A Night at The Opera (film) - Reputation and Legacy

Reputation and Legacy

A Night at the Opera is widely regarded as a classic and is arguably (along with Duck Soup) the Marx Brothers' most-recognized film. As of October 18, 2008, the film scores a 97% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Internet reviews take a revisionist approach and suggest that the film is "a very funny movie slowed down by MGM’s expensive production values and idiotic songs." Ken Hanke calls it "hysterical, but not up to the boys’ Paramount films." Mark Bourne concurs: " still let the air out of stuffed shirts and barbecue a few sacred cows, but something got lost in all that MGMness when the screen's ultimate anti-authoritarian team starting working the Andy Hardy side of the street."

Roger Ebert admits that, while A Night at the Opera "contains some of their best work," he "fast-forward over the sappy interludes involving Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones. In Duck Soup there are no sequences I can skip; the movie is funny from beginning to end."

Danel Griffin says: "A Night at the Opera is funny, but this is NOT the Marx Brothers, and their earlier style is so sorely missed that the film falls flat. The main problem with A Night at the Opera is the obvious lack of the Marx Brothers’ trademark anarchy. What distinguished them in their Paramount films from all other comedians was their thumb-biting indictment of society.

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs - #12
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes - Nominated:

OTIS B. DRIFTWOOD: "It’s alright, that’s in every contract. That’s what they call a sanity clause."

FIORELLO: "You can't fool me! There ain't no Sanity Claus."

• AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #85