A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 410, 2 May 1947, Page 24

A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA

(United Artists)

FTER five years the Marx Brothers are back, and to those of us who follow the Mad-Hatter’s-Tea-Party-line of these cultural anarchists that fact

alone is enough. Though we might prefer them if they were, we don’t demand that they should be different or original; we merely ask that they should be themselves — that Groucho should still lope through the story like a lecherous, motheaten old wolf, that Harpo should still grin and grimace, toot his horn, insult everyone in pantomime, and perhaps be given a chance to pull the harp-strings, that Chico should be still the cheeky, monkey-faced entrepreneur of wildcat schemes for making money and if possible should get on to a piano-stool at least once during the evening; and that all three should overturn and make satirical mincemeat of every convention of civilised behaviour that comes in their path. Well, they do all that in A Night in Casablanca, and I for one am satisfied. It would be churlish to be anything less. After all, comedy is the commodity in shortest supply on the screen. Even if we wished to, we can’t afford to pick and choose-and this is just about the biggest laugh offered us for five years. %* % * ‘THAT, however, is not the same as saying that it is the biggest laugh the Brothers have ever offered us. Some of their gags are beginning to show the Marx of long usage: there are a few occasions in their new film when you can manage to keep about half a jump ahead of them. When Harpo picks up a cup and saucer and eyes it hungrily, you may rightly expect that the next moment he will begin to eat it, for we have seen him do exactly that once before with the telephone. It is the same with Groucho and Chico in some of their funny business. And to be able to anticipate the Marxmen like this is almost fatal to their style of humour, the essence of which is that it should be irrelevant, wilful, and wholly unpredictable. (I make an exception, however, of the pianoplaying and harp-playing of Chico and Harpo; these are the tours de force of two considerable artists, and are no more redundant than the inclusion of "Ol’ Man River" in any programme of songs by Paul Robeson. Who could ever tire of Chico’s trigger-finger technique among the top notes?) a * * NUMBER of other critics have complained that in A Night in Casablanca the Brothers are encumbered by a fatuous and*unnecessarily complicated plot about Nazi spies in a North African hotel, missing treasure, and a couple of superfluous young lovers. This complaint does not weigh much with me. True, the plot is less than nothing by itself; but when was the plot of a Marx Brothers’ film ever anything more than a vehicle for their weird antics? Indeed if it did amount to anything in its own right, I

think we might have some good reason to complain, since it would divert our attention from the three clowns. In the present case the story allows them the opportunity to parody all spy movies from Casablanca onward (for this very reason the Brothers Warner, makers of Casablanca, sought an injunction against the Brothers Marx); it permits Groucho to make fun of sophisticated seduction as he pants hot-footed from room to room after the femme fatale, carting around with him iced champagne, flowers, a table, and a portable gramophone for providing soft music, Harpo puts his fingers to his nose at the punctilios of duelling; while Chico rides equally rough-shod over other forms of etiquette. There is one magnificently sustained sequence in which the three of them behave like a trio of poltergeists by unpacking the luggage of the distraught Nazis as fast as it is packed; and they end the film hilariously at the controls of a wildly swooping ’plane. A more serious complaint (if you are looking for one) is the absence of the monumentally dignified Margaret Dumont, who previously has been the target for most of the innuendoes and insults of the Marxmen. Their chief butt now is Sigfried Rumann, as a Nazi diplomat, aided by Lisette Verea as a slinky spy: both do their best, but they don’t add up to even a fraction of La Dumont. Anarchy is only anarchy in relation to order: it was the superb impassivity of Margaret Dumont under the slings and arrows of outrageous conduct that permitted one to appreciate fully the Olympian folly of Groucho, Harpo, and Chico. All that has been said here presupposes, of course, that you adhere to the Marxist line of comedy. If you don’t, you have no more hope of enjoying A Night in Casablanca than a Conservative has of approving of their political namesake. The point has often enough been made before, but after five years it probably needs restatement. Either you like them or you don’t; there is no half-way house with the Marx Brothers. :