Arsenic and old laces – Wikipedia

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Arsenic and old lace ( Arsenic and Old Lace ) is a 1944 film directed by Frank Capra and based on the comedy of the same name by Joseph Kesselring. The script has been adapted for the cinema by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein.

It was included in the AFI’s 100 Years list … 100 Laughs, as one of the best films of the American comedy.

The writer Mortimer Brewster, a former convinced bachelor, returns home from the aunts Abby and Martha to tell about his fresh marriage with Elaine Harper, but he discovers that the two lovable and elderly gyste “help” those who affectionately call the “lords” that is. tenants to whom the rooms rented, to leave their lives with a smile on the lips, offering them some sambuco wine correct with a mixture of poisons, and which bury them in Panama Canal , the cellar of the house where Mortimer’s brother, Teddy (who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt), continues and continuously covers new holes to conceal the corpses, now reached the number of twelve.

Determined to put an end to the madness of the two aunts and brother, Mortimer tries to make Teddy internal in a nursing home, but his plans are shocked by the arrival of the other brother Jonathan, a heinous pluriomicida (resembling Boris Karloff actor ) whose features have been ruined following numerous plastic surgery suffered. Jonathan, who is accompanied by his trusted friend, Dr. Einstein, also has the corpse of Mr. SPENALZO whose to get rid of and tries to bury it in the cellar, and then try to eliminate Mortimer.

By now believed the last heir of a family of crazy maniacs, Mortimer tries to remove Elaine from himself for fear of hurting her, but shortly before the hospitalization of Teddy in the psychiatric clinic, the two aunts (who intend to follow Teddy in the house of Cura) reveal that in reality Mortimer is the illegitimate son of a maid who had gone to work in the Brewster home just before he was born.
Full of happiness for the discovery, Mortimer announces the news to the wife and driver of the taxi outside the house, who, incredulous, replies sardonic: “And I am not a driver, I am a coffee maker!”.

Arsenic and old lace It is the faithful adaptation of a great theatrical success of Broadway by Joseph Kesselring. Filmed in 1941, suspended following the entrance to the war of the United States, he was able to be presented to the public only in 1944, when the comedy’s Broadway representations ended. Capra, keeping the unit of place and part of the theatrical cast, set the whole film in the Brewster house, making use of a scenography that reconstructs, in a few meters of study, the perspective of the cemetery, the villa, the Brooklyn bridge and the background of Manhattan. The film is very far from the ideological concerns of Frank Capra, but reveals his extraordinary ability to direct the actors [ without source ] , above all a very triggered Cary Grant and the two “terrifying” characters, Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) and the psychopath Jonathan (so the director wanted Boris Karloff, who played the character in the theatrical comedy) but who replaced with Raymond Massey, rigged With a make -up inspired by Karloff in the film Frankenstein (1931).

He is one of the few films in which Cary Grant is not dubbed by his most assiduous and lasting voice actor, Gualtiero De Angelis. The Italian version presents a short sequence dubbed by rumors completely different from the rest of the film. The film was released on Italian screens in 1946. [first]

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  1. ^ Mario Guidorizzi (edited by), Hollywood 1930-1959: the films, the serials, the Oscars, the voice actors, the posters , Verona, Mazziana Editor, 1986, isbn 88-85073-08-5.
  • Fernaldo di Giammatteo, Dictionary of American cinema. From Griffith to Tarantino, all the films that made the history of Hollywood , Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1996, ISBN 88-359-4109-1.

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