Film Review - Arsenic and Old Lace Film Review

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House review of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

In the just-over-a-decade from 1934 to 1946, Frank Capra hit his stride. The movies in that era were It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Not all of these films were immediately successful (the stories of It’s a Wonderful Life’s initial failure are now Hollywood legends), but each of them had at its heart an idealism, a basic kindness and spirit of joy. When Capra’s worldview is combined with some of the best actors of the era (Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and James Stewart to name a few), the movies have staying power and endurance beyond many others of their time or ours.

Among the movies listed above, Arsenic and Old Lace stands out as a bit of an odd duck. Like You Can’t Take It With You, it was adapted from a stage play, and in fact it presents itself very much like a filmed play. Capra doesn’t choose to take the cinematic liberty of filming at multiple locations just because he can; instead he focuses most of the action within a genteel old Brooklyn house, and in the relationships between the characters. This is why a story about a family who has collectively murdered two dozen innocent people is actually a comedy.

Cary Grant stars as Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic and confirmed bachelor who falls for the minister’s daughter who lives next door to his aunts in Brooklyn. They get married in the first scene by a justice of the peace, then stop by Brooklyn so that he can tell his elderly aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) about the marriage, and so that she can pack for their honeymoon to Niagara Falls.

Once they reach Brooklyn, a few things become obvious to the viewer. One is that Mortimer dearly loves his aunts, who apparently raised him and his two brothers, Jonathan and Teddy. The other is that Teddy is delusional, and thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, but he’s harmless and in fact is a great help and comfort to his aunts. There is some plot point talk about having Teddy committed to an asylum, but nobody sees any rush about it. There’s also some remembering about what a horrible child Jonathan was, and how he’s been gone for twenty years.

One of the best scenes in the film is the one where Mortimer discovers, quite by accident, that there is a dead body in the window seat. He reveals this shocking fact to his aunts, who serenely inform him that the dead man is one of their gentlemen, the twelfth such poor soul they have ministered to by taking him out of this life by means of poisoned elderberry wine. Cary Grant’s facial expressions and physical reactions are priceless and some of the best in his career. For some reason the plot never quite explains, Mortimer decides that the best way to deal with his aunts’ pastime of murdering lonely gentlemen and burying them in the cellar is to have his brother Teddy committed to the asylum immediately.

In the midst of this family crisis, the long-lost Jonathan returns home, accompanied by sidekick Dr. Herman Einstein, played with a sort of tortured humor by Peter Lorre. Jonathan has lived up to the promise he showed as a child and has become a psychopathic criminal with no qualms about murdering anyone who gets in his way, including his brother and aunts. And Jonathan also brings a dead body with him, so that for a while, there is a shuffling of bodies between the window seat and the graves dug in the basement, causing the aunts to be terribly indignant that they are expected to read services over a complete stranger.

Through a series of unlikely slapstick coincidences, the bad guys are caught, the aunts decide to commit themselves voluntarily, and Mortimer returns to his bride secure in the knowledge that he is adopted and therefore not likely to inherit the insanity that “practically gallops” through his family.

The emotional linchpin of the film is the affection that Mortimer feels for his aunts, and Capra makes this clear at every point: Grant’s frustration at their inability to understand that killing people is wrong wars with his desire to protect them from themselves and the consequences of their actions. The film isn’t without some serious problems—the ending is too easy and belies the seriousness of the situation, Mortimer’s attempts to get Teddy committed when it’s the aunts who are murdering people don’t make sense and are never explained, and the scenes in the middle with Jonathan and Dr. Einstein are too dark and pull the mood of the movie down so far it never quite recovers, so that Grant’s slapstick approach becomes almost clownish in the second half. It’s not that Capra never confronts darkness, but it’s usually the inner darkness of crushed idealism or apparent futility that his characters have to face, not murderous relatives.

Still, none of that matters very much while you’re watching it. Cary Grant is extraordinary both as a comedian and as an actor, Hull and Adair are perfectly charming and believable as the aunts whose only motivation is ever kindness and compassion. Most importantly, Frank Capra knows where the heart of the film is, and keeps it there. It’s best to watch it knowing full well that the scenario is unlikely, the plot is full of holes, but it’s fun to watch and laugh with anyway.