A NIGHT AT THE OPERA: Blu-ray (MGM, 1935) Warner Archive
By the time the Marx Brothers arrived on the MGM
backlot in 1935 they had already appeared on stage and screen for a little over
two decades. That said, they were nevertheless considered ‘has-beens’ in
Hollywood, having burned through a string of 5 pictures at Paramount – each,
with diminishing returns. In fact, their most fondly recalled ‘classic today,
1933’s Duck Soup, proved the biggest box office disappointment of them
all. While Paramount might have been willing to overlook this lag in returns, bitter
contract disputes officially put a period to their tenure with the 4th
brother, straight man – Zeppo, bowing out of the act for good. Mercifully,
Groucho and his 2 remaining cohorts, Chico and Harpo were not ready or willing
to throw in the towel as yet. At this
juncture, Irving G. Thalberg, MGM’s wunderkind producer, recognized there still
might be a little box office gold to mine from the brothers Marx. And thus, a
successful transition to Metro’s dream factory. Alas, this alliance too would
be extremely short-lived, though not for similar reasons. Thalberg, a visionary
whose Midas touch at Metro was unimpeachable, but was born physically slight,
died of a massive heart attack in 1936, age 37 – leaving the future of the Marx
brothers in mogul, Louis B. Mayer’s hands. Mayer, regrettably, could not see
their potential. Nevertheless, Thalberg had reasoned, with a little tweaking,
the Marx brothers could be great again.
The formula for their first picture at MGM, A Night
at the Opera (1935) would move the brothers out of their Vaudeville ‘sketches’
loosely strung together, and, add to a solidly crafted plot, written by George
S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Al Boasberg, musical interludes supplied by Kitty
Carlisle and Allan Jones. To be certain,
skits would still be a part of the process, A Night at the Opera
containing perhaps their greatest – the riotous ‘state room’ scene in which Groucho’s
cramped digs aboard a luxury liner are filled beyond capacity with all manner
of guest until, at the appropriate moment, an unsuspecting Margaret Dumont
accidentally opens the door, causing a human tsunami to burst forth and flood
the crewman’s passage. Allan Jones would market his appearance in this movie,
singing the infectious ditty, Cosi-Cosa, to appear in rapid succession
as love interest, Gaylord Ravenal in Universal’s monumental screen adaptation
of Show Boat (1936), before being cast opposite Metro’s iron butterfly,
Jeanette MacDonald in The Firefly (1937). As for Kitty Carlisle, she was
more a casual participant to picture-making in general, preferring legitimate
opera and the theater to films; her movie career, cut short after 1935 to
concentrate on this ‘first love’ and later, appearances on television, with a
brief and forgettable return to the movies in 1978.
Groucho, who admired Thalberg greatly, recalled their initial
meeting years later with a modicum of amused disdain. Apparently, Thalberg,
having summoned the brothers to discuss their signing an MGM contract, was
repeatedly delayed by chronic phone calls, leaving the Marx brothers to their
own devices inside his cavernous private office. After waiting an hour, Groucho
called down to the commissary for some potatoes. He then lit a fire in Thalberg’s
imposing fireplace. When Thalberg returned, he was to discover the brothers
sitting cross-legged and completely naked around this roaring blaze, roasting baked
potatoes. The ice was immediately broken. Used to having his way, Thalberg was
exceedingly charmed by the brothers’ cheek. The deal was done. Now, the real
work – to resurrect their sagging careers in Hollywood - would have to begin. Groucho,
perhaps most deeply concerned their reputation should not slip any further
among their fans, was outraged by an early draft of the screenplay, coauthored
by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. At Thalberg’s behest, the thistle of anarchy was
softened in this new material. In their previous outings for Paramount, Groucho
and his cohorts were caustic wits, assaulting virtually anyone unfortunate to
cross paths with their humorous diatribes. Thalberg, however, felt this had
made the brothers unsympathetic, and concentrated on crafting a more ‘likable’
persona. The bite and zing of their laughter would now be telescopically directed
only at the villains of the piece. After a rather disastrous prevue in Long
Beach, with heavy editing applied thereafter, A Night at the Opera confirmed
Thalberg’s influence to be right on the money – a lot of it!
Originally, A Night at the Opera was to have
begun with the Marx brothers’ likenesses replacing the iconic ‘Leo the Lion’ in
the MGM trademark, each – with the exception of Harpo (who, of course, honked
his horn) aping the proud roar. Mayer abhorred this opener, filmed but vetoed
by him, only to turn up decades later in a long-forgotten trailer never shown
to the public. The picture’s opening shot ought to have been of a boat in a
canal with a title card suggesting ‘Italy…where they sing all day and go the
opera at night’. This would have immediately been followed by snippets from
Leoncavallo's Pagliacci performed by ‘every day’ people in the streets,
with the penultimate serenade coming from a waiter approaching Mrs. Claypool’s
(Margaret Dumont) table, thus leading into the comedic sequence between Dumont
and Groucho, now to begin most abruptly as the opener of the movie as it exists
today. Margaret Dumont, trained as an operatic singer in her teens, marked her theatrical
debut as a raven-haired soubrette in 1902, revered for her statuesque beauty. A fortuitous marriage to millionaire
industrialist, John Moller Jr. in 1910 put a period to this ambitious
stagecraft. Tragically, the union was short-lived, Moller dying from the 1918
influenza pandemic. Dumont then returned to Broadway, rising as cream in musical
comedies. But in 1925, the actress was to achieve her greatest notoriety yet, playing
the first in a series of obtuse, wealthy dowagers opposite Groucho in The
Cocoanuts. So successful was she as Mrs. Potter, Dumont was similarly cast
as Mrs. Rittenhouse in Animal Crackers. When Paramount purchased both
properties for the screen, Dumont followed the Marx brothers to Hollywood,
reprising her roles in both movie versions: The Cocoanuts in 1929, and, Animal
Crackers, one year later. For decades thereafter, Dumont’s old beefs were
hailed as the bright ‘straight man’ anchoring the brothers Marx, who otherwise
behaved as untethered troglodytes. And Dumont, far from being the ‘fourth’
wheel in these comedies, rumored to be wholly unaware of just how funny any of
this material was, is, in hindsight, the perfect romantic foil, her restrained
reactions the exquisite counterpoint to Groucho’s madcap pursuit of…well…
Thalberg was adamant the movies made by Groucho and
his entourage for MGM would not mimic the style already established at Paramount.
He was also insistent on sending the Marx brothers on tour to test new material
with a live audience, later to be inserted accordingly into their future work
at the studio. The producer also pressed upon the writers to refine the
brothers’ screen personas. Thus, Groucho – the unabashed anarchist, now became
less absurd and bothersome. Chico was shorn of his deviousness and lent a
modicum of intelligence, while Harpo evolved from puckish prankster to a more
empathetic ‘silent’ partner. But perhaps the greatest departure from Paramount’s
in-house style was MGM’s added gloss – a studio hallmark to gild these lilies
with considerable panache, as well as a slam-bang finale - elements lacking
from the Paramount tenure. While some fans were not impressed with Thalberg’s
tinkering with this well-established formula, A Night at the Opera opened
a new chapter for the Marx brothers, reigning in their insanity to conform to
more plot-driven fare, and, with light musical respites, much needed breaks between
the rapid-fire delivery of their zingers. And while die hards deplored these
changes, Thalberg’s logic – getting twice the box office for half the laughs –
soundly attracted new fans. Groucho believed in Thalberg’s philosophy, writing
in his autobiography decades later, of the 13 movies he and his brothers made, “…two
were far above average…made by Thalberg” – referencing not only A Night
at the Opera, but its successor, A Day at the Races (1937).
Although never entirely referenced, A Night at the
Opera begins in Milan, Italy where business manager, Otis B. Driftwood
(Groucho), after having stood up his wealthy benefactress, Mrs. Claypool
(Margaret Dumont), aggressively pursues her money by suggesting her patronage
of the opera will immediately catapult her reputation into high society. To
this end, Driftwood introduces Claypool to the manager of the New York Opera
Company, Herman Gottlieb (Sig Ruman), and swiftly orchestrates an endowment of
$200,000, allowing Gottlieb to engage Rodolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King),
the ‘greatest tenor since Caruso’, for the coming season. Meanwhile, backstage,
chorister, Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones) hires his pal, Fiorello (Chico) to be
his manager. Ricardo pines for the lovely soprano, Rosa Castaldi (Kitty
Carlisle), also courted by Lassparri. Witnessing Lassparri assaulting his
dresser, Tomasso (Harpo), Driftwood knocks him unconscious with a mallet. Now, Fiorello
appears, pitching himself as the manager of the greatest tenor in the world. Mistaking
Ricardo for Lassparri, Driftwood, immediately signs him to a season contract
with the opera.
Driftwood, Claypool, Rosa, Lassparri and Gottlieb set
sail for New York, with Driftwood discovering Ricardo, Fiorello, and Tomasso
stowed away inside his steamer trunk. Lassparri has them thrown into the brig. With
Driftwood’s complicity, the trio escapes, briefly to assume the disguise of
three famous bearded aviators. Later, at Driftwood's hotel room, Fiorello,
Ricardo and Tomasso are pursued by police sergeant, Henderson (Robert Emmett
O'Connor). In attempting to evade Henderson, Ricardo is reunited with Rosa in
her hotel room. He has an altercation with Lassparri. Now, both Rosa and
Driftwood are fired by Gottlieb. Unwilling to take this snub lying down, Groucho
and his cohorts conspire to sabotage the opening night of ‘Il trovatore’
abducting Lassparri to force Gottlieb into substituting Ricardo and Rosa in his
place. Ricardo is a hit with the audience. Thus, when Lassparri frees himself
from his tethers and attempts step into Ricardo’s place, the audience boos him
off the stage. Having launched Ricardo’s career, Driftwood and Fiorello begin
to negotiate a new contract with Gottlieb as Rosa and Ricardo entertain the
audience with an encore.
The creative template established in A Night at the
Opera would be recycled in subsequent Marx Brothers’ movies. Would this
formula have endured into a successful film franchise had Thalberg lived to see
the day? Debatable. Irrefutably, it served both A Night at the Opera,
and, A Day at the Races extremely well. Viewed within the totem of the
Marx Brothers’ pantheon, Thalberg’s two carefully orchestrated and personally
supervised outings are in a class apart. While the Paramount movies were more
or less static homages to the Marx Brothers’ stage successes reincarnated on
the screen, both ‘Opera’ and ‘Races’ are
hand-crafted spectacles distinctly created for the screen. The comedy, while deliberately
not in the same vein, is nevertheless solidly executed, and, at times, achieves
a level of sheer perfection that is pretty hard to top. We have to give it to
the Marx Brothers; a finer group of madcaps yet to be defined on the movie
screen. All of the truly great comedy ‘teams’ from Hollywood’s golden age were
unique; Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Gallagher and Shean, Wheeler
and Woolsey, Abbott & Costello, etc. et al. Unlike their brethren
however, The Marx Brothers were unhinged intellectuals, railing against
authority – or at least, the appearance of it, repeatedly embodied by the
long-suffering society matron, invariably played with irrepressible charm by Maggie
Dumont. While the elaborate production numbers and romantic scenarios in A
Night at the Opera have been designed to delay, compartmentalize, augment,
though ultimately reign in the brothers’ insanity, while simultaneously to
divest them of their Vaudeville roots, the verbal and visual slapstick maintains
the brothers’ legacy as looney-tuned incorrigibles.
The Marx Brothers gimmick – if one can call it that –
lay in their curious caricatures; Groucho, the self-appointed sourpuss
authoritarian, sporting grease-painted brows and mustache, chomping on an
ever-present, though usually unlit cigar as he ran through an ego-crushing
barrage of nonsensical double entendre, puns and non sequiturs. Running
counterpoint to this - Harpo’s deafening silence, using only a horn and those
hardboiled/expressive eyes and Cheshire grin to portend of impish deviance with
a predilection for very young girls. Between these polar opposites, Chico - the
ever-present buffer with fractured English to camouflage his slyness. If we
lose something of the trio’s mockery of the upper classes in A Night at the
Opera, the void is well-compensated by MGM’s inimitable gloss and Thalberg’s
attention to detail, affording his comedians all the flourish and finesse of a ‘grade
‘A’ MGM release. As such, A Night at the Opera remains a comedy with
class – a lot of it. Does it get in the way of the Marx Brothers’ trademarked
style? Occasionally. But viewed today,
the movies made under Thalberg’s auspices are high-water marks for all
concerned.
Over the decades, A Night at the Opera has suffered
the fate of many classic movies, unceremoniously, to be re-edited for content
and theatrical reissues, then dumped on the television market, further Ginsued of
their greatness to accommodate TV’s commercial interruptions and time
constraints. MGM, generally more proactive than most studios back in the day,
nevertheless, was not very progressive in curating this title. Hence, for
decades, A Night at the Opera was to be seen only in washed out, faded,
poorly contrasted and otherwise careworn 16 and/or 35mm prints. By the early
2000’s, the damage to its past appeared to be irreversible, with no known
original elements in existence.
After an absence far too long, A Night at the Opera
arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive. And, while the results here fare
less than some of WAC’s other efforts, the reasons are purely for lack of
viable archival elements, and decidedly not the fault of any slippage in due diligence
to make A Night at the Opera look every bit as good as it can in hi-def.
There is, alas, only so much to be done with improperly maintained,
second-generation print sources. So, contrast remains a tad…well…contrasty,
with a decided decline in mid-register tonality in the grey scale and
occasionally, blown out whites glaring as they ought not. We’ll not poo-poo these
mastering results. For those only aware of what this movie has looked like for
decades on TV and later, on home video, what WAC has done here is perform another
minor miracle, working from the most tiresome and careworn film stocks housed
in their entire library of classic films.
The B&W image is more than serviceable. Better still, much of the
image here is crisply rendered, with at least hints of fine detail to
intermittently appear and satisfy. Best of all, WAC has made the extra effort
to clean-up the image without digitally scrubbing it beyond recognition. So, virtually
all of the age-related artifacts that were present throughout the DVD
presentation have been eradicated herein while film grain has been preserved. Just
compare the establishing shot of the opera house on the Blu-ray, as it appeared
on the DVD – the latter, riddled in scratches and dirt, the former now looking
smartly free of all these ravages inflicted by time. The 2.0 DTS audio sounds pretty
solid, if otherwise unremarkable. Extras include a brief featurette, previously
made available on the DVD, covering the picture’s gestation and the Marx Brothers’
enduring appeal. We also get a comprehensive audio commentary from historian,
Leonard Maltin, plus 2 short subjects and a theatrical trailer. Bottom line: despite
nearly a century’s worth of neglect, A Night at the Opera has endured the
deluge and marks its Blu-ray debut in a 1080p transfer, sure to please, if not
quite astound. Highly recommended! An ‘A+’ for effort too.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the
best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
3
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