I meant to get this started earlier this week, but I’m in the process of moving to a new apartment. That, and I’m drunk. (Ah, to alcohol- the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.)
Last week we watched Citizen Kane. For some people it was a struggle, for others it was a triumph, and for me it was merely in the way of Casablanca.
Thus, given that it’s Wednesday morning, I’ll propose watching Casablanca whenever you have a chance, joining the discussion at any point, and getting back on schedule with The Godfather for next Tuesday night.
I’ll watch the movie tonight and kick things off tomorrow morning. Here’s hoping we can get another good discussion on this movie.
Ok, I watched Casablanca. Great movie. I loved it. It was much better than Cats.
Can we all watch The Godfather now?
Ok, seriously, I did watch Casablanca. I just suck at getting a conversation started and thought I’d bump this up for anyone who can string a series of coherent thoughts together.
I haven’t watched Casablanca lately, but I’ve seen it enough times that it hardly matters.
This movie is just so much fun. Bogie, Ingrid Bergman, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains…what more could you ask for? (OK, I personally could ask for the 19 year old Lauren Bacall, but if we have to wait for To Have and Have Not to get Betty, then I can live with that.)
How many wonderfully quotable lines does this movie have? From Rains’ “I’m shocked, shocked…” to “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” it’s just wall-to-wall with memorable one-liners. The plot hangs together, the characters are believable, the bad guys are genuinely bad, and the likable ones turn out to be good, including the cynical Louie.
“It’s all the same old story,
a fight for love and glory…”
What really surprised me was the audience reaction to this movie, when I saw it on the big screen (back in '92 in Denver). It got LOTS of laughs - and all in the right places, too (not - ‘oh, look how silly they were back then’ kinds of laughs).
Favorite scene - the ‘dueling anthems’ section… great stuff. Brings tears to my eyes everytime I see it. I think it’s the obvious passion of Yvonne. Madeleine LeBeau, the actress who portrayed her, actually escaped Europe in the way described in the voice-over at the beginning of the film (the refugee trail to Lisbon). The scene meant much to her. (Plus, I think that she’s just as much of a babe as Ingrid Bergman.)
One of my favotrites - after Maltese Falcon (also starring Humphrey Bogart, with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre).
The movie has it all - humor, romance, drama, action, suspense, music. It really is a nearly perfect film. I’m glad that no one has ever tried to film a sequel - sort of a “what happened to Rick and Renault?”
“The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”
Cecil did a column, which can be found here: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_366a.html, discussing Humphrey Bogart’s salary. Being under contract, he made a flat amount per year, regardless of his output. In 1942, the year Casablanca was made, he got paid $114,125. That just makes the multi-million dollar salaries that today’s hacks get per picture all the more criminal.
Yes, I do love the anthems scene. Downright inspiring. But the heart of “Casablanca” is the love story, and I just hate Ilsa. That is interfering with my appreciation of the movie quite a lot.
Why do I hate Ilsa so much, you ask?
Because she seems to have so little power to act, to choose- she barely has a personality at all.
Hitchcock (if I remember right) talked about a ‘McGuffin,’ the object that is central to the plot- everyone wants it, chases it, fights over it- but isn’t in itself all that important. It might be the secret plans, or the rare sculpture, but which isn’t as important to the plot as you might think.
I’m sorry, but Ilsa comes off as a human McGuffin to me. She’s important only because of the two guys who want her, and it’s not up to her which one gets her. When she actually said, “You have to think for me,” I nearly threw my popcorn at the screen and yelled, “For pity’s sake, woman, grow a spine!”
I didn’t watch it, but I don’t need to–I own it on VHS and DVD and have seen it so many times I can discuss it from memory. lawoot is right about the anthem scene–it’s the turning point of the movie. When Victor tells the band to play “La Marseillaise,” and Rick gives them the nod, it determines the direction of the rest of the movie.
Even then, though, as many times as you’ve seen it, you can’t help but be stirred when Rick tells Renault to make out the letters of transit in Victor’s and Ilsa’s names. Bogie manages to keep the audience guessing, for the most part.
Casablanca is the movie that pokes a stick in the eye of the most extreme proponents of the auteur theory. It was movie-by-committee, and it stands up beautifully. A witty script, terrific performances, just enough plot to keep the momentum going, and love and self-sacrifice.
Damnit, I love this movie!! My favorite exchange:
Renault: What in heavens name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Renault: Waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
You know, it is interesting to compare last week’s movie Kane and Casablanca. Both are from the same era, yet where Kane is mainly an intellectual exercise, Casablanca is mostly an emotional one. That movie pushes all the right buttons.
Oh, plnnr, although not filmed, there was talk of a literary sequel to Casablanca a couple of years ago. I don’t know if anything came out of it. And has anybody seen/read the play from which Casablanca came from, Everybody goes to Rick’s ? If so, how different is it from the movie ?
“If someone loved you, very much, so that your happiness was the only thing that she wanted in the world, and she did a bad thing to make certain of it, could you forgive her?”
“Nobody ever loved me that much.”
I also like the dialog pdennison quotes. One line I’ve thought it would be fun to use is:
“I was informed you were the most beautiful coman to visit Casablanca. That was a gross understatement.”
At the time of Casablanca, there was talk of a film sequel entitled Brazzaville, but that didn’t pan out.
However, Michael Walsh did write As Time Goes By (Amazon.com link) in 1999, which is both a prequel (in flashback scenes) and a sequel. It’s good, but not great.
Phil - that exchange is one of my mom’s favorite bits of dialogue from the movie, too.
FQ - I have to agree with you about Ilsa. Bacall’s character in To Have and Have Not (basically a Casablanca remake with a happy ending) has a lot more zip to her. Can whistle, too.
I have always wondered what it ws like to watch this film in 1942. The film is basically about America getting out of it’s isolationist mood ‘I stick my neck out for nobody’ and into activily fighting the Nazis.
Interesting I just realized that a British guy says
‘When they come for me I hope you are more helpful.’
Then Rick says the neck line.
Ilsa is kind of a non-entity. Why do the men love her so much? She does sneak out at night over to the club to try and get the letters of transit so she must have some courage but they really don’t develop her enough.
My vote for the next film is Rear Window.
Zebra
We’re following AFI’s list of America’s 100 greatest movies. So The Godfather is next. (Yay!) Then I’ll have to suffer through Gone With the Wind in order to have an excuse to watch Lawrence of Arabia again.
Rear Window, at #42, is not quite a year away.
Now back to our regularly scheduled discussion…
I can’t even think of how to describe why or what I liked about the film. Casablanca is one of my all-time favorites, for all the reasons said above. The writing is crisp and witty, the plot moves along, and the acting is top notch.
BTW - that’s my favorite exchange in the film, too pld. I especially like Bogie’s deadpan, almost bored, delivery.
The only criticism I can think of is the flash back scenes with Rick and Ilsa are a bit overlong, but I guess necessary to show where the relationship was at when it abruptly ended.
It should be noted that part of the popularity of the film was that it neatly converged with real world events, namely the wartime conference between Roosevelt and Churchill in Casablanca in January 1943, just a month after the film opened in December 1942 (and this was back when movies opened gradually and in stages, which means most Americans knew about the meeting before they had a chance to see the film)
For me, this section is weak because Bogie, IMHO, doesn’t play “happy” very well. Compared to his riveting brooding and stoic intensity in the rest of the film, his smiling aren’t-we-in-love demeanor don’t strike me as convincing (I don’t think it was until African Queen that I bought his smile)
Of course, the letters of transit are the real McGuffin. Ilsa is important because she humanizes Victor as more than some plaster saint and she gives Rick a push in the right direction, making the risk he’s taking worth it to him. I do see your point, though, and most women I know who don’t like the film focus on that one line of hers. To each her own… (it still remains in my Desert Island Top 10 Favorites)
If you go to the studio museum as part of the Warner Bros. studio tour, you can see the Best Picture Oscar for the film, as well as some of the clothes and Dooley Wilson’s piano (which is really, really tiny–plus it’s not hard to tell Dooley couldn’t play a note in real life, if you bother to look). And as for Everybody Comes to Rick’s, IIRC, it was never actually produced as a play, although any similarities/differences are probably outlined in this book.
