event Duck Soup (1933)

For their last and best film at Paramount, the Marx Brothers hooked up with a distinguished director, Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth), and their talents were perfectly channeled into 1933's Duck Soup, arguably the funniest movie ever made. The brothers claimed that the film's story—about a leader (Groucho) who arbitrarily takes his country to war—was never intended as satire, but only Dr. Strangelove matches its audacity in sending up the follies of nationalism and arbitrary conflict. The buildup to Groucho's fight with a neighboring country, triggered by an ambassador calling him an "upstart," leads to a joyous musical setpiece in which the prospect of war sends the nation into a state of perverse ecstasy.

For their last and best film at Paramount, the Marx Brothers hooked up with a distinguished director, Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth), and their talents were perfectly channeled into 1933's Duck Soup, arguably the funniest movie ever made. The brothers claimed that the film's story—about a leader (Groucho) who arbitrarily takes his country to war—was never intended as satire, but only Dr. Strangelove matches its audacity in sending up the follies of nationalism and arbitrary conflict. The buildup to Groucho's fight with a neighboring country, triggered by an ambassador calling him an "upstart," leads to a joyous musical setpiece in which the prospect of war sends the nation into a state of perverse ecstasy.

For their last and best film at Paramount, the Marx Brothers hooked up with a distinguished director, Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth), and their talents were perfectly channeled into 1933's Duck Soup, arguably the funniest movie ever made. The brothers claimed that the film's story—about a leader (Groucho) who arbitrarily takes his country to war—was never intended as satire, but only Dr. Strangelove matches its audacity in sending up the follies of nationalism and arbitrary conflict. The buildup to Groucho's fight with a neighboring country, triggered by an ambassador calling him an "upstart," leads to a joyous musical setpiece in which the prospect of war sends the nation into a state of perverse ecstasy.