Die Marx Brothers und die Commedia dell'arte

The Marx Brothers were some of cinema’s greatest comedians. Their anarchistic comedy was unique, yet it bears traces of an older performance tradition. Stock characters, ad-libbing and their self-image as professional comics connect the Marx Brothers with the commedia dell’arte, the improvised mask theatre of travelling groups from Italy at the time of the Renaissance.

By combining approaches from film and theatre studies, ‘Die Marx Brothers und die Commedia dell’arte’ elaborates how Groucho and his brothers successfully transposed the performative characteristics and mask types of the commedia into the 20th century. Like the Italian comics, the Marx Brothers used their non-mimetic acting to create a fantastical world from which they could unveil the mask-like nature of society.

This book fills a gap in research literature, which is abundant in studies on the commedia and the Marx Brothers; however, the fascinating point at which these two performing traditions intersect has so far received no attention.