Cracked Crackers

For Marxophiles the wait has been, roughly, the equivalent of the Gaullist anticipation of le Général’s return to politics after a decade in huffy retirement. A “Free Animal Crackers” committee materialized at UCLA, and Groucho himself made vague promises to appear at the re-release premieres here and there. Finally, Animal Crackers returns to the screen after an 18-year blackout caused by the reluctance of the George S. Kaufman estate and Morrie Ryskind, who wrote the screenplay, to allow it back into circulation without a hefty financial arrangement either with TV or a motion picture distributor.

The details of the financial deal between Universal Pictures and Kaufman’s daughter and Mr. Ryskind are not available. The picture is. A 42-year-old bit of fluff in “glorious black and white” on a small screen—virtue out of necessity—representing the second film venture of the four Marx Brothers, including Zeppo, who didn’t last long with his siblings in the movies. Before seeing it I thought Gerald Mast’s evaluation, in his indispensable The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, too harsh: “leadenly stagy, clumsily paced, and cinematically incompetent . . . [its] artlessness was merely unintentional sloppiness rather than a vicious and intentional assault on the cinema’s pretensions to art.” Because, along with most Marx Brothers devotees, I had experienced only the best, the later films, like Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races.

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David Brudnoy

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For Marxophiles the wait has been, roughly, the equivalent of the Gaullist anticipation of le Général’s return to politics after a decade in huffy retirement. A “Free Animal Crackers” committee materialized at UCLA, and Groucho himself made vague promises to appear at the re-release premieres here and there. Finally, Animal Crackers returns to the screen after an 18-year blackout caused by the reluctance of the George S. Kaufman estate and Morrie Ryskind, who wrote the screenplay, to allow it back into circulation without a hefty financial arrangement either with TV or a motion picture distributor.

The details of the financial deal between Universal Pictures and Kaufman’s daughter and Mr. Ryskind are not available. The picture is. A 42-year-old bit of fluff in “glorious black and white” on a small screen—virtue out of necessity—representing the second film venture of the four Marx Brothers, including Zeppo, who didn’t last long with his siblings in the movies. Before seeing it I thought Gerald Mast’s evaluation, in his indispensable The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, too harsh: “leadenly stagy, clumsily paced, and cinematically incompetent . . . [its] artlessness was merely unintentional sloppiness rather than a vicious and intentional assault on the cinema’s pretensions to art.” Because, along with most Marx Brothers devotees, I had experienced only the best, the later films, like Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races.