Film
Bristol Film Festival: Arsenic and Old Lace
- Director
- Frank Capra
- Certificate
- PG
- Running Time
- 118 mins
Bristol’s very own Cary Grant enjoys a riot of double-takes in Frank Capra‘s hugely entertaining black comedy, adapted from a Broadway hit that originally starred Boris Karloff. He plays the nephew of oddball Brooklyn society spinster sisters the Brewsters (Jean Adair, Josephine Hull) who discovers that they’re in the habit of bumping off their gentlemen callers with their very special homemade elderberry wine. Number 30 in the American Film Institute’s list of the funniest American movies ever made, it’s justly acclaimed as a classic by just about everybody except the notoriously unreliable Time Out Film Guide, which continues to slate it as “weird, but not wonderful” with a “particularly horrible performance” by Grant. Trivia note: watch carefully in the scene where Grant is in the graveyard and you’ll see that one of the headstones reads ‘Archie Leach’ – his original name.
This Bristol Film Festival screening takes place in Averys Wine Cellar. The admission price includes a glass of sparkling wine before the film, with a wine tasting curated by the resident experts at Averys. Go here for tickets.
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