Peter Canavese
2007-07-23 22:54:00 UTC
Tenaciously manages some memorable moments and makes a virtue of its slim running time by generally hastening to one of the team's most elaborate climaxes.
Go West, one of the Marx Brothers' decidedly off-kilter later outings from the MGM years, tenaciously manages some memorable moments and makes a virtue of its slim running time by generally hastening to one of the team's most elaborate climaxes. Another sort-of musical with sort-of romantic leads, Go West's grab bag includes a few routines polished in 103 performances of an Irving Thalberg-style try-out tour.
The picture opens on a strong note with a money-scam routine pitting Groucho against Chico and Harpo. The three-man variation on the "tootsie-fruitsie" con of A Day at the Races gives new meaning to money with "strings attached." Groucho's S. Quentin Quail, Chico's Joe, and Harpo's "Rusty" fend their way to the promised land of western riches, where a series of confusions keep them entwined in a land scam (partly executed by Walter Woolf King of A Night at the Opera) and the family feud which temporarily prevents young lovers John Carroll and Diana Lewis from wedded bliss. A saloon gives Chico good occasion for one of his most ingenious piano solos ("The Woodpecker Song"), matched by Harpo's transformation of a loom from the tribal plains into a harp.
Groucho has his moments, too, like his toss-off "Telephone? This is 1870. Don Ameche hasn't invented the telephone yet" (in reference to the star's 1939 biopic The Story of Alexander Graham Bell) and his great wooing patter during Lulubelle (June MacCloy)'s number "You Can't Argue With Love." The other songs are weak, particularly "Riding the Range," which finds the brothers accompanying Carroll with guitar, harmonica, and harmony for the "clip-clopping" refrain. (The great Gus Kahn shares credit on three of the film's songs.)
A bumpy stagecoach ride and mayhem involving the contents of Harpo's carpetbag make for a nice setpiece, but nothing compares to the awfully impressive stunts in the runaway train climax, which owes a significant debt to Buster Keaton's silent classic The General (Keaton, in fact, was a script doctor at MGM at the time of Go West and advised on the picture). Many have suggested that Go West's best joke was simply Groucho's name. "San Quentin quail" was a slang-term for jail bait, a not-so subtle reference that raised a few eyebrows in 1940.
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