On Arsenic and Old Lace
On September 1, 1944, Frank Capra's film "Arsenic and Old Lace" premiered in New York. However, the filming had been completed three years earlier.
The background of this film is as follows. In 1917, in the United States, a trial was held over a certain Amy Duggan Archer-Gilligan. This lady first worked as a teacher, then as a nurse, but then, having bought the estate, opened a nursing home on its basis. During the period from 1909 to 1916, more than 60 residents of this nursing home died under suspicious circumstances. As a result of the investigation, it was found that most of them were poisoned either by arsenic or strychnine. At the same time, shortly before their deaths, they executed a will in favor of Amy Archer-Gilligan. And sometimes she wrote these wills herself. In short, the prototype of the modern, recognized legal, real estate business, based on contracts of life annuity.
The court sentenced Amy Archer-Gilligan to the death penalty, then replaced the death sentence with life imprisonment, and then completely placed her in a psychiatric hospital. Where she lived till almost 90 years.
On the basis of this “funny” story in 1939 a comedy play was written by a German immigrant Joseph Kesselring which was staged on Broadway in 1941. Even then, Capra had the idea to film this play, which he did, but while the theatrical production was popular with the audience, he could not release the film on the screen.
For three years, this fun play, based on the story of a serial killer, amused and delighted the American public. During this time, about one and a half thousand performances took place, almost constantly with a full house. And finally, in 1944, the play was removed from the stage, and Capra received the long-awaited opportunity to present his work to moviegoers.
However, some categories of viewers were able to watch this comedy before the bulk of moviegoers. In particular, Frank Capra drew attention to the fact that, while in London in 1943, he heard American and British soldiers repeating lines and clearly imitating the manners of a character in his film named Teddy "Roosevelt" Brewster, from which he concluded, that they have already seen the film. Indeed, he later found out that Jack L. Warner handed the picture over to the military a year before it was to be released to the general public. In order to increase morale, so to speak.
By the way, Frank Capra was in London due to the fact that in 1941 he was drafted into the US Army Signal Corps. In connection with the filming, he was given a reprieve, but since January 1942, due to the completion of filming, he was in military service.
The audience received this "black comedy" with enthusiasm. Most film critics responded with laudations. Although some reviews were ambiguous. So, for example, the newspaper The New York Times the day after the premiere, describing the film as "good macabre fun" wrote: "As it stands, "Arsenic and Old Lace" offers a large number of laughs and some genuine melodramatic thrills along with some cut-rate hokum. If you can be comfortable through the latter, the former will furnish a fair-to-middling reward." - The New York Times Sept. 2, 1944
Tellingly, not only the American critics of the middle of the last century were enthusiastic about this film by Frank Capra. Modern critics, including Russian ones, are equally enthusiastic about this film. For example, Alex Exler wrote in a 2008 review that this "comedy is really cool and, oddly enough, it still looks just fine. Moreover, this old style and old approach is precisely the main charm - because now it is not filming! ... I watched this comedy with great pleasure and I must say that it looks great now.The style is slightly unusual, but leaves an excellent aftertaste, and after watching you begin to regret that nowadays they do not shoot like that. Comedies are passive dummies. Even in a year or two, no one will watch them, let alone return to viewing in fifty or sixty years."
The film has not been nominated for any cinematic award, either in the United States or abroad. However, this is understandable: after all, the Second World War was raging. But based on audience ratings - 69% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film 8 or higher ratings - the film's rating according to FilmGourmand was 7.986, which allowed the film to take 726th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
