Reception
Popular belief holds that Duck Soup was a box office failure, but this is not true. Although it did not do as well as Horse Feathers, it was the sixth-highest grossing film of 1933, according to Glenn Mitchell in The Marx Brothers Encyclopedia and Simon Louvish in Monkey Business, his biography of the Marx Brothers.
One possible reason for the film's lukewarm reception is that it was released during the Great Depression. Audiences were taken aback by such preposterous political disregard, buffoonery, and cynicism at a time of economic and political crisis. Film scholar Leonard Maltin had this to say in his book The Great Movie Comedians:
As wonderful as Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup seem today, some critics and moviegoers found them unpleasant and longed for the more orderly world of The Cocoanuts with its musical banalities. Many right-thinkers laughed themselves silly in 1933—but a large number didn't. The unrelieved assault of Marxian comedy was simply too much for some people.
Years later, Groucho's son Arthur Marx described Irving Thalberg's assessment of the film's failure during a National Public Radio interview:
said the trouble with Duck Soup is you've got funny gags in it, but there's no story and there's nothing to root for. You can't root for the Marx Brothers because they're a bunch of zany kooks. says, "You gotta put a love story in your movie so there'll be something to root for, and you have to help the lovers get together."
Most critics at the time disliked it because of its "dated" look at politics. Some modern critics are also unimpressed. Christopher Null believes, "the send-up of Mussolini-types doesn't quite pan out. Take the comedy, leave the story."
Even Groucho himself did not initially think too highly of the film. When asked the significance of the film's politics, Groucho only shrugged and said: "What significance? We were just four Jews trying to get a laugh." Nevertheless, the Brothers were ecstatic when Benito Mussolini took the film as a personal insult and banned it in Italy. Also, the residents of Fredonia, New York, protested because they feared that the similar-sounding nation would hurt their city's reputation. The Marx Brothers took the opposite approach, telling them to change the name of their town to keep from hurting their movie.
Despite the tepid critical response at the time, Duck Soup is now seen as a classic political farce. Film critic Danel Griffin believes that Duck Soup is "on par with other war comedies like Chaplin's The Great Dictator and Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, only slightly more unnerving in that Duck Soup doesn't seem to realize it is anything more than innocent fluff." Fellow film critic Roger Ebert believes, "The Marx Brothers created a body of work in which individual films are like slices from the whole, but Duck Soup is probably the best." British film critic Barry Norman was slightly cautious about the Marx Brothers overall, but considered that Duck Soup was their best and included it in his 100 best films of the 20th century.
Revived interest in the film (and other 1930s comedies in general) during the 1960s was seen as dovetailing with the rebellious side of American culture in that decade. American literary critic Harold Bloom considers the end of Duck Soup one of the greatest works of American art produced in the 20th century.
In 1990, Duck Soup was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Duck Soup the 29th greatest comedy film of all time. The film also scores a 94% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. It is also one of the earliest films to appear on Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies.
American Film Institute lists:
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - #85
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs - #5
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes:
- "Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did." - Nominated
- "I could dance with you ‘til the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows ‘til you came home." - Nominated
- RUFUS T. FIREFLY: "I suggest that we give him ten years in Levenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth." CHICOLINI: "I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take five and ten in Woolworth." - Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #60
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