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Horse Feathers [1932]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Imagine Groucho as the president of a college and Harpo and Chico as football players. It doesn't get much wackier than this. Horse feathers, indeed. Groucho is hilarious to watch as a hip professor. He's at his most rebellious singing "Whatever it is, I'm against it." Thelma Todd does some of her best vamping to help fix the big football game, which Harpo and Chico are supposed to throw. Naturally, the brothers have other ideas. For sheer laughter, this has to rate almost as high as Duck Soup, with the memorable speakeasy sequence, and the funniest football finale of all time, complete with banana peels and a chariot. --Bill Desowitz


Beware some Plumed Horse may come out of the gymnasium
Review date: 2008-05-05 Rating: 10 out of 10

1932 has come and still the same depression and still the lack of whisky or bourbon and still the methylated spirit of moonshine trafficking on the telephone. So just invest, or dump, the four Marx brothers in a good college that is lying flat on its back in spite of all the varnish and inflating they have been doing with hot air and filling beans and you can greet the great implosion of the intellectual effete hormones of the middle-aged menopausal college professors and college widows and the latter's mafia beaus and college gigolos. But the speakeasy methylated whisky deliverer and his good friend the dog-catcher are better footballers than they are football player kidnappers. Though as for escaping from their locked rooms by sawing the floor around themselves they do better than any carpenter would do. What is surprising is how the Marx brothers are trying to confuse us with their symbolic subliminal innuendo that everyone feels and no one understands. Who knows that 42 is Solomon's number multiplied by the holy week, six times seven? Who knows that Harpo's swordfish is the flaming sword of some archangel in Genesis, the flaming sword that is the verb of God in the Old Testament's prophets sheathed upside down, outside in into a good old fish probably caught by Peter-Simon the fisherman and multiplied by Jesus? And we could go on like that for pages. Every single detail is ambiguous, meaningful but everything is said so fast, too fast, so that we hardly can follow the meaning of all these expectorations. And you jump from the "falsetto", or is it "false set o' toes" to a "false set o' teeth", a toe for a tooth, let's toe the line, tiptoe the mark that leads to the famous lex talionis. But what brass neck this Chico has who is playing the piano all the time as if he were on a music hall stage! What contumelious behavior this Harpo has who is constantly playing the harp, but is he really or is he alone! What bumptious chutzpah this Groucho has who is for the first time ever playing the guitar and throws it away to the ducks in the lake! And that is no wise quack from him even if it is a not so wise quack from the duck. And animal are thus constantly sprouting up in the language, a hog hugs a pig that picks a fight at once. Or some police dog ends up for sale in the dog catcher's van, who wanted to give a ticket to Harpo for blocking the traffic when he was only feeding and resting his horse. And I will not comment upon the football match that is won by the losers because they get loose on the rules and cheat openly. And that will end with the lurid scene of the college widow shifting her loyalties from the local mafioso and the smooth looking Zeppo to the triad of Harpo, Chico and Groucho in a polygamous marriage. That's what I would call a deep dive they will take all together on top of the widow after a high soar to a winning score, and the sore is for all of them who will be sorry to have ever come to that Huxley College that has little to do with any Brave New World. But they might sorely consider they have had some fun.

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


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Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Harpo Marx
Zeppo Marx
Thelma Todd
Groucho Marx
Chico Marx

Creators:
Groucho Marx (Primary Contributor)
Harpo Marx (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Universal Pictures UK
Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK
EAN: 5050582060157
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Black & White, PAL,
Release date: 2006-10-02
Audience rating: Universal, suitable for all
Region code: 2
Running time: 63 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1932

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