For someone without a firm grip on reality, this can be a terrifying movie.
Or even for someone without a firm grip on our culture.
From the very beginning when everyone is expecting Capt. Spaulding's arrival with such excitement and he tries to escape like a total sociopath.
To the entrance of Harpo when he loses his clothes and starts shooting into the crowd.
His constant girl chasing.
The strange interludes.
And finally the mass gassing at the end.
Most of the puns have to do with three characters who do not entirely understand the manners of their environment, nor the language, facial expressions, or vocal inflections.
Yikes!
But the reality is that the Brothers were masters of these social ingredients, understood them fully and played with mistakes common to those around them like the mispronunciation of words, for example when Capt. Spaulding pronounces "fragile" as "fragilly", or Chandler mixing his name up with Spaulding's.
They reflected the flaws they saw in the people around them, but they did so in a charismatically humorous way. Bravo!
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as537
15 years ago
The basis of this scene actually gave Groucho the opposite of nightmares for years. This parody of Eugene Oneils Strange Interlude quotes the stock market crash of 1929,in which he lost most of his money,causing insomnia which plagued him for the rest of his life.
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