Review of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) by Kirsty P — 02 Nov 2010

Frank Capra has put into this picture all of the rowdy slapstick, tender innocence and patent melodrama from the original material. That he adds a handful of filmic jaunts, however, doesn't do much good or add any punch. The movie opens on a montage about peculiar and random Brooklyn, and fosters the chuckle along with a riot scene at Ebbets Field, a scene which has no perceptible basis for being in the movie at all. From there it switches to a high-octane schmaltz sequence in the marriage license bureau, where above all things, people are getting marriage licenses, Cary Grant and Priscilla Lane among them. Then there's another sequence of elaborate chasing and necking in a Brooklyn cemetery, and, at last, guess what, the story of Arsenic and Old Lace. All the same, in the long run, these filmic additions give impact to the farce with Aunts Abby and Martha in the house, because beginning so schmaltzy and mawkish makes such ink-black humor so much more unexpected.

This unconventional patchwork is distinct from most of the other "reform-minded Capra-corn" films with social principles that became his brand, like It's a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe, or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It's more similar in tone to his screwball romantic comedy It Happened One Night and to Capra's other adaptation from a Broadway play You Can't Take It With You. Playing theatre critic Mortimer Brewster---frankly it doesn't matter, it's fine just viewing him for his star power the whole time---Cary Grant accomplishes a stunning mission of overstated acting with remarkable double-takes, slapstick and overall bewilderment. What makes his performance so effective is that in essence he plays the straight man in a house crammed with eccentrics, yet it is his relentless mugging and other facial agility that make you laugh. Naturally it's all exaggerated from top to bottom, but that's what the role demands and he succeeds in peddling the motor for all the farce happening around him.

Not that Grant is the lone one to get laughs in this combination of slapstick and fast-paced jousting. Played impeccably by veteran stage actress Josephine Hull and Canadian vaudevillian Jean Adair, the doting aunts' account of how they routinely murder gentleman visitors is really my favorite part, by far. After telling Grant how they add Arsenic, Strychnine, and "just a pinch of" Cyanide to Elderberry wine because it makes tea taste bitter, they smugly add that one of the gentlemen even found time to say how nice it tasted before he died. John Alexander is hilarious in his unquestionably most memorable performance as Grant's brother Teddy, who believes he's Teddy Roosevelt to the extent that his behavior, dress and perception of his surroundings all correspond with defining aspects of the vividly inimitable American president. Another of my favorite elements is how old Abby and Martha delight in using Teddy's belief that he's digging the Panama Canal to bury their shocking amount of dead bodies in the basement.

Ahead of its time? OK, but it is also markedly of its time, and has stood the test of time to stay as witty today as anything Hollywood is producing now. Our reactions to inconsistencies, oddities, unanticipated discrepancies with normalcy and established ranks will differ in terms of particular circumstances. The established rule we hear vintage comedians talk about is that if the incongruity works in a context where it's foreboding, it'll dispose us toward a fearful response, but if the framework is one that's marked as non-threatening, where the prospect of harm and dread has been denied, the circumstances are apt for humor. I've rarely found this notion better substantiated than in the characters of Aunt Martha and Aunt Abby, whose descriptions of their serial murders are so sweet and innocent that they couldn't be less congruous.