Laughing All the Way to the Madhouse

On this day in 1944, one of my personal favorite old movies was released: Arsenic and Old Lace. Directed by the legendary Frank Capra of You Can’t Take It With You and It’s A Wonderful Life fame and starring the just as legendary Cary Grant, the movie is a screwball comedy for the ages.

The plot is complex, as screwball comedies often are. Mortimer Brewster (Grant) is drama critic and famous writer of an anti-marriage book, which has not stopped him from getting engaged to Elaine Harper – played by the beautiful Priscilla Lane. Naturally, that is the most normal thing about Mortimer’s life. Throughout the film, he has to deal with Uncle Teddy, who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and buries “yellow fever victims” in the basement. Add in Mortimer’s long lost, escapee prisoner brother (Raymond Massey) who has been styled by his accomplice to resemble Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, a pair of senile murderess old aunts, a reverend, a judge, a head of mental sanitarium, and half a dozen police officers, and you have a recipe for the chaos that quickly envelops Mortimer Brewster’s life.

Throughout the film, twists in the plot occur making for a darkly funny comedy. After watching the insane antics of the Brewster clan, you will definitely think better of your own family. The movie is based off of a play by the same name, written by German immigrant Joseph Kesselring. Though macabre in nature, the film is truly spectacular and carries on in the unbelievable yet hysterical tradition of comedies in its mode.

What saddens me is that it is rare to find a modern screwball comedy with such well done hilarity, suspension of disbelief, and absolutely superior storyline than those comedies of old. Nowadays, most comedies rely on bowel movement jokes or crude humor to get their laughs, choosing to push the boundaries more than try to write an actually intelligent joke. I’m all for pushing boundaries, but still, it would be nice to have my intelligence appreciated enough that contemporary Hollywood writers thought their audience was smart enough to work out a complex joke or humorous scenario. Often times, films that attempt to recapture the glory of the early screwballs fall terribly short and end up being laughed at for all the wrong reasons.

Classics like Arsenic and Old Lace can hardly go wrong, especially with an all-star pairing such as Capra and Grant. I honestly implore you to go check out Arsenic and Old Lace and I promise you will be barking mad with laughter at the end.