Duck Soup review

Touring major cities in a digital print, Duck Soup (1933) is the most consistently watchable film the Marx brothers ever made, its relentless pot shots at war, religion and just about everything else making it more controlled chaos than movie.

As ever, the plot (neighbouring republics at war) is just a flimsy backdrop for a parade of wonderfully daft slapstick routines, held together by Groucho's jabbering put-downs and sly innuendo (""I can see you in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. And I can't see the stove"). It also contains the classic, much-copied mirror sequence, where a comedy-disguised Harpo convinces Groucho that he's looking at his own reflection.

And if the political nose-thumbing now seems a little dated, remember this: Mussolini banned it, thinking Groucho's loopy dictator was a direct attack on him. Which, of course, made the brothers very happy indeed.