DUCK SOUP

Year: 1933
UK: NFT
Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Raquel Torres, Louis Calhern, Margaret Dumont, Edgar Kennedy, Edmund Breese, William Worthington, Edwin Maxwell, Leonid Kinsky, Verna Hillie, George MacQuarris, Frederick Sullivan, Davison Clark, Charles B Middleton, Eric Mayne, Wade Boteler, E. H. Calvert, Dennis O'Keefe, Dale Van Sickel
Director: Leo McCarey
Country: USA
UK: 70 mins
UK Release Date: 18 June 2004 (Limited Re-release - London)

Synopsis

Screening digitally DUCK SOUP is the quintessential Marx Bros film, a seminal and anarchic war film satire. Pinky (Harpo Marx) and Chicolini (Chico Marx) are supposedly double agents in Freedonia, a Ruritanian state eccentrically governed by Rufus T Firefly (Groucho Marx). Assigned the sabotage of the state, though Pinky and Chicolini devote the bulk of their energies to provoking a random lemonade-vendor's wrath. Rufus T Firefly, though, entrusted the reins of power, does their work more than well, his compulsive transgressions of political etiquette swiftly breaching the peace…

Failed statehood was never so funny, but the joys of this masterpiece are not confined to the plot: their absurdist humour is everywhere, from the songs, to the grab bag of costumes. In particular, the celebrated mirror sequence, with identically bespectacled, boot-polished moustachioed and night-dressed Marxes, is a breathless marvel. The whole movie is a blast.