MGM flicks get top Marx for trying

FANS of Groucho Marx can relive his comic genius with a 24-hour marathon of some of the cinematic gems he made with his brothers Chico and Harpo.

The Marx brothers

THE incomparable Groucho Marx slouched off to that great vaudeville stage in the sky 34 years ago next Friday.

In his honour, a 24-hour marathon of some of the anarchic, innuendo-laden comedies he made with his brothers, wise-cracking Chico and wide-eyed Harpo, starts the evening before.

Showcasing the five films they made at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the event kicks off with the beloved 1935 production A Night at the Opera (Thursday, 8.30pm, TCM).

During their previous run at Paramount, which culminated in 1933's subversive anti-war farce Duck Soup, their films were narratively chaotic and often mean-spirited. Legendary MGM production head Irving Thalberg was convinced that by toning down the non-stop barrage of insults and buttressing stories with musical numbers and romantic subplots, the boys would find greater favour with the film-going public.

As so often in these matters, Thalberg was right: A Night at the Opera is their most satisfying showcase. This is the film with the famous overcrowded stateroom scene and the "party of the foist part" contract dialogue between Groucho and Chico. Margaret Dumont's finest hour comes as Groucho's long-suffering straight woman, Mrs Claypool. Re-watching this sparkling and energetic comedy is like discovering an old friend, long unseen yet fondly remembered.

For their follow-up, A Day at the Races (Thursday, 2.35am, TCM), the brothers continued to hone their material on the vaudeville circuit to sharpen their already metronomic verbal wordplay. The plot is but an excuse for the brothers to wreak more havoc in memorable sequences such as the Tutsi Fruitsy Ice Cream sketch and the dangerously dated yet still joyous Tomorrow is Another Day-All God's Chillun Got Rhythm-Lindy Hop number.

During filming, Thalberg died suddenly of pneumonia at 37. He had been the Marx Brothers' champion at MGM and without his nurturing their subsequent films, though sporadically funny, suffered. Though it showcased Groucho's signature Lydia, the Tattooed Lady and Chico's keyboard prowess on Beer Barrel Polka, the 1939 effort At the Circus (Thursday, 10.10pm, TCM) finds their act beginning to creak.

The atypically intricate stunts, off-colour gags and Harpo's prowess on his namesake instrument nearly redeem 1940's Go West (Thursday, 11.40pm, TCM), yet a year later not even an energetic final chase sequence elevates the formulaic and cheap-looking The Big Store (Thursday, 1.05am, TCM).

They made two more features in the late 1940s, leaving a 13-film legacy of fun.

Robert Altman's still-fresh 1970 counterculture hit MASH (Sunday, 8.30pm, Showtime Comedy) set the template for the director's distinctive and provocative use of ensemble casts, slow camera zooms isolating background conversations and a sonic density of overlapping dialogue.

Newcomers Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould play a pair of irreverent front-line surgeons during the Korean War, but the parallels to the still-raging Vietnam conflict were inescapable. Amusingly, the two stars were so distressed by Altman's attention to the supporting cast - which is a nascent who's who of character actors on contemporary American television - they tried in vain to have him fired.

Argentine box office success The Secret in Their Eyes (Thursday, 10.40pm, Movie One) is a crime thriller from writer-director-editor Juan Jose Campanella. It stars frequent collaborator Ricardo Darin as a recent retiree whose intention to write a novel based on an old crime yields life-and-death consequences.

Campanella tells a complex story in simple, fluid terms: the five-minute single-take shot at the football stadium is a masterpiece of planning and discreet computer effects.

Little inducement is required to revisit Martin Scorsese's intense 1980 sports biography Raging Bull (Tuesday, 8.30pm, Stvdio). Robert De Niro was at the peak of his considerable, chameleon-like powers as combustible boxer Jake La Motta, while Scorsese's audacious mix of classic black and white with his adrenalin-fuelled, almost avant-garde filming style gives the film a visceral punch undiminished by time.

Stvdio prefaces the film with Scorsese on Scorsese (Tuesday, 7.30pm, Stvdio), the 2004 profile of the director by author and film historian Richard Schickel. From his childhood in Manhattan's Little Italy through to The Aviator, Scorsese speaks eloquently and ebulliently about his passion for movies and a life spent immersed in film.

Evan Williams returns next week.

CRITIC'S CHOICE
Scorsese on Scorsese/Raging Bull (MA15+)
4 ½ stars
Tuesday, 7.30pm/8.30pm, Stvdio
A Night at the Opera (G)
4 stars
Thursday, 8.30pm, TCM
MASH (M)
4 stars
Sunday, 8.30pm, Showtime Comedy