Duck Soup Analysis

Duck Soup (1933)

Directed by: Leo McCarey
Starring: Four Marx Brothers

This film is so weird, quirky and whacky and I couldn't believe that this film was made in 1933 - I used to think that the audience's reaction time has been getting lower eventually, and hence films these days are fast, and grab our attention right away and older films are slow. This film's pace is tight, even for today's standards - by pace I mean, the timing of the jokes, and the acts. Everything is happening so fast, in the frame and a lot of things are happening simultaneously. There are a lot of Jabardasth-esque punches, and a lot of mime-ish acts happening. The performances are done like it's done for a silent film, or a mime where the actors are physically expressing their emotions a lot of times. 

For these kind of films, mise-en-scene; especially staging, blocking and production design are so crucial and some acts are almost like juggling, and to get these shots right - there must have been a lot of rehearsal going on. This film doesn't have a sense of story - it's an unpredictable mockery and I'm sure the writing would've mostly been trying to find jokes in a given context. The sudden change from dialogue, to song and back to dialogue is quirky. Usually I don't like comedies without a sense of story, but this film made me want to enjoy this film. I think the worldview of the filmmakers, is to let some chaos thrive in this overtly systematic world - where kids are asked to behave, elders are expected to behave and you're otherwise looked at as crazy, or this could also be an escapist outlet for people who want to let loose in life.