I think you just outlined the single most popular plot arc of about half of the movies made from about 1933 to1950.
Without a doubt one of the best movies ever made. I never get tired of watching it.
Tuckerfan writes:
> I’m sorry, but I just can’t see someone like Tom Cruise going up against Bogey
> and coming out a winner.
Bogart was not the highest-paid actor of that time:
> The top five Hollywood stars in 1940 are: Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Clark
> Gable, Gene Autry and Tyrone Power.
(From a website about this issue.)
Cruise is not considered by most critics or industry people to be one of the best actors around. He’s popular, but there are also a lot of people who actively dislike him. I suspect that fifty years from now he’ll be thought of like Mickey Rooney is now. People will wonder why Cruise was so popular in the 1990’s and 2000’s. He won’t have much of a cult. You should compare Bogart with the best actors of our time, not with the most popular ones.
I’m not so sure. Being pretty is more important today, and Bogie was certainly not pretty. 
How do Clark Gable and Bogart compare?
The biggest box office draw from 1939 to 1940- spanning two decades!
None of the five highest-paid actors in 1940 are now considered among the best actors of that year. I suppose that Spencer Tracy has some reputation, as does Tyrone Power. Clark Gable is considered not so great. Mickey Rooney is considered a rather limited actor. Gene Autry is hardly even remembered as an actor. Humphrey Bogart is now generally considered a much better actor than any of them. So if you want to compare Bogart with an actor today, to be fair you should compare him with whoever you consider to be the best actor today, not with Tom Cruise, who will probably be thought of in fifty years as a second-rate actor who was inexplicably popular in the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Bogie vs Harrison Ford.
My money’s on Bogie, whether or not he’s prepared.
How about Bogie vs. Jack Nicholson? I haven’t studied them or seen all their films, but it seems like they usually play the same type of character – jaded and cynical but with a sense of humor about themselves.
(Except for Jack in The Shining. Jack Torrance didn’t have a sense of humor.)
Fred C. Dobbs vs the Joker.
Jake Gitts vs Phillip Marlowe.
Here’s how great this movie is to me.
I purchased the Special Edition DVD and, since I’ve seen the film countless times, was listening to the commentary by Roger Ebert. Problem is, I kept tuning out the commentary to listen to the film in the background. Finally, I gave up and turned off the commentary and gave in.
Those work for me. Should they? (I live in fear of whooshes.)
Good grief. We’re talking about a movie here, dear.
Gitts from Chinatown and Marlowe from The Big Sleep are particularly appropriate, film noire (sp?) hard boiled private detectives.
Dobbs and the Joker start out as just Bonanza type “Good Bad guys” and become evil, although the Joker is more powerful. The Joker is betrayed on the other hand, and Dobbs is not.
Somebody help me out here.
No, we’re talking about watching a movie in a modern context, and how that context changes over time. Read critical writings about High Noon from each decade since it premiered to get a sense of such changes.
Interesting you should say that, but it did give that impression, didn’t it?
Columnist Jack Smith of the Los Angeles Times made a kind of hobby of writing about the making of Casablanca. He went to the trouble of getting copies of the scripts, shooting schedules, lighting plans and all the trappings that go into making a movie. The movie was shot mostly around Burbank, CA and on the Warner Bros. lot.
According to Smith, despite its appearance of careful planning the making of the movie was sort of haphazard. They just had a general story idea from the play Everybody Comes To Rick’s with a minimum screenplay, shot a whole bunch of scenes, including several endings, and handed the result to the editors.
And it turned out great.
There you go – that’s where the craftwork took place.
Not just “any” drinking song.
Yes, a favorite scene in a great movie.
And, as someone above mentioned, many of those refugees in Sam’s really were refugees. (Paul Henreid was Austrian; his full name was Paul Georg Julius Hernried Freiherr von Wassel-Waldingau.)
::::shudder::: glad i wasn’t drinking anything when i read that. two names that should never EVER be listed in the same sentence.
the couch jumper will be forgotten in 20 years, but the cult of bogey will go on and on.
casablanca was the first dvd i ever bought. just recently i bought the bogey and bacall set and watched them all in one sitting.
To me, a really great movie evening involves watching Casablanca, followed by Woody Allen’s Play it Again Sam. The first is from the golden age of Hollywood, and the second from the golden age of Woody.
You despise me, don’t you Rick?
If I gave you any thought l probably would…
We’ve been divorced two weeks and she’s dating a nazi!
Do not forget The Cheap Detective. 