almost equally rabid misogyny, insatiable greed for money and a demonic hatred of stupidity.’ (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum