# Casablanca and stupid young people **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 14, 2004, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359 "2004-01-14T05:35:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2004, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/41 "2004-01-14T22:24:21Z")
Getting back to the OP, my (now ex-) girlfriend is 38. She refuses to watch anything in B&W. It’s one of the reasons she’s a ex ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Will\_Repair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a698b9/32.png) [@Will\_Repair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Will_Repair)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2004, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/42 "2004-01-14T23:57:31Z")
> [@Ex Machina](#): > > There is a lot of substance to a movie like Casablanca - the script, the acting, the plot, the characters, the atmosphere, the humor… … and lighting. ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/43 "2004-01-15T01:18:03Z")
Interesting point about _Gone With the Wind_. I picked it up on VHS from the library a few weeks ago, thinking I really should watch it sometime, even though I’ve long suspected it’s not my sort of movie. When I sat down to watch it that opening on-screen narrative brought it home to me that I wasn’t in a mood to watch it, and I’ve never felt remotely nostalgic for life in the Deep South before the Civil War. I’ve also got to quote one of my favorite series of lines from _Casablanca_, if only because I’ve been tempted to use the last one more than once: _Sacha_ (the bartender): Yvonne, I love you! _Yvonne_: Give me another drink! _Rick_:Cut her off! _Sacha_: Yvonne, I love you! _Yvonne_: Give me another drink! _Rick_:Cut her off! _Yvonne_: Give me another drink! _Sacha_: Yvonne, I love you. But, he pays me! One of the basic rules of surviving in cynical times: no matter how much you love someone, never forget who pays your bills. 🙂 CJ ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/44 "2004-01-15T01:20:27Z")
OK, so I can’t quote movies to save my life. The second time around, Rick’s line should have been “_I said_, ‘Cut her off!’” :smack: It’s still a movie I thoroughly enjoy. CJ ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/45 "2004-01-15T01:43:00Z")
**Reverse** , just curious, but what black and white films _have_ you seen? Have you seen any of the movies mentioned by name in this thread? ---
**Author:** ![FilmGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@FilmGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FilmGeek)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/46 "2004-01-15T02:36:54Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > An angel named charlie, who wants to get his wings, shows George what would happen if he’d never been born, [nitpick]… the angel’s name is Clarence. [/nitpick] As for Reverse, have you seen The Man Who Wasn’t There? (2001, btw), Schindler’s List? Pi? How about ANYTHING by Hitchcock, especially Sabotage and Strangers on a Train? Or Sunset Boulevard? Double Indemnity? Are recent movies okay, because Pi most definitely does not have any your mentioned flaws. You’re equating a film stock with a stereotype of characters and plot. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/47 "2004-01-15T03:34:58Z")
> [@](#): > > I once didn’t talk to somebody for a week because after we watched Casablanca, she said it sucked because it was so cliched. “I mean, really - ‘we’ll always have Paris’? What a cheezy, over-used line THAT was!” Reminds me of the lady who saw _Hamlet_ and said, “Why, that play was nothing but a lot of quotations!” I just checked my DVD library, and there’s a lamentable dearth of Bogart. I need to get _Casablanca_, _The Big Sleep_, _The Maltese Falcon_, _Treasure of the Sierra Madre_ and _The African Queen_. Good stuff. I just wish Bogart could have played Sam Spade in some more movies. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/48 "2004-01-15T05:14:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Ilsa – yeah, I thought of Treblinka after making the post. But I was thinking along the lines of what the writers’ were thinking: a one-off-over-the-wall escape, like a prison break. I don’t think the writers knew exactly how ghastly the death camps were. Read Paul Brickhill’s book **The Great Escape** —which is a true story, and much better than any of the movies based on it. At one point, two of the POWs who escaped from Stalag Luft Drei were placed – temporarily – in a concentration camp. They were able to escape. In fact, escape was much easier than from the Luftwaffe prison, apparently because conditions were worse, and they weren’t expecting as much effort from dispirited citizens. They admitted that their crude unnel wouldn’t have lasted a week at the Stalag, but at thi camp they were able to run it shallow and unbraced. I’m sure it wasn’t the only case. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/49 "2004-01-15T05:22:11Z")
The Big Sleep is my favourite movie. I own hundreds of black and white films. But I have also seem a great many really bad “four star” black and white films rated as classics by the geeks at TV Guide. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/50 "2004-01-15T05:32:28Z")
**Baldwin** : Don’t forget _ **To Have and Have Not** _. My second-favourite Bogart film. ---
**Author:** ![zoogirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b9bd4f/32.png) [@zoogirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoogirl)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/51 "2004-01-15T06:59:12Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > **Baldwin** : Don’t forget _ **To Have and Have Not** _. My second-favourite Bogart film. My FIRST fav Bogie film! As much as I love Casablanca, I just have to go with Bacall over Bergman. Anyway, the two movies are practically joined at the hip, as far as cast and war-time intrigue go. I really lucked out with my first viewings of both of them. In the late Seventies, our local art-house, the Ridge, showed a lot of wonderful old films. I saw them as well as The African Queen, Citizen Kane, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and a triple feature of Metropolis, Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Great stuff! At the time I was in my late teens. From the age of about sixteen until well into my twenties I read everything I could get my hands on about the film industry pre 1950. I’m still very interested in the subject. (Hi **Eve**!) My teenagers will watch an old movie if it’s on, but I don’t think they’d go out of their way like I did at their age. I even sat through the whole of Birth of a Nation on the Knowledge Network with one hand on the TV airiel so I could get a clear enough picture! ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/52 "2004-01-15T15:07:30Z")
My stepson, who is 16, is taking a drama course in high school. Last fall they didn’t do an actual play, but instead decided to do a series of un-related scenes from their favorite movies. Someone had the good sense to pick “Casablanca,” which is a wonderful movie and one of my favories (my favorite being “The Maltese Falcon,” but I digress). Unfortunately, the kids (God bless them) have, well, I’ll be blunt, no talent and the results were bad. I mean REALLY bad - Leonard Pinth Garnell “Really Bad Playhouse” bad. So the kids are doing the a scene from Casablanca and the boy playing Rick says, “Hey, I’m looking at you, kid.” WTF? “Here’s looking at you, kid.” 5 words. Easy. One of the most often repeated bits of movie dialoge ever. I walked out, it was just too painful. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/53 "2004-01-15T15:34:46Z")
To prove how right you are **pkbites** I’ll tell you a true story. I was mainly brought up in Canberra but after school moved to Sydney. In the 1970s it probably took 4 hours to drive from Canberra to Sydney. One day I was rung by a friend in Canberra who noticed that _Casablanca_ was on late night Sydney TV. Could he and his wife come and watch it? Sure, mate why not? I had a VCR at this time but I don’t think I knew another person who owned one. Jan and his wife drove 4 hours to Sydney, watched _Casablanca_, accepted my videotape (luckily I’d gone VHS not Beta, so they still have it), jumped in their car and drove home for work the next day. Who would do that for _Dude Where’s My Car_ or _Zoolander_ or _Welcome To The Jungle_? ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/54 "2004-01-15T16:58:59Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > The Big Sleep is my favourite movie. I love this movie. I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen a few years back. A packed cinema all laughing with and enjoying a 50+ year old movie. What a great movie even if the plot is somewhat confusing 😉 "Have you met my daughter? - Yes, she tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up" 😃 and as for the Boggy / Bacall scene about racing 😉 WOW. ---
**Author:** ![mailman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@mailman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mailman)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/55 "2004-01-15T18:29:14Z")
We watched Casablanca a few months ago with our daughters, 8 and 10, who loved it. The younger one was spouting lines at us for the next few weeks–pretty funny. What I really appreciated this time around was how the comedic asides are layered over the darker story. My kids were laughing at the one-liners, and then drawn right back into the plot. I watched the kids watch the movie, and saw the movie in a whole new way myself. Nice. It’s not my favorite movie of all time, but I like it a lot. My one quibble is that the subtext of Jews trying to escape the Final Solution is so lightly hinted at–in the first scene at Rick’s I believe–that it’s nearly non-existent; I wish it had been spelled out a bit more clearly. Finally, somebody early in this thread made mention of an alternate ending. Is this on a new, re-re-re-release DVD or something? We watched it on a DVD from the library, but I didn’t see anything about alternate endings. What was the alternate ending? ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/56 "2004-01-15T18:41:15Z")
> [@mailman](#): > > My one quibble is that the subtext of Jews trying to escape the Final Solution is so lightly hinted at–in the first scene at Rick’s I believe–that it’s nearly non-existent; I wish it had been spelled out a bit more clearly. The film was released in 1942. No one (certainly not movie screen writers) had a clear idea about what was going on in Germany. [The History Place - Holocaust Timeline](http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html)☹ ---
**Author:** ![groo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@groo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/57 "2004-01-15T18:55:27Z")
> [@Ilsa\_Lund](#): > > Well, it’s imminently _watchable_, but it isn’t nearly the greatest movie ever made. Not close. I like it, obviously, but see my previous thread on the film. But you’re, like, um, it should be one of your favorite, I mean, does it just bring up bad memories or something? And why did you drop the Laszlo? ---
**Author:** ![mailman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@mailman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mailman)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/58 "2004-01-15T20:51:30Z")
> [@Tapioca Dextrin](#): > > The film was released in 1942. No one (certainly not movie screen writers) had a clear idea about what was going on in Germany. > > [The History Place - Holocaust Timeline](http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html)☹ That’s the party line, but in reality, EVERYBODY knew what the Nazis had been doing to the Jews in Germany for the previous decade. It didn’t take much of a leap to figure out what was going on now that war was being waged. The intelligentsia in America, which includes Hollywood screenwriters in those days, had a very good idea of what was going on. That’s why there is the veiled reference to Jews being desperate to get out of the Nazi clutches in the opening scene of the film. That’s also why Rick gives exit visas to the woman [vaguely Jewish in a Hollywoodish way] and her new husband early in the film. Rick knows, as do the filmmakers, that for some people it really is a matter of life or death to get hold of papers like this. Casablanca is a film about escaping the Holocaust. The characters know the situation, and the screenwriters knew too. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/59 "2004-01-15T20:59:23Z")
> [@Tapioca Dextrin](#): > > The film was released in 1942. No one (certainly not movie screen writers) had a clear idea about what was going on in Germany. From that website you linked: > [@](#): > > May 18, 1942 — The New York Times reports on an inside page that Nazis have machine-gunned over 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, 100,000 in Poland and twice as many in western Russia. > > June 30 and July 2 [1942] — The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis. The movie _Casablanca_ was in production 25 May 1942 — 3 August 1942, and released in November 1942. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359/60 "2004-01-15T22:59:38Z")
> [@groo](#): > > But you’re, like, um, it should be one of your favorite, I mean, does it just bring up bad memories or something? And why did you drop the Laszlo? I was playing _Ghost Recon_ just after having watched the film, and I named my mission “Ilsa\_Lund,” cause I had an image of Ingrid Bergman gunning down commandos with an M-16 screaming “Die you MOTHERFUCKERS!” The next day, after having lurked for several months, I needed to search for something and had to register. “Ilsa\_Lund” was the first thing that sprang to mind. 😕 :eek: 😃🆒 ;j [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casablanca-and-stupid-young-people/224359.md?page=4)