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Before moving on to direct films like GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, OUR TOWN, KINGS ROW and THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, Sam Wood helmed two of the Marx. Bros.’ most famous films. OPERA came first followed by A DAY AT THE RACES two years later. As you can see from my star rating and review of RACES, I don’t think that the Marx Bros. films are classics.

They’re funny, but too chaotic at times. It’s the zaniness that some people like but it doesn’t work as a film. Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx) is a shady business manager who is trying to help the rich Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont, HORSE FEATHERS) get into high society by donating money to the opera. Meanwhile, Driftwood’s friends Fiorello (Chico Marx) and Tomasso (Harpo Marx) are trying to help their singer friend Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones, A DAY AT THE RACES) get a lead part in the opera company’s performance in New York City. However, the company star Rodolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King, GO WEST) has different ideas, especially when it comes to Ricardo’s girlfriend and female singing star Rosa Castaldi (Kitty Carlisle, RADIO DAYS).

Once again like in RACES, the story seems like a setting was picked and then gags were manufactured to fit. This film seems more so than RACES. Once again, the Marx Bros. are on the outside, helping out, instead of being in the heart of the story. Ricardo seems to be drug along for the ride.

Though the film as a whole doesn’t work as well as RACES, some of the individual gags and sequences are funnier than anything in the latter flick. For example, the contract negotiation between Driftwood and Fiorello, many of Groucho’s one liners, Driftwood’s crowded cabin on the ship and the bed switching scene are classic. But Harpo at times is let loose too much. A perfect example is the breakfast scene where he eats like a goat. It’s random, out of context and slows down the film.

Pacing in Marx Bros. films is sometimes nonexistent. The comedic timing is right, but the story pacing is a back burner issue in service of the next gag sequence. The films never feel like films, but an excuse for the Marx Bros. to mug the camera. Even production values are comprised in OPERA. There are several scenes that have terrible jump cuts. This can be forgiven in a great film like in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but it happens so often in OPERA that it just shows laziness on the part of the filmmakers. If the creators don’t take a film any more seriously than throwaway entertainment than why should we?

You might think that I hate the Marx Bros., but I don’t at all. They’re very funny and are extremely talented, but they opted to use their films as means to show off rather than make films it seems. Screen clowns like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and W.C. Fields utilized the medium and made it work for them. It seems to me that the Marx Bros. should have dropped the pretense of making “cinema” and just filmed their vaudeville acts like a concert film – it might have worked a lot better. Nonetheless, all movie fans need to watch Marx Bros. films, because they still serve as the foundation for which many future screen comedians built from.