Review of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) by Brian R — 15 Jan 2010

"No, no. I'm not a Brewster. I'm the son of a sea-cook! Ha! Ha! Chaaaaarrrge!".

Cary Grant gives a joyously unrestrained performance in perhaps the finest black comedy of them all. He plays Mortimer Brewster, a newly-wed literary critic, who discovers on his wedding day that insanity runs in his family. In fact, "it practically gallops". His sweet and innocent aunts have, quite unmaliciously and with the best of intentions, bumped off twelve would-be lodgers with their poisoned elderberry wine. Not even Mortimer's brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey), a psychopathic serial killer given the face of Boris Karloff by his alcoholic plastic surgeon accomplice (Peter Lorre) can match this feat. Jonathan decides to hide out at the aunts house and bury the body of his latest victim in the cellar, in "the lock" dug by Mortimer's other brother, the supremely bonkers Teddy, who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt burying yellow-fever victims. This would be dark and possibly unpalatable stuff if it wasn't in the hands of a true master director - Frank Capra, and a brilliant ensemble cast, many of whom had played their roles with great success in the play on which the film was based. It is a bit stagey, but then the action happens in more or less real time, and Capra has the confidence in his cast and faith in the material to keep things simple, maintaining the film's giddy pace until it reaches it's quite hysterical climax. The script, characterizations and physical comedy (especially from Grant) are pitch-perfect. This is a film I could watch again and again and again and never tire of. It has a kind of anarchic spirit that doesn't exist anywhere else in films outside of The Marx Brothers.