Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Two seemingly sweet little old ladies bump off their lonely male lodgers much to the horror and surprise of their newlywed nephew Mortimer (Cary Grant).What I had hoped would be a charming American comedy classic turns out to be amongst the most tortuous two hours of cinema I have ever sat through. Directed by Frank Capra, the film stars Cary Grant as Mortimer, a writer renowned for his anti-marriage diatribes, who has just done the unthinkable and got hitched to beautiful blonde Elaine (Priscilla Lane). But before Mortimer can leave with his wife for their honeymoon, his discovery of a dead body at his aunts' Brooklyn home throws him into disarray.With zero concern for subtlety from either Capra or his star, Arsenic and Old Lace is a loud, repetitive, drawn-out exercise in absolute tedium, the plot going round and round in circles until the viewer is finally put out of their misery with a really dumb ending. Grant over-acts like his life depends upon it, mugging and doing double takes whenever possible, as though this is all that is needed to drum up laughs; it isn't. The majority of the supporting cast are just as insufferable: the guy who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt really grates, the old ladies are far from endearing, Raymond Massey (as Mortimer's escaped criminal brother Jonathan) glares a lot, and Peter Lorre merely plays a caricature of himself.Somehow this movie has earned itself a solid reputation and a high IMDb rating (8.0), which confuses me just as much as It's a Wonderful Life's place at #25 in IMDb's Top Rated Movies. What is it that others see in Capra's films that I don't?

Having just seen Frank Capra's "Arsenic And Old Lace" (1944) for the 1st time, The ONLY Way that I can think of describing it is to say that it is S-O-O-O Bad, That It's ACTUALLY Good !!! It's Pure Camp for sure!!! A REAL Spoof, but I'm not quite sure WHAT it's even Spoofing !!!This is definitely "Cult Classic" material !!! The wide ranging cast of character actors did an excellent job !!! I was particularly impressed by the performance of Cary Grant, who I've only seen in suave, debonair leading man roles before. Grant really shows me the true breadth of his acting ability here, pulling off a slap stick comedic role quite convincingly & hilariously. His facial expressions are comedic gems.Although the fun of viewing this film is it's accelerating chaos, it required precision orchestration in many scenes, which were probably the result of many rehearsals & retakes. Capra did a remarkable job putting together this TOTAL Farce.VERY Entertaining !!! VERY Entertaining !!! [email protected]

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.

Arsenic and old lace is one of my all time favorite movies. I saw the movie when I was a kid one halloween and just fell in love. That was my first time seeing a Cary Grant film and he quickly became one of my favorite actors for old movies. My aunt did the play when she was in college so I was always familiar with the story. But the movie brought it more to life to me.Cary Grant was hilarious as usual and probably played the best performance I have seen him do. His facial expressions and the way he acted because he was so perplexed to learn that his aunts were murders was hilarious. But I think my favorite character in the movie might be the man who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt, I used to laugh so hard at the scenes of him running up the stairs every time yelling, "Charge." The whole movie was just wonderfully done and shot very smoothly. And the fact that its a comedy/ thriller that is usually on t.v. every Halloween makes it all the better to me.This movie had everything you could possibly in a comedy, great and funny characters, a Thriller, and crime film, a bit of a funny love story. I would definitely recommend this movie to people who love a good comedy/ thriller. There are no other movies like this film and you do not wanna miss an amazing performance by Cary Grant.