Arsenic and Old Lace

Frank Capra's point of departure is his own You Can't Take It with You, reconsidered after the onset of the war at the junction of screwball comedy and film noir. Capitulation of the bachelor, the drama critic (Cary Grant) who stops writing Mind Over Matrimony to wed the reverend's daughter (Priscilla Lane), the honeymoon is his reward for enduring Halloween with the Brooklyn clan. The old house comes equipped with a private graveyard in the cellar courtesy of the aunts (Josephine Hull, Jean Adair), firm believers in the charity of offing lonely geezers. (Arsenic, strychnine and cyanide in elderberry wine, "should have quite a kick.") The cousin (John Alexander) is Teddy Roosevelt in his own mind, bugle in hand to charge the battlefield of the living room staircase, a joke carried over to Dreyer's Ordet. "Darling, you wouldn't want to set up housekeeping in a padded cell." A cyclonic divertissement between combat documentaries, nothing like pure speed to release the filmmaker's scabrous streak. "A honey of a lunatic," the prodigal son (Raymond Massey) cut into a Karloff facsimile, baleful stitches accentuated by jack-o'-lantern lighting. (The Teutonic quack in tow is named "Einstein" and quivered by Peter Lorre.) The stage machinery is preserved for the swift run-through, the strategically darkened set allows for a silhouetted glimpse of the corpse inside the window seat. Anchoring the whirl of murderous pixies and wannabe playwrights is Grant's cavalcade of wide-eyed double takes and flustered whinnies, slowed down for a serene cigarette and capped by the whoop of bastardly freedom. "Please. This must be an artistic achievement." It certainly goes into The Addams Family, though not before passing through Hitchcock's Rope. With Edward Everett Horton, Jack Carson, James Gleason, John Ridgely, Edward McNamara, Grant Mitchell, and Gary Owen. In black and white.