The scoop is probably not very fresh, but it's still a little personal discovery: the Marx Brothers invented the comic speaking. Measure a little paradox in Marxian sketches, slapstick - silent art par excellence - is saturated words. Body language becomes an excuse to torture the body language. If a Chaplin (for example) is dumb, is that his plans speak for themselves. The trick is the Marx Brothers to do precisely that plans can no longer speak for themselves. The word is not there to explain, but rather to make any situation equivocal. There will always be a Groucho to complicate its puns the simplest situations. The climax of course being that this complication of speech is a wonderful way to grind the sense to let it germinate pure action, anarchic, mute as Harpo!
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