Movie Quote of the Day (‘Arthur,’ In Which Our Hero Meets the Really Ruthless Rich)

[Much to his discomfort, Arthur is meeting the father of his prospective fiancée.)

Burt Johnson [played by Stephen Elliott]: [smiling broadly] “When I was 11 years old, I KILLED a man.”

Arthur Bach [played by Dudley Moore]: “Well, when you're 11 you probably don't even know there's a law against that. Is Susan here?”

Burt [oblivious as he reminisces]: “I knew what I was doing. We were poor. He came into our house to steal our food.”

Arthur: “Well, he was asking for it.”

Burt: “I took a knife, and I killed him in the kitchen.”

Arthur [laughing nervously]: “You, uh... probably ate out that night, what with that man lying in your kitchen.”

Burt: “You seem to find humor in everything.”

Arthur [nervously]: “Yeah, sorry.”—Arthur (1981), written and directed by Steve Gordon

Even though Arthur has been out nearly 40 years now, I had only caught bits and pieces of it over the years until this summer, when I viewed it in its entirety on TCM. There are so many aspects of this comedy to savor, starting with the performances of Dudley Moore and Sir John Gielgud.

But what I think has been overlooked over time is the sheer toughness of Steve Gordon’s screenplay, which pulls off something pretty stunning: Despite its surface sunniness, a throwback to the Cinderella rom-coms that Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard or Claudette Colbert might have made in the Thirties, this film is under no illusions about the rich.  

Released in the first summer of the Reagan Administration, it offers a caution that the men who profited the most in this era would have no one’s interests but their own in mind. They may be different from you and me, as Scott Fitzgerald maintained, but they don't have more charm, just more money--and the muscle to maintain it.

Burt Johnson may be the most dramatic example of the abusive 1% here, but he’s not the only one. While visiting his grandmother, Martha, Arthur shares his feelings for Linda, the thief he had encountered while she was filching a necktie at a department store.

Yet Martha warns him bluntly that he will be disowned if he does not marry longtime rich girlfriend Susan: "We are ruthless people. Don't screw with us!"

Knowing that he is gravely ill, the butler Hobbes likewise warns about the dangers of defying his family, in some of the strongest lines of tough love ever delivered on film: “Poor drunks do not find love, Arthur. Poor drunks have very few teeth, they urinate outdoors, they freeze to death in summer. I can't bear to think of you that way."

When salvation does come nevertheless for Arthur, it comes in the only realistic scenario possible. In church, as Burt Johnson pummels Arthur for jilting his daughter, Martha simply can’t abide an outsider delivering punishment to any member of her family, no matter how wayward she might regard him. Coming to the aid of her grandson, after all, does not contradict what she said earlier. Notice the subject of her first sentence: We are ruthless people. 

So the rich turn on each other, only this time it comes through blows rather than lawsuits.