Tea at Trianon: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

From Anthony Esolen at Word and Song:

The cast of this film is terrific. I’ve long thought that Cary Grant was the finest comic actor in Hollywood’s history, and he’s set up for pratfalls and misconstructions and confusion and hair-raising escapes. His poor fiancee (Priscilla Lane) can’t figure out what’s gone wrong with him all at once and why she can’t come into the house and what the heck is keeping him; and then you’ve got the inimitable good-guy slow-on-the-uptake cops (James Gleason and Jack Carson), and the befuddled chief of the lunatic asylum (Edward Everett Horton). Absolutely bonkers, everybody — and who’s the one person that looks and sounds as if he’s the one going nuts? Why, it’s Mortimer, the poor guy who just wants to get out of there and get married! (Read more.)