Book Review - The Great Movies

The Great Movies by Roger Ebert - The first of a series of books by my all time favorite movie critic.  Before he died he added two more to the series.

Ebert offers relatively brief (couple pages each) commentaries on movies that he thinks belong in the top tier of films.  He admits right off the bat that he can't tell what the standard is for a "great movie".  These are the ones that come to his mind when he thinks about them.  He proceeds to tell you why he believes they belong on the list.

You will recognize plenty of the titles.  Any modest movie lover knows "Casablanca", "Network", "Star Wars", "Pulp Fiction" or "Schindler's List".  Students of the movies will not be surprised to see "Battleship Potemkin", "The Bicycle Thief", "Un Chien Andalue" or "The Seventh Seal" there.  What sucked me in were the odd balls and lesser knowns.  Like "Detour" (which I saw and reviewed after reading about it in the book), the low budget film noir that could be the perfect introduction to this film genre.  It has no pretensions and plenty of flaws.  Yet it remains a truly wonderful movie.  There are plenty of gems among the 100 titles that he explores.

You could easily use this book as the basis for an introduction to film class.  You could still use for upper level course work too.  I was tempted to use it to set up my Netflix queue for the next two years.

If you love the movies and well written commentary(easy to read as well.  Ebert doesn't have to show off), you would be hard pressed to find a better place to start.

Rating - **** Recommended

Movie Review - Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby - (1938) - A quiet archaeologist (Cary Grant) runs into a flighty heiress (Katherine Hepburn) who upsets his life in general and brings a leopard named "Baby" into his life.  Along the way he discovers that the young woman is also the niece of a woman that is considering donating a million dollars to the museum where he works.  Then an important bone gets lost followed quickly by the leopard.  After that things just start getting silly.

Howard Hawks leads the way on this screwball script with Hepburn in her first ever comedy.  She struggled with it at first until Hawks brought in several veteran comic actors to help.  The result is truly wonderful.  Grant was already an establish comic actor who had a lot more trouble working with his feline co-star than his female one (he and Hepburn would do several more movies together).  While they made good use of split screens and other effects to limit the interaction between Baby and his co-stars there were times when they had to be in the same shot.

While the movie is considered a classic today it was considered a flop at the time.   It performed so badly that Hawks's contract at RKO was cancelled, Hepburn bought out her contract to avoid making more like it and Grant was afraid that it was a sign that he'd never be a star.  Hawks felt that the movie suffered because the madcap action of the leads didn't have a straight person(s) to work against in the story.  The movie would probably have been better anchored if there were but in the end it's still a classic screwball comedy.

The truly funny thing is that if a female character like Susan Vance appeared in a contemporary movie she would almost certainly be the star of a horror film.  She is self centered, manipulative, perfectly willing to say anything to get what she wants and not entirely in touch with reality. She feels perfectly entitled to make off with other people's possessions.   By our standards she is quite simply nuts (that's the technical term)

In the end, you can't argue with success.

Rating = **** Recommended

The End of Film, Big Data and Super Media

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Monday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013-14 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of February 3, 2014


My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Super Media                                                                                                    

Normally I like to do a little wrap up of the Super Bowl in the week that follows.  Unfortunately for me I will have to be on the road for the first of the week so I won’t have the chance to do that.  So as I record this show the day BEFORE the big game I thought I’d take a look at what is without argument the single biggest media event of the year in the United States.

Now you may be under the impression that this was a sports event.  You know teams from Seattle and Denver playing the championship game of the most popular sport in our nation.  Well let’s be honest, the game itself just isn’t that a big deal.  I know that there are a lot, and I mean a LOT, of people who pay little to no attention to football during the regular season and playoffs who will suddenly show up for the Super Bowl.  It’s not because the quality of the play jumps up for this game.

No it’s the media aspects that make the difference.  Take a look at the first Super Bowl, which, parenthetically wasn’t even called the Super Bowl.  That didn’t happen till the third one.  In  1967 that first AFL-NFL Championship Game wasn’t nearly the show it is today.  It was broadcast on both CBS and NBC, it is the only one of the series that wasn’t a sell out and a 30 second ad sold for only forty two thousand dollars.  Oh and the half time show?  The marching bands from the Universities of Arizona and Grambling.

Since then the commercials have gotten outrageously expensive and sometimes astoundingly creative.  While last year’s game actually gave you a reason to watch more often than not the commercials are a lot more interesting than the football.  As for the half time shows they have grown progressively more complex.  Right up to ten years ago when the show was so complicated that the rehersal ran more than four hours long.  Following some changes required by the league to the show two of the performers decided to add a little risque twist to the show.  When Justin Timberlake pulled off a little more of Janet Jackson’s costume than expected we all learned the phrase “Wardrobe Malfunction” and the FCC proceeded to lose its marbles.  All over something that took something like nine sixteenths of a second.

It may not be a great game but it’s likely to be the most watched television broadcast of the year (it has been recently) and the second largest watched event in the world (after the World Cup).

Yeah, it’s really about the media.  And now we can all get on with our lives for another year.


Super Media                                                                                                        

With the return of the Net Neutrality issue to the middle of the media discussion and the ongoing concern over our national Intelligence organizations gathering all kinds of information about us many of us are actively thinking about the amount of data that may be floating around out there about us.  So let me give you a catchall name for that phenomenon.  It’s called “Big Data” and it has a whole bunch of problems of its own.

I’m not talking about the ones we normally think about.  On the other side of the issue there are problems as well.  First of all there’s the fact that big data is, well, big.  Enormous.  Gigantic.  Elephantine.  In fact we may need to come up with a whole new word just to describe it.  If you’re someone trying to make some sense out of all of this you completely understand the image of trying to drink from a firehose.

There is so much data being generated every day by millions of millions of people that most systems just can’t keep up.  You need specialized programs to sort through it all that have some kind of method of sifting the important stuff from the stuff most of us generate.  Then you need people who are accustomed to dealing with this massive weight of information.  Here’s the problem.  The programs only sort of exist and there aren’t nearly enough of the people to deal with the output of the programs we have at the moment.

This isn’t the first time we’ve had this problem.  Back in the early days of the Cold War the United States began to intercept massive amounts of Soviet coded information.  We lacked the computers, the codebreakers and the time to deal with the massive amount of information that poured in.  Decades later millions of pages of information still hadn’t been processed.

So what’s likely to happen with the problems of big data in the 21st Century?

The software will get better, the computers will get faster and more people will begin to specialize in its analysis.  The other curious side effect is that big data users will begin to change how they gather the information.  Some experts are saying that rather than gathering EVERYTHING they will have us do some of the filtering based on how we’re asked to share our information.

Meanwhile some of us will get more careful how our information is shared.  Most people won’t understand the issues or the problems.  For those people big data will remain just too big to comprehend.

RIP Pete Seeger                                                                                                                       

I have very mixed feelings about this next topic.  I am aware that technology marches on and the old must make way for the new.  I’m also aware that we’ve been through this same shift in several other areas of the media and have survived, even thrived in many ways.  But this is different.

The movies are moving away film.  Most of us don’t even think about it but when we go to the movies we are watching them presented in the same way they’ve been presented for decades.  Our parents watched them pretty much the same way and even our grandparents would recognize the basic technology.  It’s called 35 millimeter motion picture film.  The same basic technology that was the basis of still photography for more than a century.  Expose the film, develop the negative then create the positive print.  Pretty straightforward.

Of course film in the still photography world is largely a thing of the past.  I’ve been a hobby photographer since the 1970s and it’s been years since the last roll of film passed through my camera.  I still love photography and have enjoyed learning about digital imaging.  We went through a similar challenge when we moved away from vinyl for music recording to digital.

But I still have reservations about this shift.  First of all is the visual difference between film and digital recording.  Too often it’s easy to spot the video versus the film.  It looks different and I’m not sure its an improvement.

I understand the business aspects of this decision.  Paramount is leading the way announcing the current “Wolf of Wall Street” is the first wide release movie to come ONLY in digital form.  There’s a huge savings on creating prints and physically shipping them worldwide.  Now they can be delivered electronically or by satellite.
Beyond my artistic concerns are the worries of the archival community.  There are advantages to having a negative to preserve.  Kept at a proper temperature and humidity an old fashion negative will last for centuries.  With digital formats changing seemingly every decade or less the cost of trying to keep a master library could quickly become astronomical.  Because early movies weren’t considered worth preserving there is at least a decade of the early days of the movies we have completely lost.

We need to make sure we don’t make the same mistake again.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Best of the Web - Videos For Your Soul

Videos For Your Soul.com - This is actually a project by a friend of mine (Randall Curtis - The Holy Geek.  I'm pretty sure you're going to run into him again later in this series).  It began as a spiritual practice during Lent.  He gathered together some of the best and most inspiring videos on YouTube.  Then he offered up a comment or a question with each one and opened it up to discussion.  The framework for the progression is the Christian practice of Lent but the videos are not especially Christian or even religious in nature.  He uses them to open a wider discussion of who we are and what we are doing in our lives.  Randall even notes in his description of the site that his goal is beyond the walls of the church:

 I hope that some of these videos and reflections might even turn in discussions at Sunday school classes, at coffee shops and at bars.

 You can come at this website from a variety of angles.  Certainly you can approach it from a faith based direction.  Or you can simply appreciate the effort to sift through the enormous number of videos out there (48 HOURS of new video is loaded per minute on YouTube) to find ones that will make you laugh, make you think, make you cry or make you want to change the world.  Or maybe a little of both.

It's a faith based site that isn't preachy or condemnatory or designed to make you feel bad.  It's intent is to lift you up.  Nice to find out here on the Wild Wild Web.

I know there's a whole new series coming for Lent 2014 (Lent begins this year on March 5.  I wanted to give you time to enjoy what's already there before the new ones start flowing)

Movie Review - Children of Men

Children of Men (2006) - In a dystopian future (only a little more than a decade from now) humanity is faced with total collapse after every woman becomes infertile.  The sudden appearance of a pregnant woman pits different political factions against one another while one man tries to get her to sanctuary.

I'm always amazed when Hollywood decides to go the dystopian route.  They're just tough movies to sell to the broad audience.  Americans like happy endings and this kind of story generally doesn't offer one.  When I saw the previews I was excited.  It struck me as a great concept and one that hadn't been done to death.  Following the sudden end of pregnancy the world goes to hell in a hand basket.  In Great Britain they've closed the borders and are actively ridding themselves of illegal immigrants.  The resulting society isn't one that anyone would want.  It's violent and devoid of humanity.  As the government cracks down revolutionary opposition groups pop up (called "The Fish").  Once upon a time Theo (Clive Owen) has been one of them.  But as the years went on his idealism died.   Walking the streets one day he is kidnapped by the Fish and confronted by his ex-wife (Julianne Moore).  She asks him to help the pregnant girl escape to a sanctuary.  From the moment he agrees his life is no longer his own.

Based on a novel by P.D. James the movie never quite pulls it off for me.  The cast is excellent with Owen, Moore, Michael Caine, and Chiwetel Ejiofor carrying most of the movie.  At the end director Alfonso Cuaron leaves us with an appropriate ending for the genre of the story.  Somehow it just left me feeling a little on the "meh" side of the equation.  There was very little exploration of the issues that create the context for the story.  It's mostly treated as just an excuse for chase scenes and firefights.

I had hoped for so much more.  If you've got nothing better to do this could fill two hours you could do wors than this.

Rating -***  Worth A Look

RIP Pete Seeger, The Sherman Thing, Award Failure

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Monday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013-14 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of January 27, 2014


My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

The Sherman Thing                                                                                            

Can I just say that I really wanted to avoid this topic?  It’s been beaten to just about death and I am seriously tired of it.  The problem is that while a lot of time and energy has been spent on the surface issues there are some underlying ones that I think are getting missed.

So let’s talk about Seattle Seahawk defensive back Richard Sherman.

Yeah, I know how you feel.

Sherman has been the center of a firestorm after remarks he made to Fox Sports sideline reporter Erin Andrews about 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree after Seattle beat San Francisco in the playoffs.  To be honest the comments themself aren’t worth worrying about.  It’s trash talk which is a constant in football.  Sherman made himself look immature and classless but that’s really the worst of it.

Some folks took to calling Sherman a “thug”.  Listen to the comments then take a look at Richard Sherman.  Then tell me if that comes more from his smack talk rant or the fact that he’s a black man.  I know which side I come down on.

For the Sherman defenders who claim that the comments were made in the heat of battle I would recommend they look at the timeline a little closer.  Plus I would note that Sherman said the same things two days before the game in conversations with the broadcast team AND said them almost word for word just a minute before the Fox interview when he spoke with a reporter for a Spanish language network.

So where does this really lead us?

For me it’s that not only do people in the spotlight need to be aware of what comes out of their mouths but that we the media consumers need to be careful about what we think we hear.

  Being spontaneous and energetic is fine just as long as you don’t mind being treated as a sideshow.  Sherman, who is better spoken than a great many of his professional colleagues, has been showing his thoughtful off field persona in a lot of interviews since.

In the end I think he’s going to be fine.  The lesson for the rest of us is to avoid melting down quite so quickly.


Award Failure                                                                                                    

I stopped watching any of the awards shows about 15 years ago.  Too often they are bloated, overly scripted snore fests.  It’s just easier to wait till the next morning, read the winners list and check to see if someone did something idiotic (fairly sure bet) or something really great (far less likely).  The worst are the ones where the celebrity presenters are so obviously and painfully reading the jokes prior to doing the only thing we really care about.  Announcing the winners.

Then you get the post award show sturm und drang of criticism.  The host/hosts are often at the center of this along with timing of the show or acceptance speeches.  I think the most recent Golden Globes may have reached a new low in this category when hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey were criticized in some circles because...they’re girls.  Yeah, some critics were upset at the lack of an X-chromosome up there cracking wise.  Spare me.

Worst of all for me though is that most of the awards shows have forgotten why they exist.  At least the traditional understanding.  They’re supposed to be about the medium, about the art form.  The Tony awards are to celebrate “excellence in Broadway theatre”.  Oscars are about the movies, television gets the Emmy, music the Grammy.  So why do the shows seem to be about so much other than that?  

It’s sketch comedy, monologues, pointless production numbers and acceptance speeches   And the acceptance speeches usually make me crazy.  I know not everyone, even actors, are actually good thinking on their feet in front of people.  So what’s wrong with just saying “I’m honored to be considered with all these great artists.  Thank you” and walking off?  Or even better, grab the trophy look out at the audience, hoist it high and yell “Yeeeeaaahhh!”.
What you end up with is this year’s Grammy show where a pre-planned two song encore featuring Trent Reznor, Dave Grohl, Lindsey Buckingham and the group Queens of the Stone Age not only got cut off they ran the credits over the top of them while an announcer talked.  Reznor felt like the music got disrespected and I agree with him.

Of course by then a handful of big name artists had already left the building.  Presumably they had what they’d come for and that wasn’t the music either.

I think I’ll keep catching the highlights on YouTube.

RIP Pete Seeger                                                                                                                       

Do you have a “bucket list”?  That’s the list of things you want to do before you “kick the bucket”.  Those great trips, exciting challenges or things to do you want to be able to say you’ve done, just once in your life.  When I woke up on Tuesday morning I discovered that an item had been removed from my personal bucket list.  Not because I’d done it in my sleep but because it was no longer possible to do.

I always wanted to meet folk singer Pete Seeger.

Sadly Pete died on Monday.

If you love music I bet you can remember the very first song you ever owned.  For my generation, that very first record.  You remember it, don’t you?  For me it was the album “Children’s Concert at Town Hall”.  I grew up in a family where folk music was what we listened to.  My dad played some on the guitar, there were Peter, Paul and Mary, the Mamas and the Papas and the Kingston Trio albums that we listened to.  And I remember that at Kindergarten age I got this Pete Seeger album as a present.  Of all the songs on that record there are a few that have been part of my life.  “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”, “Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal”.  But there was one song that I would still sing bits of when my daughter was little and she always wanted to hear it all.  That was a silly story song called “Abi Yoyo”.  If you ever wonder how people like me end up doing the performance things we do this is it.  The first time I ever stood up in front of an audience and performed was when I acted out the story of Abi Yoyo for my kindergarten class.

Pete Seeger has held a central place in my love of music ever since.  When I grew up I discovered his real place as a pioneer in the folk music movement of the 1950’s, a member of the singing group the Weavers, who were eventually blackballed.  He wrote or co-wrote several of my favorite songs “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, “If I Had a Hammer”, and “Turn, Turn, Turn”.  He re-emerged in the ‘60s as part of the protest movement.  To the end of his days he was an activist for environmental protection with special love for the Hudson River Valley.

There are few artists that can stand next to him for dedication, influence and breadth of accomplishment.

There are none who can take his place in my heart.

Pete Seeger was 94 years old.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Movie Review - The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch - (1969) - The days of the "Old West" are coming to an end as World War I approaches.  A gang of aging outlaws goes for one final score as they are pursued by bounty hunters sent by the railroad company.

This is another movie around which legend gathers.  John Wayne claimed that this movie killed the "myth of the Old West" (which might not have been a bad thing).  Most people will remember the violence and the blood (it's Sam Peckinpah, so there's blood by the gallon) or that it nearly earned an X rating for violence twice.  It certainly changed the way stories were told in the movies.  With more edits coming more quickly, intermixing slow motion sequences "The Wild Bunch" was something new in its time.  Peckinpah allowed the actors to find their own way through the story which resulted in some absolutely classic and brilliant film moments (like the one in the picture.  It was unscripted and pretty much made up on the spot by director and cast)

Beyond the film making what really makes this movie is the cast.  Given a script that allows them more depth of character than you might expect up front they bring some amazing subtlety to the story.  William Holden and Robert Ryan lead the way as former partners now on opposite sides of the conflict.  Supported by a fabulous group of character actors (Ernest Borgnine, Edmund O'Brien, Warren Oates, Strother Martin and Dub Taylor among others) they create something that is truly epic and iconic.  It's easy to think that the movie begins and ends with the blood and violence.  That seriously undersells "The Wild Bunch".  This is the story of men facing age and the change of everything they have known and held dear.  I found myself thinking of George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" a lot while I watched this.  There are some amazing parallels between the two, both of which were released just months apart in 1969.

I went into this viewing thinking that I had a pretty good idea what I was about to see.  "The Wild Bunch" managed to surprise me several times by being much more than I expected.

Rating - **** Recommended

Tracking the Top 100

This is the American Film Institute’s 2007 list of the top 100 American movies; I’ve put the ones I’ve seen in bold. I've included only those movies that I've seen the whole way through.  I had checked it a couple years ago and had scored about 60% of them.  Just updated it and now I'm at 70%.  10 of the top 10 and 18 of the top 20.

1. Citizen Kane, 1941.

2. The Godfather, 1972.

3. Casablanca, 1942.

4. Raging Bull, 1980.

5. Singin’ in the Rain, 1952.

6. Gone With the Wind, 1939.

7. Lawrence of Arabia, 1962.

8. Schindler’s List, 1993.

9. Vertigo, 1958.

10. The Wizard of Oz, 1939.

11. City Lights, 1931.

12. The Searchers, 1956.

13. Star Wars, 1977.

14. Psycho, 1960.

15. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968.

16. Sunset Blvd., 1950.

17. The Graduate, 1967.

18. The General, 1927.

19. On the Waterfront, 1954.

20. It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946.

21. Chinatown, 1974.

22. Some Like It Hot, 1959.

23. The Grapes of Wrath, 1940.

24. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982.

25. To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962.

26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939.

27. High Noon, 1952.

28. All About Eve, 1950.

29. Double Indemnity, 1944.

30. Apocalypse Now, 1979.

31. The Maltese Falcon, 1941.

32. The Godfather Part II, 1974.

33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975.

34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937.

35. Annie Hall, 1977.

36. The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957.

37. The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946.

38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948.

39. Dr. Strangelove, 1964.

40. The Sound of Music, 1965.

41. King Kong, 1933.

42. Bonnie and Clyde, 1967.

43. Midnight Cowboy, 1969.

44. The Philadelphia Story, 1940.

45. Shane, 1953.

46. It Happened One Night, 1934.

47. A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951.

48. Rear Window, 1954.

49. Intolerance, 1916.

50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001.

51. West Side Story, 1961.

52. Taxi Driver, 1976.

53. The Deer Hunter, 1978.

54. M-A-S-H, 1970.

55. North by Northwest, 1959.

56. Jaws, 1975.

57. Rocky, 1976.

58. The Gold Rush, 1925.

59. Nashville, 1975.

60. Duck Soup, 1933.

61. Sullivan’s Travels, 1941.

62. American Graffiti, 1973.

63. Cabaret, 1972.

64. Network, 1976.

65. The African Queen, 1951.

66. Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981.

67. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966.

68. Unforgiven, 1992.

69. Tootsie, 1982.

70. A Clockwork Orange, 1971.

71. Saving Private Ryan, 1998.

72. The Shawshank Redemption, 1994.

73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969.

74. The Silence of the Lambs, 1991.

75. In the Heat of the Night, 1967.

76. Forrest Gump, 1994.

77. All the President’s Men, 1976.

78. Modern Times, 1936.

79. The Wild Bunch, 1969.

80. The Apartment, 1960.

81. Spartacus, 1960.

82. Sunrise, 1927.

83. Titanic, 1997.

84. Easy Rider, 1969.

85. A Night at the Opera, 1935.

86. Platoon, 1986.

87. 12 Angry Men, 1957.

88. Bringing Up Baby, 1938.

89. The Sixth Sense, 1999.

90. Swing Time, 1936.

91. Sophie’s Choice, 1982.

92. Goodfellas, 1990.

93. The French Connection, 1971.

94. Pulp Fiction, 1994.

95. The Last Picture Show, 1971.

96. Do the Right Thing, 1989.

97. Blade Runner, 1982.

98. Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942.

99. Toy Story, 1995.

100. Ben-Hur, 1959.

From My Shelves - The Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers - It was sometime in either very late high school or early college that I got into the Marx Brothers.  You'll find no less than 12 titles on my shelves (listed at the end).  If memory serves a friend in high school (who bore a more than passing resemblance to Groucho when he put his mind to it) first put them on my radar.  In birth order they are Leonard (Chico), Arthur (Harpo), Julius (Groucho), Milton (Gummo) and Herbert (Zeppo).  The brothers began as vaudeville performers then made the transition to Broadway.  Performing was a family business in more ways than one.  Their uncle was Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean, vaudeville and Broadway stars in their own right.  Shean helped the boys write some of their early material.

Their comedy is based on set characters and the natural abilities of the brothers themselves.  Groucho had a legendary ability to ad lib through anything.  His side comments and sly innuendo are still astounding all these years later.  Groucho is the godfather of snark.  The smartest and most talented of the group may have been Harpo who is supposed to have been able to play no less than 6 instruments. Including, of course, the harp.  The Marx Brothers were outrageous, unpredictable and bizarre.  At the same time they were brilliant, witty and sarcastic.  Nothing was safe from their mockery.

The early movies ("Cocoanuts" and "Animal Crackers") are film versions of their hit Broadway shows.  While the material is quite good it suffers from being very "stagy".  Neither the brothers nor their studio(Paramount) really knew how to bring that Marxian madness fully to the screen.  Things are a better fit to the movies as they move into "Monkey Business" and "Horse Feathers".  "Duck Soup" is generally acclaimed as the greatest Marx Brothers movie of them all.  It was not one of their more successful ones (the political overtones probably put people off) and I'll admit that while I admire the movie it isn't my favorite of them all. (Interesting local note on "Duck Soup" - the fictional country in the movie is "Freedonia" and the leadership of Fredonia, New York asked Paramount to take out the reference claiming it was hurting their town.  Groucho responded by asking them to change their name because it was hurting his movie)

For me the greatest Marx Brothers movies come when they move to MGM and begin working with Irving Thalberg.  "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races" are better plotted, more disciplined scripts that really show off the brothers to their best effect.  Thalberg was the "Boy Wonder" with a magic touch and it shows in these two movies.  The downside is that he also insisted on including musical numbers and a romantic story line that really doesn't help the overall movie.  They look especially dated now.  Nevertheless, I believe these two movies are the Marx Brothers at their peak (Groucho would agree in interviews later in his life).  Sadly Thalberg died before filming was complete on "Races" and the MGM brain trust had no idea what to do with the act (plus the brothers could be a bit, um, disruptive when they put their minds to it.  MGM liked order and the Marx Brothers are about anarchy).  The rest of their movies are lesser lights.  They would make "Room Service" at RKO, return to MGM for "At the Circus", "Go West" and "The Big Store".  At that point they announced their retirement from the movies.  To help Chico pay off gambling debts the brothers would reunite for "A Night in Casablanca" and "Love Happy".  By the end the brothers were showing their age.

After the movies were behind them the brothers dabbled in a variety of things.  Chico had his own band for a while (with Mel Torme as singer!), Groucho had some additional fame and success on television with "You Bet Your Life".  They made the occasional guest star appearances as well.  The two youngest brothers (who had only limited or no roles in the movies) Gummo and Zeppo actually founded a very successful talent agency.

Chico went first in 1961.  He was followed by Harpo in '64, Groucho and Gummo in '77 and Zeppo in '79.

Modern viewers may have a little trouble connecting with the rhythm of the comedy of the '20s and '30s that is the bread and butter for the Marxes, especially in their earlier movies.  I think that's one of the reasons that the two Thalberg films do so well.  If you can make that internal shift you will be amply rewarded.

The Marx Brothers are truly special and unique talents.  No one else has ever come close to the level of genius that they brought to the screen.  If a lot of their act seems familiar it's because they've had such a profound effect on so many performers that followed them.

On the shelf -

• The Cocoanuts
• Animal Crackers
• Monkey Business
• Horse Feathers
• Duck Soup
• A Day at the Races
• A Night at the Opera
• Go West
• The Big Store
• Room Service (featuring Lucille Ball)
• At the Circus
• A Night in Casablanca

(The only "major" title I'm missing is "Love Happy" which features a walk on by Marilyn Monroe)