The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999

In its brilliant combination of silent-film pantomime and verbal fireworks, Duck Soup is the distillation of all the best elements to be found in the Marx brothers' comedies. In the film, under the leadership of Groucho's unforgettable prime minister Rufus T. Firefly, Freedonia goes to war with neighboring Sylvania for no reason whatsoever. Among the film's famous scenes are the moment when Groucho mistakes Harpo for his own mirror image, and the barrage of oranges and grapefruits that greet Margaret Dumont as she sings the national anthem in the film's riotous finale. Duck Soup is also filled with inimitable dialogue and the confusions of word play—double entendres, non sequiturs, and puns. In the film, the Marx brothers, with McCarey, present a world in which organized groups, political parties, nations, and social classes seem foolish, and court jesters sane.

Critics and moviegoers around the world regard Duck Soup as one of the Marx brothers' finest comedies. Yet the film was such a failure when it opened in 1933 that Paramount dropped its contract with the Marx brothers. With the American economy in collapse, Hitler on the rise in Germany, and democracy faltering at home and abroad, audiences were simply not in the mood for a political satire that held nothing sacred and left nothing unscathed. Though Duck Soup was provocative enough to have been banned in Italy by Mussolini, McCarey insisted that the only political message intended was "to kid dictators."

The Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo) were products of the rough-and-tumble world of vaudeville, in which performers tested and refined stage routines over the course of many years, before audiences in theaters big and small across America. By the time they had been signed to the movies in 1929, they were established stars, appearing nightly on Broadway. Yet they never lost their hard-won love of anarchy nor their predilection for satirizing all forms of authority and pomposity. Their first four films for Paramount more or less duplicated the formula that had served them so well on the stage, one in which their unorthodox routines were tempered by traditional musical comedy stage business involving juveniles, ingenues, and romantic subplots. In Duck Soup this formula was dropped altogether, and the result is pure, unadulterated Marx Brothers. As always, they revel in physical slapstick as well as the verbal fireworks (chief among them double entendres, non sequiturs, and puns) that had become their trademark, but now they were free to follow their comedic instincts with abandon. The public received the final product with bewilderment, the box office was dismal, and the brothers were dropped by Paramount. Soon after, they signed with MGM, where producer Irving Thalberg smoothed over their rough edges and made them popular again.