Arsenic and lace cap

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Movie
German title Arsenic and lace cap
Original title Arsenic and Old Lace
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1944
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Frank Capra
script Julius J. Epstein
Philip G. Epstein
production Frank Capra
Jack L. Warner
music Max Steiner
camera Sol Polito
cut Daniel Mandell
occupation
synchronization

Arsenic and Old Lace (Original title: Arsenic and Old Lace ) is an American movie from 1941, which, however, only in 1944 was performed. Directed by Frank Capra .

The comedy film, enriched with black humor, is based on the play of the same name by Joseph Kesselring and was adapted by the screenwriter Julius J. Epstein . The success of the stage version on Broadway delayed the premiere of the film until 1944, because the producers had contractually agreed to wait until after the play was canceled on Broadway before the film was evaluated.

Cary Grant plays the writer Mortimer Brewster. Shortly after his wedding, he discovered that his two aunts - two lovable old ladies, portrayed by Josephine Hull and Jean Adair  - literally have some corpses in the cellar. John Alexander can be seen as Brewster's insane brother, Teddy. Hull, Adair and Alexander were engaged in these roles as early as 1941 when the play was premiered.

action

Abby and Martha Brewster are two lovable old ladies who couldn't give a man a head. Her nephew, the theater critic Mortimer, is firmly convinced of this. But when he returned from the registry office to the house on the day of his wedding with the pastor's daughter Elaine to report on the successful marriage and to say goodbye before the imminent honeymoon , he made a horrific discovery there: there was a corpse in the chest by the window hidden. Mortimer confronts the aunts and learns that, disguised as renting rooms, they lure old lonely men into their house out of pity and kill them with a mixture of wine and the poisons arsenic , strychnine and potassium cyanide to "bring them closer to God" . To get rid of the corpses, they use Mortimer's mentally ill, personality-disturbed brother Teddy. Teddy thinks he is President Theodore Roosevelt and is known in the neighborhood and by the police as a troublemaker because he regularly blows his trumpet loudly to attack in the course of his delusions. It's easy for the aunts to let the unsuspecting teddy bear dig graves in the basement by making him believe he's digging the Panama Canal . The murdered pass them off to him as victims of yellow fever , thus prompting Teddy to bury them quickly to prevent the disease from spreading.

When Mortimer learns of these practices, he is shocked, but does not want to turn his family over to the police. Instead, he thinks he can solve the problem by initiating the admission of his brother Teddy to a mental hospital as a first step . In order to overcome the necessary bureaucratic hurdles, he leaves the house, not without forbidding his aunts to let more strangers into the house or even to murder them (after they almost murdered an old man again if Mortimer did not prevent it at the last moment would have). In the meantime, while Teddy is once again digging the supposed Panama Canal in the cellar, Mortimer's long-lost brother Jonathan Brewster returns to the house, the black sheep of the family. Jonathan is a police wanted serial killer . Together with his accomplice Dr. He wants to go into hiding with Einstein in his aunts' house and secretly get rid of the last murder victim he has brought with him. The criminals soon learned of Teddy's excavation activities in the basement and smelled their chance to dispose of the body conveniently in the basement.

In order to be able to do this unnoticed, Jonathan intimidates the aunts so much that they retreat to the upper floor. He succeeds in this not least because of his numerous operations by Dr. Einstein's disfigured, scary face, which in the course of the film reminds all other characters of Frankenstein's monster . When Mortimer returns to the house, he meets Jonathan and his accomplices to his annoyance. When Mortimer discovers Jonathan's dead body, he threatens Jonathan and his accomplice with betraying them to the police if they don't disappear immediately. However, the two criminals have already discovered that they are not the only ones who want to make a corpse disappear in the basement, and can therefore force Mortimer to give up this idea. Mortimer and Jonathan's mutual dislike escalates the situation until Jonathan finally decides to kill Mortimer, for which he ties and gags him.

During the course of the action, the local police, who kept dropping by for various trivial items, did not notice Mortimer's plight. Rather, the simple-minded Officer O'Hara is interested in showing the theater critic his self-written, terribly bad play and asking for his opinion. When Jonathan gives Mortimer's bondage as a rehearsal of a new play, which at first appears credible because of Mortimer's profession as a theater critic, O'Hara believes the felon. When O'Hara calls Jonathan Frankenstein, he gets angry and a violent fight breaks out between him and the three patrol officers. Only when Police Commissioner Rooney shows up in person is Jonathan recognized as the wanted serial killer and arrested.

Although the corpses of all family members except Mortimer are brought up in the course of the plot, the meanwhile freed Mortimer manages to show that his relatives are insane and thus prevent an inspection of the cellar. He manages that not only Teddy but also his two aunts are admitted to the sanatorium. Dr. As a doctor, Einstein signs the aunts' instructions and can then flee. Elaine, who lives across from her aunts with her father, got angry at her new husband that evening because he couldn't go on his honeymoon and repeatedly behaved very dismissively towards her. She finds the corpses in the cellar, and Mortimer can only with difficulty prevent her from telling the police by kissing them hard. Most recently, Mortimer learns from his aunts that he was adopted as a child and therefore does not have to fear that he has inherited the madness of his relatives. He can now go on a honeymoon with his wife.

background

The film is based on the screenwriter adapted Julius J. Epstein eponymous play Arsenic and Old Lace playwright Joseph Kesselring . Kesselring was inspired by the murders attributed to Amy Archer-Gilligan .

The play had its Broadway premiere on January 10, 1941 at the Fulton Theater and was there 1,444 times. The last curtain fell on June 17, 1944. Therefore, the film premiere could not take place until September 1, 1944 in the Manhattan Strand Theater; The film was shown in cinemas throughout the US from September 23, 1944. That was how long Warner Bros. had contractually agreed to wait before the premiere of the film, which was also produced in 1941. As early as 1943, however, the film was shown exclusively to US troops stationed abroad.

Boris Karloff played Jonathan Brewster in the play. Karloff was also the producer and financier of the play. In the film, however, Karloff's role was played by Raymond Massey . This was purposely made up to resemble Karloff. In the English original of the film as well as in the play, there is a central gag that both the aunts and Mortimer say that Jonathan reminds them of Boris Karloff. In the German dubbing it became Frankenstein's monster .

Director Capra first asked Bob Hope , Jack Benny and Ronald Reagan about the role of Mortimer Brewster . Bob Hope, for example, couldn't get out of his Paramount contract. It wasn't until all three of them canceled that the leading role went to Cary Grant.

The leading actors Hull, Adair and Alexander were released from their Broadway engagements for just eight weeks, so the entire film was shot between October 20 and December 16, 1941.

In one scene, Mortimer sits pensively on a tombstone in the neighboring cemetery called Archie Leach , Cary Grant's real name.

The piece Teddy plays on the piano at the beginning of the film is the 3rd movement , also called Turkish March , entitled Alla Turca , from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 .

Cary Grant donated his entire film fee of $ 100,000 to the US War Relief Fund.

German version

The first German dubbing for theatrical release was made in 1957. In 1962 a new German version was made in the studios of Berliner Synchron GmbH , Berlin . The dialogue book came from Fritz A. Koeniger and the dialogue was directed by Klaus von Wahl . This version also received a completely new, partly animated opening credits in German. All film images with English texts were also replaced by still images with German-speaking counterparts. Since then this second version has mostly been shown. However, both dubbed versions are included on the DVD of the film, released in 2004 . As can be seen when comparing the two dubbed versions on the DVD with the original version, a few short scenes have been cut out in both the 1957 and 1962 versions.

role actor Voice actor (theatrical version 1957) Voice actor (theatrical version 1962)
Mortimer Brewster Cary Grant Peter Pasetti Ottokar Runze
Elaine Harper (Brewster) Priscilla Lane Ingrid Pan Renate Küster
Abby Brewster Josephine Hull ? Elf tailors
Martha Brewster Jean Adair ? Ursula War
Jonathan Brewster Raymond Massey Klaus W. Krause Friedrich Joloff
Dr. Einstein Peter Lorre Wolfgang Buettner Helmut Ahner
Teddy Brewster John Alexander Werner Lieven Alexander Welbat
Sergeant Patrick O'Hara Jack Carson Niels Clausnitzer ?
Sgt.Brophy Edward McNamara Ernst Constantine Benno Hoffmann
Lt. Rooney James Gleason ? Hans Hessling
Dr. Gilchrist Chester Clute ? Paul Esser
taxi driver Garry Owen Erich Ebert Heinz Welzel
Reporters at the registry office Charles Lane ? Harry Wüstenhagen
Mr. Gibbs, old man Edward McWade ? Knut Hartwig

An audio film version produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk has existed for television broadcasts since 2003 . The speaker is Bernd Benecke.

reception

The editors of the Lexicon of International Films judge the film to be an "evergreen of black humor, enriched by Capra with macabre wit and imagination, whereby it achieves delicious effects from the contrast between petty bourgeois comfort and naked horror" .

The film "captivates with pointed dialogues and the clash of honest bourgeoisie with sheer horror" , can be read in the Heyne film dictionary. It is "a masterpiece of black humor."

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

DVD release

  • Arsenic and lace cap . Warner Home Video 2004 - this DVD contains both the US original theatrical version (approx. 113 minutes) and the German theatrical version from 1957 (approx. 113 minutes) as well as the second German dubbed version from 1962 (approx. 110 minutes).

literature

  • Joseph Kesselring : lace cap and arsenic. (Original title: Arsenic and Old Lace ). German by Annemarie Artinger. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1974
  • Dieter Krusche, Jürgen Labenski : Reclam's film guide. 7th edition, Reclam, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-15-010205-7 , p. 56

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jesse Leavenworth: 'Devil's Rooming House' Examines 'Arsenic And Old Lace' Killings , Hartford Courant, March 21, 2010, accessed December 4, 2015.
  2. ^ Arsenic and lace cap (1st version [1957]) in the German synchronous index ; Retrieved October 11, 2007
  3. ^ Arsenic and lace cap (2nd version [1962]) in the German synchronous index ; Retrieved October 11, 2007
  4. ↑ Arsenic and lace cap . Warner Home Video 2004
  5. ↑ Arsenic and lace cap in the Hörfilm database of Hörfilm e. V.
  6. ↑ Arsenic and lace cap. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used