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Disfigurement Minor 
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TITLE |
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) |
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DISABILITY |
Disfigurement Mental Schizophrenia? Psychopath |
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NOTES |
A comic
masterpiece with a pace and lack of sentimentality |
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not found in
some of Capra's other films (Pauline Kael calls it |
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Grant's
acting is stretched to his limit and then some as the sane nephew of
two old dears who invite tramps for tea and then kill them. They
also all share a brother who believes he is Theodore
Roosevelt. |
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Grant has
just got married when he discovers that his |
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respectable
aunts have a body in a chest under the window, |
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and that
they have killed 11 others. Caught between telling |
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the police
and not wanting his bride to know what an insane |
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family he
comes from he helps them cover up the murder. |
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But then on
the scene arrives his older brother, Jonathon, |
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(Massey) who
has escaped from gaol where he was held for |
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murder.
Accompanying him is Dr. Einstein (Lorre) who has |
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given him a
botched face-lift leaving Jonathon's face covered |
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in scars
making him look even more evil (one of the |
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policemen
involved says he looks like Boris Karloff who in fact played the
role in the stage play). |
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Running
through the whole is the theme of hereditary insanity |
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and Grant is
overjoyed when he discovers he was adopted. |
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His last
line "Darling, I'm a bastard" was cut by the censors. |
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One wonders
what they'd have done to Ibsen's "Ghosts". |
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Notes
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