‘Night at the Opera’ one of Marx Brothers’ best

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, directed by Sam Wood, written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, 91 minutes, unrated. Shows tonight only, weather permitting, Pickering Square, downtown Bangor, sundown. Lawn chairs advised. Free.

If you’re going to launch a comedy film series and call it “Smiles on a Summer Night,” you’d better get audiences smiling. Laughter would be best, but frowns won’t do. Think of the disaster you’d have on your hands should you find yourself with rows of glum faces lifted to a bum comedy that didn’t go over. Ruinous.

The problem is that with so many great comedies available, where do you begin? How do you judge something as subjective as an audience’s tastes? Do you go for modern comedy or classic comedy? Do you mirror the times and consider low comedy or nix it for romantic comedy? And if so, which one?

The possibilities are enough to make you consider a drink, particularly when the success of your series comes down to the strength of only six films. It’s the selection of those films that the River City Cinema Society got right. True, anyone could throw a dart at the American Film Institute’s list of 100 best comedies and come away with a winner, but not necessarily a series that got to the depth and breadth of the genre, which the society has done in spite of having to work with an abbreviated list.

Tonight’s film is the classic 1935 Marx Brothers hit “A Night at the Opera,” which came out two years after their best film, “Duck Soup,” bombed so badly at the box office, it provoked their studio, Paramount Pictures, to drop them.

After a period in which it seemed as if the brothers’ film careers were finished, they were picked up by Irving Thalberg at MGM, whose idea it was to balance their slapstick with a romantic element that audiences could connect with, while in the process rounding out their notoriously thin plots.

The result is “Opera,” with Sam Wood directing from a sharp, funny script by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who wrote the brothers’ Broadway smash, “Animal Crackers.” What they created is a movie that allowed the brothers a high-end backdrop for their low-end antics. It was the right move, perfect for the times, then and now.

The movie stars Groucho Marx as Otis B. Driftwood, a shameless promoter who finds in the wealthy Mrs. Claypool (the wonderful Margaret Dumont, a mainstay in many of the brothers’ films) the sort of stool who agrees to pay $200,000 for a shot at high society.

According to Driftwood, the best way into this closed world is by financing the New York Opera Company. Decked out in her diamonds and sandbagged by more cash than she can manage, the steadfast Claypool decides to go for it, braving Driftwood’s rapid fire bon mots with a haughty air that creates something of a shell around her. The woman is impervious to the subplot building along the fringes.

In it, Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones are Rosa and Ricardo, wannabe opera stars in the making who are dumbstruck by their love for each other. Preventing them from achieving their dreams are the cruel head of the opera company, Hermann Gottlieb (Sig Ruman), and the preening opera star Rodolpho Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), who wants Rosa for himself in spite of all signs suggesting that he’d be happier waxing cute with Ricardo.

Around all of this whirls Chico and Harpo Marx, serving no real purpose other than to join Groucho in generating mayhem. But what mayhem. “A Night at the Opera” boasts scenes and dialogue that are so consistently alive and clever, they would fall apart if explored in print because what lifts them – nuance – would be lost.

What matters is their presence in the movie, how they are delivered by the brothers, and how the rest of the cast reacts. It’s a delicate balance – and not one that was achieved without some work. Before a frame of the movie was shot, Wood and the brothers perfected the material on the road in audience rehearsals, tweaking the script to achieve the greatest number of laughs. What’s impressive is that in spite of being so wholly manufactured, the movie doesn’t feel manufactured. It’s quick and effortless, its energy never lagging in spite of having every reason to collapse.

What comes through in “A Night of the Opera” isn’t just that the brothers came to have fun, but also to succeed. Fresh off the failure of “Duck Soup,” this was their comeback movie. The effort shows.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Weekends in Television, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.