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By
WAYNE KLEIN
The Marx Brothers hit their
peak with "Duck Soup." Sure, "A Night at the
Opera" and "A Day at the Races" were both bigger
box office hits and, while both those latter films
have their moments they just can't quite compete
with the inspired anarchy of "Duck Soup." Let's
start with the positives first. It doesn't look
like most of the films have any footage missing as
near as I can tell. Sure, some of the editing
still looks ragged but most of their early films
(and films from that era for that matter) have
that "look." The first three movies are a bit
static looking (since the first two were based on
their stage plays that's not a surprise -- they
look like photographed stage plays). With "Monkey
Business" and "Horse Feathers" The Marx Brothers
began to develop a style that was a bit more
cinematic. All five films are essential for fans.
Now the bad news. Universal has been slapping
together boxed sets lately of older films and TV
series with little or no extras and without any
effort at restoration. They're where Warner
Brothers was about 6 years ago. The prints often
don't look as sharp as they could and there are
plenty of analog blemishes to muddy up the picture
as well. Digitally many of these flaws could
easily be corrected on these prints. Since the
original negatives are long gone (they were shot
on nitrate stock; nitrate stock is quite unstable
and begins to disintegrate and shrink after a
couple of decades), unfortunately, we're left with
prints that are several generations removed from
the originals, which means that these will
probably never look perfect. Could they look
better? Absolutely since there's been minimal
effort to clean them up and none of them look as
if there has been any effort to restore them.
"Horse Feathers" still appears to be missing some
material (unfortunately most of it is probably
permanently lost) that probably could have been
restored from foreign prints.
The extras are a bit skimpy at best. We get some
older "The Today Show" interviews. There's no
documentary on The Marx Brothers career, the
challenges they faced in reaching an audience and
why, ultimately, MGM put them under contract only
to dilute their best qualities. I'm also
disappointed that there's no audio commentary.
Surely former UCLA Professor Howard Suber would
have been available to do a commentary on these
terrific films? What about vintage newsreels
discussing the previews of their movies? There's a
handsome book embedded in the packaging but here's
a victory of style over substance as there's very
little information about these films beyond a
brief vague essay.
I give the films 5 stars for the quality of these
classics, but 2 stars for the inferior
presentation from Universal. It's a pity as Warner
has most of the lesser Marx movies but did a
marvelous job of restoring them and adding extras
including commentaries to them. Considering that
Universal has a great restoration department and
that they've done a marvelous job of restoring
Hitchcock's classic films "Rear Window" and
"Vertigo," I'm really disappointed that more
effort wasn't made here. It's an example of
Hollywood not valuing its past. |
