Harpo speaks! New recordings reveal mute Marx brother chatting with audience

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The comedy legend, who adopted his silent persona because of stage nerves, did occasionally address his audience, as revealed by a new archive release Groucho was the cigar-chomping wit with the improbable moustache, Chico was the piano-playing rustic grifter and Zeppo played the straight man and the lover. But as any Marx Brothers fan knows, Harpo was the pantomime, who cracked up the audience without saying a word, dressed in his tattered raincoat and curly wig. His persona was childlike and mischievous but also musical – he let his harp and his taxi horn do the talking. But now we get to see, or rather hear, a new side to Harpo Marx. A very special recording has been unearthed of Harpo in 1964 speaking to an audience, in character. Arthur “Harpo” Marx was born Adolph Marx in New York in 1888. He started performing with his brothers in 1910, and his nickname probably came about because of his instrument of choice – he was an entirely self-taught musician. By 1915, due to his nerves a...
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Motherboard review – enthralling smartphone self-portrait of family life

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Copenhagen documentary film festival
Victoria Mapplebeck’s documentary stitches 20 years’ worth of footage into a home video love letter to her son, whose whole life so far is observed

Victoria Mapplebeck is a British director and lecturer who has worked in film, video, VR, user-generated content, and with her personal, revelatory projects she’s shown a magic touch with a smartphone camera: she won a TV Bafta in 2019 for her iPhone short Missed Call, about her life as a single mum, working out her relationship with her teenage son and his absent dad. Now she has developed this into a tender, intimate, funny and entirely absorbing full-scale feature documentary, the title of which is a reference to the central circuit board on a computer – meaning perhaps both the importance of the digital equipment she’s using to record everything, and her own central importance to the computer of their own family unit, the motherboard that isn’t allowed to go wrong or take a day off.

Motherboard is essentially a home video love letter to her son Jim that crafts 20 years’ worth of footage, showing her own life and that of Jim growing surreally from a tiny baby into a fiercely opinionated, smart young adult who suddenly towers over the parent. The film lasts around 90 minutes, which is about how long the growing up process seems to take in real life for a parent. And at the same time she has to deal with exhaustion, a breast cancer diagnosis, anxiety and her own complex relationship with her father who walked out on the family when she was still young.

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