Sunday, August 29, 2010

REAL culture

So we've decided that real education for our girls can't be trusted to the schools, public or private: we're going to have to introduce them to the Marx Brothers at home. They took to A Night at the Opera like fowl to duck soup; tonight we watched (courtesy of Netflix) Cocoanuts, the MBs' first film. I hadn't seen it before myself.

The movie's a 1929 film of a 1925 George Kaufman musical, and the remnants of the musical show – lots of schmaltzy songs, big production dance numbers, a fairly nugatory "plot." Production values primitive at best. The grandest moments – too few & far between – are the Marxes making zany.

Me, I've always worshipped Groucho as one of the grand masters of the word of our century. In another life, I will have a tongue as sharp as his. But I fear Daphne, our youngest, has cathected all too strongly on Harpo. It's not just his mute cuteness she admires, but his spirit of blithe anarchy, his fearsome jolly destructiveness. Show her a Marx Brothers movie, & then fear for the furniture. Perhaps we need to buy her a horn.

No comments: