In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace is based on a hugely successful play of the same name by Joseph Kesselring, which ran for over three years on Broadway. In fact, the play’s success delayed the release of the movie, which was shot in 1941, because of a contract stipulation that it couldn’t be released until the Broadway production closed (a scenario later echoed with Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap). The play has been revived a few times in New York and London, and it’s a staple of school and community theater, but it feels safe to say that most people know this work through the movie, which is a fine example of how Hollywood used to bring popular stage hits to the masses.
In the interests of opening up the story and beefing up the romance plot, Capra begins with two added scenes: the first set at Ebbets Field, where a Dodgers game quickly descends into a brawl, the second in some crowded city office where handsome young couple Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) and Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane) are trying to get a marriage license without drawing the attention of what we’d now call paparazzi. These two scenes set up the many dualities to come: Brooklyn vs. “the United States proper,” old money vs. honest work, living in a shared reality vs. not, all leading up to that perennial favorite: appearance vs. reality.
The Brewster family comes from old stock and old money, but apart from Mortimer they’ve long since gone to seed. One brother (Teddy, played by John Alexander) thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt , another brother (Jonathan, played by Raymond Massey) is a serial killer, and so are the sisters Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair). You’d never guess any of this from looking at the Brewster home, however, which is the very picture of old-money gentility with a heavy dose of Victorian propriety. That’s why it comes as such a shock when Mortimer finds a body in the window seat, which is just the beginning of his discoveries: much of the story’s humor is based on the aggressively normal Mortimer trying to deal with the insanity swirling around him.
Most of Arsenic and Old Lace takes place in the Brewster home, and these scenes were shot in sequence, retaining a link to the stage production. Cinematographer Sol Polito gets in a few licks with expressive camera work, but overall this movie lives and dies by the actors and the script. Fortunately both are in good order. The screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein (who collectively won an Oscar for their Casablanca screenplay) preserves the madcap vibe of Kesselring’s play, while an able cast including three Broadway cast members (Hull, Adair, and Alexander) plus a whole slew of Hollywood stars, many of whom had substantial stage experience, delivers it admirably. This comedy is all about the timing, and few do it better than Grant, who got his start in the music hall. A few things don’t work as well as they do on stage, most notably Teddy charging up the stairs as if they were San Juan Hill, which brought down the house in the live production I saw. I guess for some things you just have to be in the room.
Given my interest in movie adaptations of stage plays, Arsenic and Old Lace is an obvious choice to review. Despite some attitudes that haven’t aged well (Mortimer’s behavior toward his fiancee comes immediately to mind), it’s also a movie for our times. In a world in which American leadership seems to have lost its mind, an absurdist black comedy full of social commentary that you can choose to see or not might be just the thing to sharpen your wits while also providing a welcome break from what may well continue to be a grim reality. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1153
Technical details: 118 min.; B&W; screen ratio 1.37:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD (1 disc).
Extras: audio commentary by Charles Dennis; 1952 radio adaptation featuring Boris Karloff; the film’s (surprisingly entertaining) trailer; illustrated booklet with essay by David Cairns.
Fun Fact: Boris Karloff played Jonathan Brewster in the stage production, providing the comic underpinning for the remark that, due to less-than-expert plastic surgery by Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre), he now “looks like Boris Karloff.” Actually, Raymond Massey looks more like Karloff auditioning for a less makeup-heavy version of Frankenstein’s monster, which goes to show you how closely he was identified with that role.
Parting Thought: The two beat cops introduced about six minutes in both have Irish names (Brophy and O’Hara; we will later meet Lt. Rooney). In the play, one of the cops was named “Klein” but apparently that was considered too Jewish for movie audiences (as opposed to New Yorkers, who know they’re part of the gorgeous international mosaic that is America). Is this type of censorship more insidious than the suppression of sexual behavior because it tends to pass unnoticed?
