Synopsis
Paramount's All Talking Musicomedy Sensation
During the Florida land boom, the Marx Brothers run a hotel, auction off some land and thwart a jewel robbery.
1929 Directed by Robert Florey, Joseph Santley
During the Florida land boom, the Marx Brothers run a hotel, auction off some land and thwart a jewel robbery.
Los cuatro cocos, Marx Brothers - Cocoanuts, Marx Brothers [1929] The Cocoanuts, No Hotel da Fuzarca, Il ladro di gioielli, Noci di cocco, Noix de coco, Orzechy kokosowe, A kókuszdiók, Miljonärernas paradis, 可可豆, Кокосовые орешки, Hotel Kokosnød, 코코넛 대소동, Üç Ahbap Çavuşlar, Els quatre cocos
Hotel workers: We haven't been paid in two weeks and we want our wages!
Groucho: Wages? Do you want to be wage slaves, answer me that.
Hotel workers: No.
Groucho: No, of course not. Well, what makes wage slaves? Wages!
The transition from silent to sound at the dawn of the talkie was not a smooth one, as clearly evident in The Cocoanuts, the first of several collaborations between the Marx brothers at Paramount.
This is very much a vaudeville show put to film, a warm up for later works where they understood the medium of film better and could perform more intuitively. The musical element is frustratingly at odds with the lightning fast, wisecracking humour of the brothers, thus moments of hilarity are sprinkled too thin and far between the languidly paced dances and performances. The movie is at its best when all the brothers are on screen together as the anarchic chaos well and truly kicks off, though…
My lovely wife bought me a set of the first 5 Marx Brothers movies even though she doesn't like them. Isn't she lovely?
This is the one where Groucho runs a hotel in Florida and tries to sell some land. Kay Francis is a jewel thief. As I've said before, you don't watch Marx Bros movies for the plot, but for the chaos they create. This isn't one of their best, but it's still pretty good.
Interesting thing about The Cocoanuts - it was the Marx brother's first film with Paramount, based on their successful stage show at the time, and the Brothers were so upset when they saw the final cut of the film that they apparently tried to buy back the negatives and destroy them? It's hard to form an opinion on their opinion however, as the master copy of the film is apparently lost--the DVD version is seven minutes shorter than the original cut, and made up of three different prints, according to IMDB, explaining the strong variations in the quality of the film stock watching it. So it's hard to say if the Marx Brothers were right to feel something was lost…
Has a reputation as the Marx brothers' dark horse, since it creaks and groans even by Marx standards (read: That's a lot of creakin' and groanin'). But I'm struck by how many of the components of what would become the Marx formula are fully present here - the snooty institution being lightly skewered by the boys (a Florida hotel), Margaret Dumont, romantic and musical subplots that get way too much screen time, Harpo on the harp, Chico on the piano, Groucho on the ball, etc etc etc. And it has at least one all-time classic set-piece in the auction sequence.
Am I nuts or is Zeppo at his best here? Will keep my eye on him in later weeks.
Why a duck?
Almost nonstop shenanigans, occasionally interrupted by supporting characters pretending this picture has a plot.
Anytime at least one Marx brother is onscreen, this is pretty enjoyable. (Zeppo doesn't count.) Anytime the Marx brothers are nowhere to be seen, this is interminable. Unfortunately the latter comprises a nonzero amount of screentime. There's one sequence with two adjacent hotel rooms and slamming doors and characters slipping in and out from under a bed that's a hoot, but otherwise the movie rarely sustains that level of lunacy.
Part of my Roaring Twenties Project
The Marx Brothers -- Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo -- only made five movies with all four siblings present and this was their film debut. Directed by French-born Robert Florey and choreography specialist Joseph Santley, it's the cinematic adaptation of the Broadway hit musical in which the Marx Brothers starred for 276 performances beginning in 1925. And as the poster indicates, the film production was made with sound -- "Paramount's All Talking-Singing Musical Comedy Hit."
All the action takes place in Florida during the Land Bubble of the late 1920s. Mr. Hammer (Groucho) is the owner of the mostly empty Hotel de Cocoanut at Cocoanut Manor. He's a penny-pincher who fleeces guests and stiffs…
The Marx brothers first film taken from their stage play and it feels even more like a recording of their performance than other early Marx films do. Robert Florey direction is non-existent which lets down Harpo the most (his routines always benefit when they seem better integrated). The pace is sluggish and the material without the brothers even harder to sit through than usual, but they rarely show as much bite as here.
1929 Ranked
Physically Owned Films
My least favorite of the Marx Brothers films I've seen, The Cocoanuts feels pretty clunky in its pace and editing. Surely this must be growing pains from the switches of silent to sound and broadway to film. Putting that aside, there's still a lot of funny in it. Full of great wordplay, snark, and that connected hotel room bit is a big highlight.