A Night At The Opera (1935)

WHO: Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx star in this, their first film without their brother Zeppo.

WHAT: The Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers were based on successful stage shows. Their next two films, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, were not; they were created especially for the screen and had not been tested out on audiences. They were successful both critically and commercially nonetheless. Duck Soup, however, also an original-to-screen film, was a failure on both levels upon its initial release (only later did it become the Marx Brothers' biggest cult hit). So when A Night At The Opera was put into production by Irving Thalberg at MGM, the first step after the script was complete was to try something unusual: stage it on the road and hone it along the way: the tour started in April 1935 in Salt Lake City and went to Seattle, Portland and finally San Francisco (where I understand it was performed at the Orpheum) before being committed to film. The result? The three remaining Marx Brothers were back to being hit-makers, and went on to make seven more films. Of those I've seen from their post-Paramount period, this one is certainly the best.

WHERE/WHEN: Today at the Castro at 3:45 and 7PM, and 1PM January 11th at the SFPL Main Library

WHY: As far as I know (and I feel pretty confident that I'm one to know), today's screenings of A Night At the Opera and Duck Soup are the final 35mm showings of classic films in Frisco Bay theatres for 2013. Not a bad pair to go out on...

HOW: On a 35mm double-bill with Duck Soup at the Castro. On projected DVD at the SFPL event.

Duck Soup (1933)

WHO: This is the last film starring the "Four Marx Brothers": Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo; it's also the only Marx Bros. film directed by a truly world-class auteur, in this case Leo McCarey.

WHAT: This film contains what must be the Marx's most brilliant single-scene contribution to the history of screen comedy: the "mirror" scene in which Groucho and Harpo (dressed as a doppelganger of his brother) encounter each other on opposite sides of a frame. So much has been said about this scene, and so much more can be, but there's nothing like watching it in the midst of fellow appreciators of Marxian comedy. Here's one article on the scene. Here's another.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens today & tomorrow at the Stanford Theatre at 6:10 & 9:20, at the Castro Theatre December 30th (at 2:20, 5:30 & 8:45), and at 3:00 on January 18th, 2014 at the Pacific Film Archive.

WHY: Whether you've been attending the weekly Marx Brothers/Preston Sturges double-bills at the Stanford this season, or just following along at home, I highly recommend you read an article published on the theatre website by local critic Richard von Busack on both. He focuses a bit more attention on Sturges, who left a signature on the Paramount Studio of the early 1940s as deep as that the Marx team did on that studio in the early 1930s, but has not stayed quite as present in popular culture for various reasons. But the article has some excellent insight into Groucho and his kin as well.

HOW: All of these screenings are on 35mm. The Stanford shows are double-bills with The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and the Castro shows are double-bills with A Night At The Opera.

Sullivan's Travels (1941)

WHO: Preston Sturges wrote and directed this.

WHAT: Can an artist who has only known privilege make art that speaks to the experiences of people without privilege? This is the question at the heart of Sullivan's Travels, a laugh-out-loud comedy made in the early 1940s, when the Great Depression had officially ended but poverty continued. A pompous but good-hearted movie director, tired of making studio fluff, determines to experience the "real" America by going out on the road, and ends up farther from his Hollywood mansion than he'd ever expected. Filled with the romance, adventure, witty dialogue, and wonderful character actors that typify classic-era movie-making at its best, this film is frequently cited as one of the best comedies ever. Has the Hollywood myth machine ever been subject to more hilariously honest satire?

WHERE/WHEN: Only at the Stanford Theatre tonight through Sunday at 7:30, with additional matinee screenings tomorrow and Sunday at 4:10.

WHY: It's a pretty weak weekend for 35mm film screenings in Frisco Bay, believe it or not. The Castro is given over to the all-digital Good Vibrations Erotic Short Film Competition tonight and digitally-projected Sing-A-Long Sound Of Music the rest of the weekend. The Pacific Film Archive is screening its own 35mm print of the Hong Kong New Wave landmark The Arch Sunday and an imported print of Fassbinder's Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? tonight, but the latter is surely the same moderately scratched, extremely color-faded print I saw at Yerba Buena Center For The Arts last month. Otherwise it's showing Fassbinder's Despair on Blu-Ray and turning over the rest of the weekend to 2K & 4K digital presentations of classic films known for their great photochemical-era cinematography. At least Sony archivist Grover Crisp will be on hand to defend DCP as a format for the Saturday showings of Louis Malle's Alamo Bay and Scorsese's Taxi Driver. I hope he's asked some pointed questions.

But there are bright spots for 35mm-goers besides The Arch: YBCA is showing Querelle on 35mm Sunday (quality of print unknown), the 4-Star is giving the brand-new, shot-on-film 12 Years a Slave what I believe to be it's first local 35mm showings, and there's always the Stanford, which is wonderfully old-fashioned enough not to have the capability of screening anything digitally. Nor does it have the capability of selling advance tickets online or by phone, so if you want to ensure a seat at its annual, always-sold-out Christmas Eve screening of It's A Wonderful Life, you'll have to make your way to the theatre box office sometime shortly after tickets go on sale tomorrow. While you're there, why not catch a great film or two? Preston Sturges's closest-to-canonized classic Sullivan's Travels screening with my personal favorite Marx Brothers picture Horse Feathers? You can't go wrong.

HOW: Both films on the double-bill screen in 35mm as always at this venue.

Monkey Business (1931)

WHO: Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo Marx star in this.

WHAT: When people talk about the pre-code gangster films Hollywood brewed out of the early-1930s confluence of Prohibtion, the Depression, and the sudden celebrity status of the likes of Al Capone and John Dillinger, they always seem to leave out this film. The first Marx Brothers movie conceived of for the silver screen (as the prior The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers has been based on stage shows) is perhaps more often thought of as "the one on a ship" than "the one with gangsters" but the latter form a key part of the film's completely unimportant plot. Just because it's an absurd comedy doesn't mean it shouldn't go down with other 1931 films like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy as important films made before the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping turned Hollywood away from  on-screen gangster depictions for a while. It' not for nothing that the illustrious Dave Kehr once decribed the comic aspects of Howard Hawks's Scarface by invoking the image of "Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun."

WHERE/WHEN: Today through Sunday at the Stanford Theatre at 6:00 & 9:15.

WHY: Happy Thanksgiving and Hannukah. You've probably already heard about how an unusually late-in-month Thanksgiving and an unusually early-in-Gregorian-year Hannukah have converged today for the first time since the nineteenth century, making for a once-in-lifetime double holiday. Being a goy myself, I'm not one to proscribe holiday traditions, but if a rabbi says watching Marx Brothers movies is a good way to celebrate Hannukah, I'm happy to pass it along.

Thanksgiving being a big moviegoing day to begin with, there's few classic comedy masterpieces that seem as well-suited to the holiday as The Lady Eve, with its uproariously funny banquet set piece. The pairing of Monkey Business on a double-bill with an equally ship-board and crook-filled comedy  seems so perfect that I almost wonder if the Stanford noticed the Thanksgiving/Hannukah collision on the calendar and decided to build its current Preston Sturges/Marx Brothers series inspired by it.

HOW: 35mm as always at the Stanford.