I think this is very insightful. I had my heart badly broken in college, and in the weeks afterward, unable to sleep, I first saw Casablanca on late-night TV. The movie burned itself into my heart. Bogie, standing on the railway platform in the rain, completely crushed – that connected with me in a way very few movies ever had. If I had seen it a different time in my life – as a teenager, or now as a happily married thirty-something – I’m sure I would have liked it; but that powerful, visceral reaction I get when I watch it would not be the same.
Slight hijack, but anyone interested in buying the movie should check out WB’s buy two get one free deal: http://www.warnervideo.com/two-disc/
I just purchased Casablanca, Amadeus, and will be sending off for Se7en. Tempted to buy another two as I wouldn’t mind Boogie Nights, Cookoo’s Nest, and Christmas Story…
When my first husband and I divorced, the only items that we argued over were the framed black and white stills from Casablanca.
“I was conceived while the movie was being filmed,” was my best argument.
Writing and acting styles change. A classic endures despite that.
As for watching a movie for the plot, Ebert says that what’s important is not what the movie is about, but how it is about what it’s about. Once I understood that, I was on my way to becoming a buff.
Three exceptions to Reverse’s B&W rules that immediately jumped to mind when I read her or his comments are Gilda, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Manhattan..
This phrase from someone else also puzzles me:
What is an over-Technicolored film? Examples?
From snpp.com, episode capsule for “Natural Born Kissers” (the one where Marge and Homer start having sex in semi-public):
Hey pkbites, I just wanted to say thanks. Casablanca has been buried on my NetFlix queue for quite some time, and your thread convinced me to bump it to the top. I watched it for the first time Sunday night, and loved it.
I definitly see why it’s a classic.
I agree with Skammer that to appreciate Casablanca (and It’s a Wonderful Life), you have to have an outlook that few teenagers have. Not many teenagers are aware of their own mortality, or have faced a sacrifice of the proportions Rick faced. While I loved both movies from the first time I saw them, I was in my mid-20s, and had undergone my share of disappointments. I don’t know whether I would have appreciated them earlier.
It’s not just young people though: I’ve met plenty of people my age (I’m 44) who don’t appreciate such movies. Lots of them seem to be practical-type men I work with (I’m an engineer) who consider any creative pursuit to be pretentious arty-fartsy stuff.
To all these wonderful B&W movies, I have to add a couple more of my favorites: *It Happened One Night * (Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert) and *His Girl Friday * (Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell).
My kids, who are 21 and 19, have the same reaction. They turn up their noses at these movies. I came close to convincing them to watch Casablanca over the holiday, but they ended up being too busy with their friends. Soon. Soon. I’ll win them over. I think they’re old enough now to have the maturity to appreciate these classics.
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.
And I wish he made more Fred C or Charlie Allnut movies.
Always liked him as the heavy better.Probably stems from the Petrified Forest.
Also thought Dick Powell did as much justice to Raymond Chandler in Murder My Sweet as Bogie in The Big Sleep.
Amazing considering where he came from in his previous movie roles.
And for any younguns’ who turn their noses at B&W check out Detour,esp.if you’re a fan of the Coen bros.They could have written that movie if they were alive back in the day.
I recently saw it on the big screen about a year ago, and I never really apperciated how funny it was until then. Bogy gets a lot of great lines, and the telephone conversation in his office was great.
“No, this isn’t a police station”.
When I was in college (going on twenty years ago now) I ran the student union film program. I went to one of those big state universities with lots of students, but a commuter college. We did a Bogart film festival and sold out every night.
I think there are some movies, some actors, some directors (and even some genres) that are so iconoclastic that they will always find audiences among college students and the youth of whatever “today” is - at least the ones looking for icons in the past. Hitchcock, James Dean, Bogart, Monroe, the Ms. Hepburns (Audrey and Katherine), Chaplin - genres like Science Fiction and Film Noir and Musicals.
What a movie like the Big Sleep has going for it is its level that it taps into that on so many levels…Raymond Chandler…Howard Hawks…Bogart and Bacall. Plus a snappy script.
And Casablanca…Casablanca taps into something different. A moment in WWII that was relevant then and is still so. Nobility in ordinary (and not so ordinary) humans. Ingrid Bergman at her most luminous. A film that rises above its sloppy creation (not that there is much sloppy about the end product, but they were writing it while they were filming). Many of the actors were Jews fleeing the Nazis (if they didn’t know exactly what was going on, they at least knew enough to flee Europe).