Duck Soup
(1933)
The Marx Brothers didn’t make all that many films—just 13 from The Cocoanuts in 1929 to Love Happy in 1949—but I’d say that all but one of them (the last; even Groucho didn’t like it) are classics. This one is probably my favorite, even over the wonderful A Night at the Opera. The wild anarchy reaches new levels here. About all it lacks is Harpo doing his usual solo. In the middle of it all is a wonderful, brutal satire on war fever, done as a musical number imitating a minstrel show. The scene with Harpo and Groucho dressed in identical nightgowns, Harpo pretending to be a mirror image, is worth the price of admission all by itself.