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domino harvey wrote:Arsenic and Old Lace is one of those terrible films inexplicably beloved even by those who don't watch older films.

knives wrote:Arsenic and Old Lace
Ugg, I usually love Massey, but he's absolutely awful here. Every frame of the movie makes it clear that the play was superior and if not for a wonderful performance by Lorre I'd say this was entirely worthless. It's easily the worst feature that Capra ever did. I won't even bother talking about the other lackluster performances. Just watch The Boogie Man Will Get You instead.

knives wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2011 3:06 am I'm not sure how known this one is, but I whole heartily recommend Walter Lang's Star Dust which is a new twist for me on the A Star is Born story mold. Linda Darnell stars as a small town girl who forces her way into Hollywood via her natural charm. This is where the story becomes unique as she's never an Eve nor really broken down like in the proto type. Instead it plays out as a comedy on the bureaucracy of the studio system. The whole idea of training actors to become stars and developing personas for them seems like the biggest joke. No one is deliberately cruel or mean. In fact the whole lot of them are really swell, but they feed into the system which is a nasty piece of business. I think in it's own bizarre way this inevitable killing is more mean than having a bunch of back stabbers looking for an easy kill. At least there there are some defenses that can be utilized.

A large part in how this succeeds in tone is how perfect the performances are. There has to be a certain degree of caustic naivete present with everybody. You don't act like a bad intentionally, but success is predicated on bad behavior so when Darnell gets in a pissing match with the blond she can't even realize that's what she's doing. Roland Young, who really deserves to be better known, is an other case of stupid murder. He's this good willed and gentile Mephistopheles who breeds and molds these young women trying to make the next Garbo. He genuinely cares and sympathizes with these women, at least until the next group flies by his window. That only makes things worse for them though. I'm trying to describe it, but an example might do better. Remember in Hoop Dreams the scout who brings the two boys to the school? Young plays that exact villain, but is somehow even more deluded to his supposed good deeds for these women.

In it's own way it's frightening, yet the movie also captures why it's so alluring. Darnell never gets the bad mojo that lies in her wake with the cogs to stardom being her worst discomforts. It's light and fluffy for a strange, but ultimately rewarding little tale to tell. The film captures it's lead's ignorance perfectly in it's own tone so that the creepy and kooky things that I've been talking about don't seem so bad at first. Hope it seems only makes the poison worse. The experience is akin to a jolly pop song about suicide. You're rocking and having fun like it's a love song singing the words and not connecting their meaning. Only in this song the hints to the true meaning are sometimes too clear. A girl comes out of a room crying with a sad look, only to reveal that the best outcome is the one to happen. The film plays up the question just long enough though for the question of the other option and what it does to a person haunts only to make what comes next all the more nasty. If this is the happy side to stardom than it's not worth it.