Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Absurd comedy, when done correctly, can be a hilarious romp into a series of preposterous and improbable events. A prime example is Bringing Up Baby, a far-fetched tale of a man, a woman and her leopard. And while Cary Grant brought a lot to the straight man role in that film, when placed into the similarly absurd comedy of Arsenic and Old Lace, he’s left adrift.

This is because a good portion of the film does not employ the talents of the great, enigmatic and good looking Cary Grant. When you give the man top billing, he needs to be carrying your film. Just about every good scene in this film has Cary Grant and all the bad scenes have none of him.

The lack of Cary Grant’s screen presence also brings up another important issue: the lack of focus. It’s a film that lacks clear boundaries, brining in other stories, other characters and other threads of the plot on a whim, creating a tangled up mess of loosely related characters and events into one house.

Initially, the film starts off as a comedic farce as theater critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) secretly marries Elaine Harper (Pricilla Lane) even though it will garnish his reputation as an outspoken bachelor. From here, the film sets up a series of episodes where Mortimer attempts to conceal his wife from the public life.

But then the film switches gears into a morbid crime comedy. Turns out, Mortimer’s brother, Jonathan (Raymond Massey), is a notorious murder and he decides to visit home and dispose of the body of his latest victim. Problem is that the Brewster house already has another body on the premises that needs to be buried.

The initial lighthearted tone of the film jars with the more dark and sinister twist added to the film. Perhaps the improbable jump is a deliberate play into the absurd comedy, but it fails to be funny. The film certainly pokes fun at the sinister nature of Jonathan, yet it lacks the wit to make it hilarious.

And while the film is aware of how outlandish it is, there’s a vast disconnect between the absurdity and the humor. In one sequence, Cary Grant is gagged and tied up while he talks about poor fools get gagged and tied up in poorly written plays. The look he gives afterwards summarizes my feelings on the film.

Cary Grant directly looks at the audience, eyes wide as if to say “can you believe that just happened?” No, I can’t. I know you’re trying to be funny, but it’s too outlandish, too serious too sinister to be as funny as it wants to be. There certainly are the occasional funny moments, but overall, the film is as dry and dead as the bodies that everyone is trying to hide.