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RR 99/265 The Cambridge Companion to Modernism Edited by Michael Levenson Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1999 xvii + 246 pp. ISBN 0 521 49516 4; 0 521 49866 X paperback L37.50 ($54.95); L13.95 ($19.95) paperback Cambridge Companions to Literature series
Keywords Literature, Modernism
Groucho scratches his chin, lifts an eyebrow, does a little dance; leaves the frame of the mirror and returns hopping; leaves the frame of the mirror and returns on his knees.
This is Michael Wood, Professor of English at Princeton, describing the famous mirror sequence in Duck Soup (1933).Groucho is performing these antics in front of a full-- length "mirror" that is in fact an empty frame; his "reflection" is being played by his brother Harpo, who (for a reason arising out of the extravagant plot) is disguised as Groucho at this point. Professor Wood's scholarly essay on "Modernism and film" is the last of nine that make up this addition to the Cambridge Companions...