I haven't read the above opinions yet, but I will give mine.
After watching this virtually back-to-back with A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA, I found the latter to be an overall funnier movie! No other reason to compare the 2 other than the fact that I watched them just a few days apart.
I've seen both films roughly an equal number of times over the last 50 years, so it has nothing to do with over-familiarity with either film.
ANIMAL CRACKERS has a running time of 97-98 minutes, and seems even longer. The latter time seems to be "official", while my DVDs say 97. (I have the Image version, and the Silver Screen edition from the 2004 box.) Now they do contain edits, but nowhere near a minute's worth -- it's probably just rounding.
That being said, it's about a 1/2 hour too long. I don't think it's a coincidence that their following 3 films run anywhere from 68-77 minutes. And they are all much better, to boot!
For those who get all warm and fuzzy when talking about the Marx's Paramount films, and who complain about their later films having too much plot and music -- well, take a look at ANIMAL CRACKERS. In fact, the director, Victor Herman, favored uniniterrupted comedy scenes. He actually proved his point by audience-testing a 4 reel version of the film containing comedy scenes alone! (Documented in THE MARX BROTHERS ENCYCLOPEDIA, by Glenn Mitchell.)
Now that's the version I'd love to see, though with the modern technology that we have at our fingertips, it's easy to do, even with just the fast forward button or a scene selection menu. (My laptop is not powerful enough to do video editing of such large files. I've tried.)
If I were to re-edit the film, I'd remove more than just the fluff -- I'd trim down or trim out some of the Marx Brothers scenes, believe it or not. I have also have a theory that the Brothers were still geting used to playing to the camera and a quiet set rather than to a live audience. (This is somehing that Abbott and Costello also experienced when they entered films.)
The bridge game with Harpo, Chico, Margaret Dumont, and one of her guests goes on for too long. There are a couple of funny things in it, but the scene frankly tries my patience.
The same with Chico at the piano -- I usually thoroughly enjoy his piano playing. But he tries both his fellow cast members' patience as well as ours with his monotonous melody. This song is not "Sugartime", though it is often thought that it is. Couldn't be, since that song wasn't written until 1957! He does go on to play another tune. I'd have just let him play the monotous melody once for a few seconds, cut to Groucho and Dumont rolling their eyes, then cut to Chico playing the next melody.
I not a fan of the "Hungerdunger" scene, nor the scene with Grouch and Chico talking about how to solve the burglary. In fairness, the best lines of the former scene were censored out of re-issues but finally restored to the blu-ray. In any case, I'd prune it a bit more to give it some more "punch." Same with the burglary-solving discussion: either prune it or jettison it altogether.
The whole plot about stealing the painting and replacing it, by no less than 2 groups of people, driven by different motives, is ridiculous. I've read that on Broadway they needed to offset the Brothers' antics with some relief from the comedy! The only reason to leave
any of it in there is to setup the ending with Harpo and the silverware.
Regarding one of the thefts, I never liked the scene where Chico and Harpo replace the painting, especially since much of it is done in the dark, with an obvious Groucho double, which you can see because of the silouette of his profile.
Hal Thompson, the romantic male lead (if you wanna call him that), is terrible. And he gets to show off his terrible singing voice to-boot, in his duet with Lillian Roth. BTW, I do like the song's melody, also played under the main titles -- it's by Kalmar and Ruby, whose songs I usually enjoy. According to IMDB, Thompson had a long career duration wise, making his last appearance in 1959 in an Alfred Hitchcock's presents episode. He started in the silents, but his documented appearances according to IMDB are few and far between. Strange.
Lillian Roth was really cute! I like her. YOWZA! Her movie career ended several years after this picture, but later wrote an auto-bio about her career, and they supposedly turned it into a movie.
Maybe I'm getting old, but may I say that Margaret Dumont looks kind of pretty in this film? She looks more than 5 years younger than she did in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. I might even dare to say that perhaps 10 years earlier, in 1920, that she was considered beautiful.
In fairness, I believe the movie script was cleaned up a lot from the Broadway script. Even Groucho remarks in the film, after the sewer/sure joke, "Well, we cleaned that up pretty well!" Also, some scenes from the play were also excised -- supposedly a costume party, known as the "DuBarry scene," and Groucho's "ordering" scene. (c.f. THE ENCYLOPEDIA mentioned above about the DuBarry scene, and THE MARX BROTHERS AT THE MOVIES by Zimmerman and Goldblatt about the ordering scene.) Now how funny either of those scenes were is anyone's guess, since I've never read any detail about these scenes.
Pretty much everything I've read indicates that the producers wanted to make an "instant movie" by filming the Broadway play, though it is evident that the above changes, among others, were made. It seems that it was done mostly to keep the movie to a shorter running time -- which was probably motivated more by cost than anything else.
Keep in mind that this was released in late 1930 -- a little over a year since the industry abandoned silent films and concentrated stictly on talkies. The industry was still learning, an IMHO comedy was harder to "get right" than drama at this stage of the game. In general, the comedy competition for talkies was only bettered by the shorts being produced by Hal Roach from the likes of Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, and Charley Chase -- though it should be noted that it wasn't until around the time that ANIMAL CRACKERS was released in September of that year that even the Roach product seemed to figure it all out, since there are many weak talkie shorts he produced in 1929 and early 1930, particularly by Our Gang.
So, to me, while not one of their best, it is still a memorable film for a few key comedy scenes: Hooray for Capt. Spaulding, Groucho's monologue about his African Safari, Groucho's exchanges with Chandler, Dumont, and others guests, and Harpo's antics throughout, including his silver-ware dropping scene. I even enjoy the "Abie the fish-man" scene, particularly Abie's line to Chico, when asked when he became "Chandler": "When did
you become an Italian?" In short, to me the film seems funnier when I'm recalling the best scenes rather than when I'm actually watching the entire film -- and my most recent viewing occurred over 2 separate nights, watching roughly half the film each night. Thats says a lot, I think.
What I would have liked would have been to literally film ANIMAL CRACKERS while it was being performed in front of a live audience on Broadway. Today of course that is possible, and has been done, but in 1930, the challenges of sound recording would have been insurmountable. A compromise would have been to let off-screen cast members and crew laugh out loud -- I think that would have removed what I perceive to be some awkwardness and pacing of some of the comedy scenes.
Also, I think me sitting in front of my TV alone watching this film is an entirely different experience than watching it with a knee-slapping, howling audience. Most of their comedies don't need that experience, but this film is definitely one that would benefit it immensely. I still regret not seeing this in the theater in 1974 -- I was definitely old enough to see it (and it was G-rated!), but if memory serves me correctly, it wasn't playing in my immediate neighborhood. I think that by the time I heard about it playing, and then asked my parents to take me to see it, it was no longer playing even in the theater about a half hour away! I do remember my neighbor, in her late teens or maybe older, telling me that she saw it and that I would like it.
Returning to my first point and why I think A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA (ANIC) is better -- well, I didn't get bored with the movie as I just did wih ANIMAL CRACKERS (AC). The movie industry obvioulsy learned a lot in the intervening 16 years, and so did The Brothers. There may be nothing in ANIC as iconic as Groucho singing "Hooray for Capt. Spaulding," but the movie as a whole keeps your attention more, and some of the scenes are very funny -- and none try your patience with length and monotony.
It was a tough call for me, but I think you need to judge a movie as a whole, and not how it would play if you cut out the stuff that you don't like. So I cherish AC for a few great individual, iconic scenes, and ANIC as an overall better movie experience with the laughs spread out a bit more evenly.
Now feel free to
![[protest]](https://threestooges.net/forums/Smileys/default/protest.gif "Protest")
if you will.
