Charles Herold (cherold)
Director Frank Capra is most famous for movies that combine humor with human drama and sweet morals, but in his adaption of Arsenic and Old Lace he just goes for the laughs, and winds up with one of the funniest and most frenetic movies of the 40s.The film's linchpin is Cary Grant as a panicked writer who discovers his sweet aunts have a very, very bad secret. It's a manic, expressive performance full of double takes, bemused looks, hysterical shouting, and stunned, quizzical silence. It is the funniest he has ever been.The rest of the cast is excellent as well, although the great tragedy of Arsenic and Old Lace is the absence of Boris Karloff, who appeared in the Broadway production as a criminal who became furious whenever people told him his latest plastic surgery made him look like ... Boris Karloff. It's a brilliant in-joke the movie loses. Apparently Karloff did reprise the role in several TV adaptations, but alas, they seem to have all vanished from the face of the earth.Anyway, watch this movie. It's amazing.
ElMaruecan82
And it doesn't even gallop, it's like roadrunner's running style. Indeed, this is one of the craziest movies you'll ever experience, even by today's standards. Yet it is so confident in its material that it embraces it with wide open arms and squeeze the most out of it… sometimes a little more than needed.Roger Ebert said that no good film is too long, no bad film is short enough, but I think there should be an exception with screwball comedies, because they're fast-paced and rely on plots that are the densest in terms of twists and situations' reversals, so that eighty non-stop comedic minutes have the same two-hour feel than thrillers. "Arsenic and Old Lace" would have benefited from a wiser editing, and Cary Grant's performance should have taken a significant part of it. The star himself disliked his performance saying it was too over-the-top, and "Casablanca" writers Epstein brothers, who adapted the play, expressed similar concerns.Director Capra agreed to make a few changes but the call of World War II left the initial production unaltered and some notable irony in Grant's acting as Mortimer Brewster: the straight-man of perhaps the most lunatic movie family ever being no less lunatic in his own reactions. His two aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) have discovered an unorthodox way for euthanizing old and lonely men: some glasses of wine mixed with arsenic, strychnine and a pinch of cyanide. It's less the fact that they just 'relieved' their twelfth victim from the burden of life that is funny in its wicked way but their total obliviousness to it, and this is where Grant's acting doesn't match the actresses' performances.The two aunts are funny because they are exactly as you would expect two old ladies to behave: sweet, smiling and cheerful, thus contributing to the funniest running-gag when no one, not even cops, believe they really buried corpses in the cellar. Someone acting ridiculously isn't funny, but someone being ridiculous in all seriousness can be. So while the aunts play their part with the perfect dose of nuance, cluelessness and a pinch of detachment, Grant's reactions when he discovers the corpse, learns about their actions, tries to reason them or to get his newlywed wife Elaine (Priscilla Lane) out of the house, are so over-the-top that they undermine the plot's credibility.What can be so credible about two old ladies who kill men and get away with it? Well, even the zaniest screwball classics had order within their chaotic story-line. "Arsenic and Old Lace" follows a clear plot line, Grant must prove that the acts of killings are from his crazy brother who pretends he's Teddy Roosevelt, so he has to keep the lowest profile. Yet his hysteria has side-effects and raises more suspicion and troubles than his brother's antics and aunts' behavior. In the end, he's as crazy as everyone else, one can blame it on the shock but he never feels like recovering from it and plays Mortimer Brewster in the same note. Now, is he funny? Yes, even hilarious. On its own, Cary Grant is unforgettable with all his screams, charges, howls and mimics to the camera, Grant really takes you off-guard and proves that he has the comical timing of the greats. It is just that he's not in-line with the other performers. And what was just a feeling in the beginning was confirmed when the two villains made their entrance: Raymond Massey as brother Jonathan and Boris Karloff's lookalike (another funny leitmotif) and his diminutive companion, Dr. Einstein, played by Peter Lorre). In the scene where the two men discover the macabre truth about the cellar, they don't overreact, but they simply compare their tallies and have a similar argument about one who didn't technically die by being killed till 'Johnny' points out that if the ill-fated man hasn't been shot, he wouldn't have died of that pneumonia.So, I'm torn between two attitudes when it comes to Grant's over(re)acting. I love to think that Mortimer wouldn't be so "crazy" if he wasn't surrounded by such crazy people, and his attitude is precisely the one of a sane person, but I'm pretty sure there was a way to tone it down. His character wasn't far from his Dr. Huxley from "Bringing up Baby" who also had a lot to deal with, and Huxley had an interesting line, he said he felt some attraction toward Hepburn's Susan during quiet moments, but there were no quiet moments. I wish Brewster went into quieter phases and not just when he was gagged.Now, the film had all the ingredients to the perfect screwball classic, using every kind of humor, and some great meta-referential jokes, exploring the profession of Brewster as a critic, it just tried to be too funny for its own good while a little less would've been better. But I'm being too harsh on the film; overall, I think it's a very nice moment you spend watching it, its length doesn't ruin the enjoyment and it has aged well, like a good wine... without any lethal addition of course.
somajumdar
Amazing...amazing...amazing movie. Terrific story-telling, each dialogue delivered to perfection, superb acting, laced with arsenic-humor. I have never seen any better-crafted humor film. Capra at his frenetic best. And almost everything happens inside a sitting-room. Yet the pace never slackens; there is not a single dull moment. Even if it is a theatrical adaptation of a very successful play, Capra nails it perfectly. I have seen it how many times now...don't remember...but must have crossed twenty times at least!! I would like to watch it at least once every year till I die...it is that good!
