Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Firstly, this is a play. It isn't just based on a play, it's obviously based on a play. While much of the early output of Hollywood was naturally sourced from the stage, many of those films aren't even recognisable as plays outside of being set in very static locations. This is a notable exception. Entire scenes are full of irony that hinges on the fact that the lines are spoken on a stage. It's a play that's self-satisfied at being a play and is indecently happy about poking fun at stage productions through itself. Also, almost the entire film takes place on one set, which helps build the atmosphere of that set marvellously but also makes the few scenes shot elsewhere feel somehow detached and secondary.

I'm sure that given all of this, it really shouldn't work as a film. But it does. I'll say right off the bat that I don't buy into Cary Grant's posturing around like a pigeon whenever he gets the slightest bit surprised by anything, and apparently neither did he, viewing it as horrible overacting and frequently being quoted as saying that this was the least favourite of all his films. Everything else, though, including the rest of his own performance, is simply a joy to watch.

Grant plays Mortimer Brewster, as happy as you'd expect anyone to be when they've just got married to someone who looks as good as Priscilla Lane. His beloved aunts, the elderly Brewster sisters, are so kindly that it would seem to one and all that they couldn't hurt a fly, but then comes the startling discovery that they are really a pair of serial killers with no less than twelve corpses to their credit. What follows is a comedy of errors that ranks right up there among the very best farces ever written for the stage, not surprisingly given that the original production ran for a record 1,444 performances on Broadway.

Even with stellar performances from all the supporting cast, the stars of the show have to be the two aunts themselves. Josephine Hull is perfect, in a role very different from her Oscar-winning turn in Harvey, making me regret further the fact that she preferred the stage to the screen, as dying 14 years before I was born tends to deprive me of the chance to see her act in person. Jean Adair is the other aunt who also came to the part from the original stage production. In fact, while the film was released in 1944, it was shot three years earlier in 1941 while the play was still a major hit on Broadway. Most of the principal cast were allowed to swap coasts to appear in the film, but there was one major exception.

On Broadway, Boris Karloff was playing the role of Jonathan Brewster, the big hulking murderer of a son. The aunts are killers but they don't look or act like killers in the slightest. Their son Jonathan really looks the part, though, and who better to fit that dangerous image than Frankenstein's Monster himself, Karloff the Uncanny? Unfortunately the managers of the stage show refused to release him for the film version because they feared a notable drop in revenue during shooting. This understandable though highly lamentable decision means that we lose out entirely on what should be a wonderful joke about Brewster killing a man because he thought he looked like Boris Karloff. In its place we get a gravestone inscribed with Cary Grant's real name, Archie Leach, which really isn't in the same class.

Karloff's part is taken by Raymond Massey who I've seen once before, as the lead in Things to Come, a surprisingly good science fiction work based on the thoughtful HG Wells novel. Massey does well here in Karloff's role without trying too hard to be Karloff. I haven't seen Priscilla Lane before at all but she is a bouncy gem of a young lady as Cary Grant's new wife. Peter Lorre I do know well. He is always a joy and he's wonderful here as Jonathan Brewster's tormented sidekick, Dr Einstein. Whenever I see him in a film, he stands out in my mind while watching and remains in my memory looking back. He was superb in small supporting roles in classics like Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, but still better when taking the lead in films like Mad Love, which is one of my favourite films and one that truly deserves to be in this Top 250 list.

And then there's Cary Grant, who is one of the major Hollywood leading men but also one who has eluded me often. I may not have seen much Jimmy Stewart in my time, but I've seen even less Cary Grant. I remember him well from Operation Petticoat, an excellent wartime comedy which paired him up with Tony Curtis and a pink submarine, but that could well be the only place I've seen him. That sad state of affairs will get rectified shortly, at least, as he's a major presence on this list, featuring no less than six times.

All of these great names who I've seen so rarely highlight admirably just how much I need to work through this project. Above Raymond Massey and Priscilla Lane and Cary Grant though, my biggest cinematic gap here is director Frank Capra. As this is my first Capra, I honestly can't say how much of the success of Arsenic and Old Lace has to do with him. After all, given the quality of both the script and the cast, it would seem difficult to fail and any competent director would have probably done as well.

However this was far from being his only classic. There are no less than four of them in the Top 250, It Happened One Night, Mr Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life being the other three, and many of the rest are supposedly just as good. It Happened One Night holds the honour of being the first film to win all of the top five Academy Awards, and It's a Wonderful Life is one of the most widely loved films ever made. From what I've read it would seem that the three Best Director Oscars that he won for himself were well deserved, and highlight just how dominant he was as a director back in his day. In fact his name even lent itself to a genre, Capra-corn, which was used in jest to describe how often his plots dealt with Everyman winning through in a world that couldn't understand him. I'm very much looking forward to catching up with more representative examples of his work.

In the meantime I enjoyed what he did with Arsenic and Old Lace very much, and I can agree with Anne Sharp, author of Walking the Shark: A Peter Lorre Book, who describes it as the best Hallowe'en movie ever made. I'll try to watch it again next Hallowe'en. So should you.

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