#85 ‘A Night at the Opera’

Contracts, Chaos, and the Marxist Brothers Who Made Anarchy Fashionable

A Night at the Opera (1935) is the Marx Brothers at their most streamlined and studio-polished—which is to say, slightly less feral but no less committed to tearing logic limb from limb while wearing tuxedos. It’s a screwball grenade lobbed at high culture, capitalism, and the idea that rich people are better just because they can pronounce “Rigoletto” without choking.

This time, Groucho is Otis B. Driftwood, a money-grubbing parasite attaching himself to a wealthy widow and clawing his way into the world of opera, because apparently that’s where the real grift is. Chico and Harpo are along for the ride, playing the piano, stealing scenes, and violating the laws of space-time with their usual blend of joyful destruction and suspicious accents.

The “plot” (generous term) concerns the effort to elevate a talented unknown tenor to operatic fame while undermining a pompous diva and a tyrannical manager. But plot is not the point. The point is the stateroom scene. The contract negotiation scene. Harpo crawling through the orchestra pit like a mime exorcised from hell. The Marx Brothers don’t build narratives—they detonate them.

Let’s talk about the comedy: it’s sharp, surreal, and anarchic in all the right ways. Groucho’s one-liners are so fast they should come with subtitles. Chico turns malapropisms into a jazz form. And Harpo—well, he’s still the beautiful chaos elemental, running on pure instinct and whatever was in the prop department that day.

But for all its brilliance, A Night at the Opera still clings to the era’s predictable gender politics. Kitty Carlisle plays the lovely soprano whose main job is to stand next to the romantic lead and not trip over her dress. Margaret Dumont returns as the wealthy dowager, Groucho’s eternal foil and the patron saint of women who are expected to be endlessly tolerant of men behaving like caffeinated toddlers.

Yes, Dumont is glorious. But let’s not pretend she’s in on the joke. She is the joke—a symbol of feminine order, wealth, and social decorum that must be mocked, manipulated, and eventually kissed without warning. The film loves her for being the straight woman, but it never lets her win the game.

Still, this is arguably the Marx Brothers’ most accessible film. It tempers their usual anarchy with a dash of structure, thanks to producer Irving Thalberg, who thought maybe audiences would care more if there were actual stakes and a romantic subplot. He wasn’t wrong—it was a massive hit—but part of you misses the unfiltered weirdness of Duck Soup, where they weren’t shackled by sentiment or story arcs.

4 out of 5 crumpled contracts
(One for Groucho’s acid tongue. One for Harpo’s divine mischief. One for Chico’s linguistic jazz. One for the stateroom scene, which should be preserved in the Louvre. The missing star? Lost somewhere between the soprano’s bland love interest and the realization that even comedic revolution still made women stand off to the side while the boys burned everything down.)