ShotDeck Drop: Duck Soup (1933)

The visual research resource ShotDeck recently examined Duck Soup (1933), the Marx Brothers’ musical satire of war and politics, photographed by Henry Sharp, ASC and directed by Leo McCarey. The story (such as it is) starts with the quashing of a revolution in the fictional country of Freedonia with the installation of dictator Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx). In the neighboring country of Sylvania, a scheming ambassador (Louis Calhern) seeks control of Freedonia through espionage and statecraft, but Firefly decides that what Freedonia really needs is a war.

Sharp racked up more than 100 film and television credits in his 55 years as a cinematographer, including three of Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s silent-era films: Don Q Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926) and The Iron Mask (1929). He joined the ASC in 1922, with the following notice appearing in that year’s August issue of American Cinematographer:

“Always a keen chap, Sharp began his picture career with the Thomas Dixon Company as assistant cinematographer and laboratory worker. Since [then], he has been connected with Paramount, Corona Cinema Company, and Triangle. Four years ago, he started with Thomas H. Ince and has been with that organization without missing a day during that period. For three years he has been first cameraman and as such has shot nothing but all-star productions.”

In the 10 years between that announcement and the production of Duck Soup, Sharp racked up a whopping 50 feature credits. Meanwhile, Hollywood was still adjusting to the introduction of sound and all the ways it inhibited the camera’s freedom of movement. The Marx Brothers’ first two films — The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930), both photographed by George Folsey, ASC — were sound pictures, but they were based on plays and more or less staged from the perspective of the audience, with little variety in camera angles. With Monkey Business (1931; Arthur Todd, ASC) and continuing with Horse Feathers (1932; Ray June, ASC), blimped, mobile cameras allowed the Marxes to cook up elaborate set pieces with more sophisticated visual comedy gags.

The Marx Brothers’ fifth and final feature for Paramount, Duck Soup contains some of their most famous routines, and features the most refined cinematography of any of their films until then, from sweeping crane shots (operated by future ASC member Edward Colman) to delicately lit close-ups. Sharp and McCarey — who assisted Tod Browning at Universal and directed dozens of comedy shorts for Hal Roach — don’t revolutionize the medium as much as they subvert it, using the audience’s well-worn expectations to deliver new twists on old formulas.

Hail Freedonia

One example comes early in the film, where the Freedonian elite eagerly await Firefly's public debut, while a chorus of singers herald his imminent arrival. The camera dollies backwards and booms up over a gauntlet of soldiers as a lineup of prancing flower girls scatter petals along the path where Firefly is expected, and...

...Nothing happens.

CUT TO:

Elsewhere in the palace, an alarm clock rings, waking Firefly. He throws off his nightgown to reveal a rumpled suit beneath, then slides down a fireman's pole down to the ballroom, and creeps unnoticed into the awaiting scene before anyone realizes it.

“The last man nearly ruined this place, he didn’t know what to do with it. If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait till I get through with it.”

The scene launches into a dialogue between Firefly and the dowager propping up his administration, Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont). Packed with combative non sequiturs, physical humor, and fourth-wall breaking asides, the familiar Marx Bros. format remains in place, but Sharp's cinematography is controlled, specific and lit more dramatically than in their previous films.

"That's a good quarter cigar. I smoked the other three quarters myself."

The camera draws even closer to reveal gag and story information: the butt of a cigar, a fancy teacup with half-eaten donut, a carefully inscribed lock combination. These shots are exacting in their attention to detail, which in and out of context possess a kind of surrealist quality. In previous films, tight closeups were used for Chico Marx's piano numbers, but there are no instrumental interludes with him or Harpo Marx in Duck Soup.

"Who you gonna believe? Me, or your own eyes?"

Like many comedy stars of their era (and today), the Marx Brothers worked with a team of writers, re-teaming on Duck Soup with Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby — who wrote the music and scenarios for the brothers' musical plays — and Arthur Sheekman, who wrote additional dialogue for the Monkey Business and Horse Feathers screenplays. The brothers chose McCarey based on his reputation for inventive comedy pictures, but clashed with him over the tone of Duck Soup. He was interested in developing characters and story, and they were only interested in making jokes. Despite all that, "He was the only first-class director we ever had," Groucho told Richard Anobile for The Marx Bros. Scrapbook. Ironically, it was one of McCarey's ideas that led to what has arguably become the film's most famous joke.

The "mirror gag" is pure vaudeville, predating its earliest appearances in films like Charlie Chaplin's The Floorwalker (1916; William C. Foster, ASC, Roland Totheroh, ASC) and Max Linder's Seven Years Bad Luck (1921; shot by Charles Van Enger, ASC). McCarey himself employed it at Hal Roach for the Charley Chase short Sittin' Pretty (1924; Len Powers, ASC).

It goes like this: someone in the scene thinks they're looking at themselves in a mirror, but they're actually looking at another person pretending to be their reflection, a deception obvious to anyone but the mark, at first. The laughs come from the beholder's attempts to trick the false "reflection" out of their ruse, and the trickster's attempts to keep it up.

In Duck Soup, Sylvanian spies Chicolini (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo) have infiltrated Mrs. Teasdale's house in search of Firefly's war plans. Chicolini locks Firefly in a closet, then he and Pinky assume the prisoner's identity in greasepaint and matching nightgowns. (Unsurprisingly, all the brothers look alike in Groucho makeup.) When Firefly escapes and calls his guards, Pinky panics and crashes through a large mirror he thought was a doorway. Firefly investigates and finds Pinky on the other side of the empty mirror frame. Caught, Pinky plays the part of Firefly's reflection.

The Marx Brothers' popularity allowed them to claim the mirror gag for themselves, but countless variations exist. Harpo recreated it with Lucille Ball for an episode of I Love Lucy, and it became a running gag in animation: Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, Bugs Bunny, and Scooby-Doo all did their own takes. Filmmakers used it as an in-camera trick to play with the self-perceptions of their characters, when they gaze into a mirror and see another face staring back at them. The trope is used to trick the audience in Airplane! (1981), to seamless effect in a deleted sequence from Terminator 2 (1991), and played for thrills in the horror film 1408 (2007).

"Where's my Stradivarius?"

Earlier in the film, a slapstick skirmish between the spies and a lemonade vendor foreshadows Freedonia's inevitable war with Sylvania. On the battlefield, Firefly and Mrs. Teasdale, along with Chicolini and Pinky (who were playing both sides), find themselves holed up in a farmhouse, besieged by the enemy on all sides. Still, the jokes fly like bullets. One subtle editing gag has Firefly changing his uniform from shot to shot — from Confederate to Union soldier, to Boy Scout, to Beefeater, then finally, Davy Crockett — implying that all forms of militarism are fair game for mockery.

Duck Soup flopped in theaters, its relentless lunacy and blatant disrespect for authority too much for audiences who expected more conventional entertainment, and didn't want to be reminded of the rise of Fascism in Europe. (Benito Mussolini was so offended by it, he had it banned in Italy.) But it is a funny movie — one whose humor yielded keen observations on the nature of politics. It wasn't written that way, according Groucho. "It turned out to be a satire."

Founded by Lawrence Sher, ASC (cinematographer of Joker: Folie à Deux, The Hangover Trilogy, Garden State), ShotDeck is the world’s largest library of fully-searchable high-definition cinematic images. With over 1.6 Million shots and now an App for iPhone and iPad access, ShotDeck is an invaluable reference, planning, and collaboration tool for filmmakers, students and creatives of any kind.

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