Two years earlier, the Marx brothers completed their wondrous five-year run at Paramount Pictures with Duck Soup, but only history would later judge it a triumph.
Then again, at least it was the beginning of something. It was also the beginning of the end for the Marx brothers. A Night At The Opera was a huge critical and commercial hit, and no less reputable a source than Groucho himself considered it and its follow-up, A Day At The Races, the best films they ever did.
It contains a few of the Marx brothers’ most celebrated sequences, like the brilliant stateroom scene, which piles 15 people and a steamer trunk into the smallest cabin on a transatlantic ship, and Groucho and Chico’s contract negotiation, a masterpiece of tangled legalese and ripped clauses. (Incidentally, the other three, along with such stone-cold classics as The Lady Eve and It’s A Gift, rank below Arthur, so take that with several grains of salt.) It was selected for preservation in the fourth year of the National Film Registry, in the same wave that included the screwball standards It Happened One Night and His Girl Friday. 5), among the five Marx brothers movies on the list.
On AFI’s list of the 100 funniest comedies of all time, 1935’s A Night At The Opera ranks 12th, second only to its predecessor, 1933’s Duck Soup ( No. “Whatever it is, I’m against it.” -Groucho Marx, Horse Feathers
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