silver nitrate notes

Duck Soup and the Mirror Scene

14 aug 2015

Leo McCarey (1898-1969) directed Duck Soup (1933) at Paramount in the last year of the Marx Brothers' contract with the studio. The film was a commercial disappointment on release. The Brothers moved to MGM afterwards and their style was smoothed down over the rest of the decade. Duck Soup is the film that has most clearly survived, largely because nothing in it was smoothed down. The anarchy is total. The plot is nominal. The politics, when present, are less satire than demolition.

McCarey's contribution is conventionally underrated. He had been a film director since 1921, had made comedies with Laurel and Hardy, and understood how to frame physical comedy so that the gag arrived in the frame without the cut announcing it. The cinematographer was Henry Sharp (1889-1964). Together they built Duck Soup as a series of long takes, mostly wide, with the Brothers free to work their routines within the frame. Groucho's one-liners were delivered at a pace that modern editing conventions would have dissolved into reverse shots; Sharp keeps the camera wide enough to hold Groucho and whoever he was insulting in the same frame.

The mirror scene is the set piece the film is remembered for. Harpo, disguised as Groucho, has broken a large pier mirror and is pretending to be Groucho's reflection. The scene depends on Harpo matching Groucho's movements exactly through an open doorway. McCarey shot it in a wide static take with the camera positioned so that the "mirror" doorway was centred. Every gesture of Groucho's had to be matched in mirror orientation by Harpo, in real time, without cuts. The scene lasts about two and a half minutes. The brothers rehearsed it for two weeks before shooting. The final take has one visible mismatch; McCarey left it in because it reads as the reflection catching itself.

The political dimension of the film is often discussed. Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) becomes dictator of Freedonia and leads it into a pointless war with Sylvania. This was released months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany. The Brothers denied political intention; Mussolini banned the film in Italy anyway. Whether or not the satire was intended, the material meant something specific in 1933 that it no longer means now. The mirror scene has aged better.

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sources
[1] Kanfer, Stefan. Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx. Knopf, 2000.
[2] Gehring, Wes D. Leo McCarey: From Marx to McCarthy. Scarecrow, 2005.
[3] Marx, Groucho. Groucho and Me. Bernard Geis, 1959.
[4] Louvish, Simon. Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers. Thames & Hudson, 1999.