Cocoanuts [VHS]

At last. I got so hungry to see this film, I eventually ordered a copy from the USA. No one in the UK seemed to have a copy or know of its exsistance. I don't know whether this is the first time it has EVER been released here, but it's about damn time. 'The Coccanuts' sees the Marx Bros. in a hotel run by Groucho. Fans will want to know little else and can imagine I'm sure what will happen when the four are let loose in such a prestigious enviroment. The film is basically a filmed version of their stage musical that conquered broadway in the mid-late 20s: 'I'll Say She Is'. Bearing in mind its age, it is full of bad cuts, poor sound and variable lighting but it is a must for Marx fans. It has some excellent scenes of slapstick and biting dialogue. Get a copy and treasure it - who knows when it will be re-released after this?

The four brothers are probably some of the most important American actors that made the transition from the old silent movies to the new talkies, form the old camera to the new camera, from the old primitive editing technology to the new technology, without speaking of microphones and lighting and so many other elements that will become the sound stage. The first element about these four brothers is that Harpo will remain silent. He will not use any words. He only uses some noises, a horn or a harp, his namesake, and some grunts or grumbles. He kept from the old silent movies the body language that was so typical in all actors who had to express their words with their flesh and bones. The other brothers are of course in language and Groucho is the one who is always using words as if they were traps and tricky snares. With Chico he makes a superb couple and they line up some marvelous linguistic imbroglio, like "viaduct" and" why a duck?" I also like among many others "stucco" and "stuck on", or "flower-beds ... pansies ... short pansies and long pansies ... some early bloomers." They also use anything they can think of to make a pastiche out of it, to turn it into some kind of hilarious quite crazy caricature. We can think of Fitzgerald all the time in this film, the very happy and crazy 1920s before the depression, with the Charleston and all the rest of it, including the alcohol free parties. We have to think of the musicals that were so famous in Broadway and that Fred Astaire was going to transform into a genre of its own for the cinema. The Marx brothers were precursors in 1929. The derisive use of Carmen's famous melodies exploited here with completely innocuous words that become meaningful by being innocuous was of course going to become a very classic method to make music funny and to capture the amused and amazed interest of the audience with all comedians. The content of this film is of course so shallow that you will not get a headache trying to find a meaning. A poor hotel manager, and owner, in Florida is going through an economic crisis and he is saved by small events like a necklace being stolen in the hotel, an investigation carried out by the clowns of the show, a social climbing marriage defeated by love, etc. A fairly entertaining film even if it has probably a little aged. The humor is too much of the practical type, though the linguistic level is more vivacious, and the shallowness of the plot is typical of a time when it was necessary to forget the underside of reality before the depression and the famished masses after the depression.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines