Duck Soup

Surviving 85 years of changing audience tastes and one world war, this gem looks set to stay in the annals of history as one of the funniest films of all time!

Even if you’ve never seen the Marx Brothers before, you’ve no doubt seen them parodied hundreds of times across pop culture… After ‘Animal Crackers’, ‘Horse Feathers’, and ‘Monkey Business’, this is the film where they really find their feet. This film has one of the most iconic scenes in comedy - Harpo (disguised as Groucho) shatters a mirror and, to avoid detection, hides in the mirror frame exacting mimicking everything Groucho does, while a suspicious Groucho does everything he can think of to catch his ‘reflection’ out…

Rufus T Firefly (Groucho Marx) is made dictator of Freedonia by a rich sponsor, Mrs Teasdale (Margaret Dupont), while a neighbouring country, Sylvania, has its eye on Freedonia, so sends in spies (Harpo and Chico Marx). Though the ‘plot’ is little more than a convenience that allows Groucho to deliver an impressive number of double entendres, and sequence after sequence of anarchic zaniness, plenty of slapstick, and a splash of screwball comedy thrown in for good measure. There’s so many reasons this film has stood the test of time...