Was Casablanca one of the the first films with a truly modern sense of humor?

[astro]

Maybe I haven't seen enough old films but the knowing and somewhat world weary sarcastic attitudes of the supporting characters like the police chief and the market trader played by Claude Rains and Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca are the among first times I recall seeing this distinctly (to me) modern sense of humor in an older film. Citizen Kane would be the other.

Is Casablanca somewhat unique or pioneering in this fashion or am I just lacking knowledge of film history?

[astro]

Sigh...PIMF

Would a kindly mod please move this to the Cafe.

[Eve]

Good lord—watch some of the bitter, cynical, wise-cracking pre-Code films of 1929–34! Very modern. Hell, some of them are already postmodern!

[astro]

I forgot to out my other question in the OP.

Some of the reviews I have read say that the Claude Raines as the police chief is playing it somewhat swishy (I didn't get that vibe), but (and maybe I have the story confused it here) I thought the minor character of the slightly innocent, pretty young thing trying to get approvals for her and her young hubby to leave was (or had) done the deed (or something funky) with the Police Chief to get the papers she needed. Right... or not?


Casablanca Review

The richness of the supporting characters (Greenstreet as the corrupt club owner, Lorre as the sniveling cheat, Rains as the subtly homosexual police chief and minor characters like the young girl who will do anything to help her husband) set the moral stage for the decisions of the major characters.

[j.c.]

Not bashing, really, but it's not clear what you mean by "truly modern sense of humor" and can't think of anything that you could mean that remotely begs such a question. Excepting some of the fashion and the running time, there is nothing in Casablanca that is more modern than, oh, and half-dozen films from the turn of the century.

[astro]

Originally posted by j.c.
Not bashing, really, but it's not clear what you mean by "truly modern sense of humor" and can't think of anything that you could mean that remotely begs such a question. Excepting some of the fashion and the running time, there is nothing in Casablanca that is more modern than, oh, and half-dozen films from the turn of the century.

I agree it was poorly phrased and I suppose I'm grasping to convey the seemingly modern and corruptible sophistication of the "I'm shocked, shocked etc..." wry, knowing sarcasm of the film. Like I said I'm not a film student, but Casablanca seems to be to have a distinctly different tone to it's overall feel than other films of the period and it's Claude Raines performance as the police chief that (to me) mainly makes that difference.

[Captain Amazing]

Originally posted by astro
I agree it was poorly phrased and I suppose I'm grasping to convey the seemingly modern and corruptible sophistication of the "I'm shocked, shocked etc..." wry, knowing sarcasm of the film.

Well, you could call it film noir, and that can be a trait of film noir...but even so, Casablanca was hardly the first film noir out there.

[TheMemeWarrior]

Originally posted by Eve
Good lord—watch some of the bitter, cynical, wise-cracking pre-Code films of 1929–34! Very modern. Hell, some of them are already postmodern!

wholeheartedly agreed, but dont dismiss the rest of the 30s and 40s. I especially think The Lady Eve was very good a being cynical and funny while staying one step ahead of the code.

[Jackmannii]

I was reminded the other day* of a classic line in a Marx Brothers movie (Horsefeathers, 1932) when Chico said to a woman he was trying to con, "Who are you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?"

Maybe that's the watershed.







*it was mentioned in a N.Y. Times column on the former Iraqi Information Minister.

[matt_mcl]

Originally posted by astro
I forgot to out my other question in the OP.

Some of the reviews I have read say that the Claude Raines as the police chief is playing it somewhat swishy (I didn't get that vibe), but (and maybe I have the story confused it here) I thought the minor character of the slightly innocent, pretty young thing trying to get approvals for her and her young hubby to leave was (or had) done the deed (or something funky) with the Police Chief to get the papers she needed. Right... or not?

No, that's correct. The vibe you're referring to is his interaction with Rick ("Ricky is the sort of man who if I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick.") If this were Star Trek, I would call it "slashy."

[Kallisti]

"I thought the minor character of the slightly innocent, pretty young thing trying to get approvals for her and her young hubby to leave was (or had) done the deed (or something funky) with the Police Chief to get the papers she needed. Right... or not?"

No, she was going to, but Rick ruined Renault's fun by letting her husband win at the rigged roulette wheel, so she could pay with money instead.

[sailor]

>> as the subtly homosexual police chief

WTF ?? The guy is pretty much raping women and he is a homosexual? Is it because he's French? I don't get this.

[Julius Henry]

The "subtly homosexual police chief" idea comes, I believe, from the scene where Louis is describing Rick, and says something along the lines of "if I were a woman, I would be in love with Rick." A stretch, I think, but movie critics have never been known for their intellectual prowess.

[matt_mcl]

Well, that and the honeyed looks at "I'm going to miss you, Ricky," and "This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship," and various other junctures.

[matt_mcl]

And of course you realize liking da boys and liking da girls aren't mutually exclusive possibilities.

[sailor]

>> Ricky is the sort of man who if I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick."

I cannot see *any* hint of homosexuality in there. He says "if I were a woman" and "if I were not around". In other words, if he were still around as a man he would want the woman to go for him. The idea that there is any homosexuality there is ludicrous.

[Gaudere]

[Moderator Hat ON]

To the Cafe.

[Moderator Hat OFF]

[Exapno Mapcase]

Back to the OP. I'm amazed that Eve managed not to blow a gasket over this. Nice restraint on her part.

As some have already said, you can think that Casablanca is the first with this type of humor only if you've never seen a movie made earlier than 1942. For pete's sake, Bogart made The Maltese Falcon the year before. Doesn't that have the same attitude as Casablanca except more so?

C'mon, Eve, pull out the film history books and give the OP both barrels.

[astro]

Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase
Back to the OP. I'm amazed that Eve managed not to blow a gasket over this. Nice restraint on her part.

As some have already said, you can think that Casablanca is the first with this type of humor only if you've never seen a movie made earlier than 1942. For pete's sake, Bogart made The Maltese Falcon the year before. Doesn't that have the same attitude as Casablanca except more so?

C'mon, Eve, pull out the film history books and give the OP both barrels.

In my recollection of the Maltese Falcon it surely is as edgy and "film noirish" as it gets, but that's not really what I'm talking about, Casablanca is playfully corrupt and that's different.

In retrospect it appears clear to me I'm doing a poor job articulating a notion that appears to be singular to me with respect to the uniqueness of Casablanca's overall sensibility, and that tells me I'm probably wrong about it.

[Bryan Ekers]

Hat-check girl, looking at Mae West's jewelry: Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!
West: Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

That was Mae West's first movie line, from Night After Night, 1932. The line is over seventy years old and it still cracks me up.

Damn you, Hays!

[SolGrundy]

Now hang on a second, I don't think it's right to dismiss the OP so quickly, especially without giving some more concrete counter-examples. For most of us, the only pre-70's (or even pre-60's) movies we're exposed to are Hays Code ones, and then on top of that the ones that are deemed "family-friendly" enough to be shown repeatedly. It's a completely understandable, and common, misconception that movies of that time period really reflected people's values.

Look at The Public Enemy. Cagney comes off as more of a delinquent than a gangster, and the only non-grapefruit-related violence is of the "bang! you're dead!" variety. But every time I've seen it, it's been presented in a nostalgic context, as in "This is what people of the time really thought life as a gangster was like."

Anyway, I had the same reaction as the OP the first time I saw His Girl Friday. Here was a movie with an intelligent, competent, professional, divorced (!!) woman who could hold her own against any man but was still feminine. A movie with an "anti-hero" who's basically corrupt and spends most of the movie using his ties to try and get his ex-wife's fiance (and his mother!) arrested. A comedy that talks about the death penalty. Subtle in-jokes about the movie's stars. And it was made in 1940! Before I saw it, I had no idea that people even knew how to make movies like that back then.

[seriousart]

For what it's worth, I agree with astro. I've seen my fair share of movies from this era and this is one of the few that struck me as being really laugh-out-loud funny.

I've been slowly making progress on watching all of AFI's top 100 comedies. But while I appreciate most of them, some of the older ones don't make me laugh like the more contemporary ones do. I'd like to think I'm as sophisticated a viewer as the next guy, but some of the classics (Philadelphia Story, or His Girl Friday for instance) just don't make me laugh like I thought they would. I liked and appreciated them, but for sheer yuks, not so much.

Casablanca feels different. The humor feels, for lack of a better word, timeless to me and makes me laugh out loud like so many of my contemporary favorites. Maybe the writing is just a little sharper or the deliveries better timed, but whatever it is, it clearly stands out from the crowd.

As a disclaimer, I am also a big fan of Chaplain and Keaton's silent films, but Casablanca is so different in it's sensibilities it's hard to compare.

[seriousart]

For what it's worth, I agree with astro. I've seen my fair share of movies from this era and this is one of the few that struck me as being really laugh-out-loud funny.

I've been slowly making progress on watching all of AFI's top 100 comedies. But while I appreciate most of them, some of the older ones don't make me laugh like the more contemporary ones do. I'd like to think I'm as sophisticated a viewer as the next guy, but some of the classics (Philadelphia Story, or His Girl Friday for instance) just don't make me laugh like I thought they would. I liked and appreciated them, but for sheer yuks, not so much.

Casablanca feels different. The humor feels, for lack of a better word, timeless to me and makes me laugh out loud like so many of my contemporary favorites. Maybe the writing is just a little sharper or the deliveries better timed, but whatever it is, it clearly stands out from the crowd.

As a disclaimer, I am also a big fan of Chaplain and Keaton's silent films, but Casablanca is so different in it's sensibilities it's hard to compare.

[seriousart]

sorry, it said I had a connection failure so I hit reply again.

[bifar]

Perhaps it’s better to describe Claude Rains’ character as ‘camp’. He played quite a few campish characters in his time (eg Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood) and it was quite common for Hollywood films to have characters who displayed lots of camp characteristics to be otherwise completely heterosexual. It was a kind of complex sexual coding that wasn’t really examined at the time. And the relationship between Rains’ character and Rick is kinda slashy. But I tend to think that it’s a kind of metaphor for American-European relationships at the time, so their beautiful friendship at the end is beyond gender.

I think the OP has hit the nail on the head about a certain atmosphere in Casablanca, though, as has been noted, there were loads of films before it with a far more ‘modern’ sense of humour. I think Casablanca was one of the first films to directly address the cynicism of war from America’s point of view and it has a world-weariness that is unique. It is this kind of atmosphere that got translated into later film noirs although, because they were generally more serious and less philosophical, they don’t have the same humour.

IMHO, of course.

(BTW, can I just say that Claude Rains is my absolute favourite actor ever and I adore posting about him. He is wonderful in Casablanca but catch him in Mr Skeffington, The Invisible Man and Now, Voyager, too.)

[RealityChuck]

Sorry, but a lot of what may seem original in "Casablanca" shows up time and time again in earlier films.

In Top Hat and Swing Time, for instance, Helen Broderick makes plenty of cynical wisecracks that wouldn't be out of place in a movie today. Another Astaire/Rogers comedy (maybe Swing Time has sly references to homosexuality (especially through Edward Everett Horton, who was gay).

Horton: I'm a big hit with the girls.
Astaire: You??!!!!

Sexual references abound, both pre-code and post. They were just more subtle. There was the famous line in 42nd Street:

Anytime Annie. She only once said no, and then she didn't understand the question.

Less famous is the delightfully sly exchange in the film:

Chorus boy: Want to sit on my lap?
Chorus girl: I ain't no flagpole sitter.

A bit subtle (think about it), quite modern.

Granted, Casablanca had a lot of great lines (and Raines had many of them), but they weren't all that different in concept than many other previous films.

[Walloon]

Originally posted by sailor
WTF

No need to get vulgar.

[vl_mungo]

Originally posted by Jackmannii
I was reminded the other day* of a classic line in a Marx Brothers movie (Horsefeathers, 1932) when Chico said to a woman he was trying to con, "Who are you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?"

Maybe that's the watershed.







*it was mentioned in a N.Y. Times column on the former Iraqi Information Minister.

Yeah... watch some Marx Brothers, at least up to "Night at the Opera". Duck Soup has some of the most scathing political commentary and fall off of your chair humour that you will find anywhere.

[Mr. Frink]

To echo the thoughts of many others in this thread, I don't really see anything earthshattering in the "modern-ness" of Casablanca. I think many people have an assumption that films made back in the '30s & '40s were more quaint & naive than more recent films. I'll bet that people with this assumption haven't actually seen very many movies from this era. Check out 1931's The Front Page for instance.

And as for your other question, I'm also in the camp of those who feel there was a homosexual subtext to the relationship b/t Renault & Rick. Once you're aware of it, it's hard to see their interplay as anything but flirting. There are so many clues that point to a subtle homosexuality--certain lines of dialogue, mannerisms, his speech, etc.

In fact, one of my favorite moments is when the young Hungarian woman pleads with Rick to help her & her husband gain safe passage. She mentions that her husband has had to approach Renault directly, and Rick--knowing full well what this entails replies: "I see Renualt has become broad-minded"!!!! What a classic line!!!