This is a thread about CASABLANCA because it is utterly awesome and the best black and white film ever.

WHAT AM I SAYING???

"This gun is pointed straight at your heart"

"That is my least vulnerable point"

Me: "Casablanca is on BBC2"
Dad:"We're not watching that old ..."
Me: "I've never seen it before"
Dad:"Now you have to see this film. It's a fantastic (endless monolog until the film starts...)"

I am still blown away by Casablanca. I think it's in my top 5. Ingrid Bergman is sex on legs on the movie, and she never shows more than an ankle. She never looked better.

"You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together . . . and blow. "

i have no idea what those mean.

blah blah blah, fucking see it.

youre not really a film critic are you.

henry miller otm too.

-- :| (...), January 5th, 2005.

Uhm... regular cheques would appear to say so.

Citizen Kane is a technical tour de force, but I don't get the same emotional hit that from it that I do Casablanca. I always end up with a tear or two at the end of the Curtiz movie, and Bogart's Rick is a more complex character than Welles' Kane. He's a guy broken in half through loss, something that touches virtually everyone and makes for a strong emotional core. The characters in Casablanca are really what makes it a classic. Finding a script, acting or characterisation like that is hard - whether today or whether almost sixty five years ago.

If you want a complex breakdown of Casablanca give me a paid book contract, which would be my third. Ta.

= you are saying you liked the movie, and nothing else. that is not good criticism.

Best colour film? The Godfather 1/2.

X^n post:
And the extremely sympathetic villian/rival played by Claude Rains in Notorious (after all, his mother is the real villian) is a much more interesting character than that goody-two-shoes Victor Laszlo.

Citizen Kane is a technical tour de force, but I don't get the same emotional hit that from it that I do Casablanca. I always end up with a tear or two at the end of the Curtiz movie, and Bogart's Rick is a more complex character than Welles' Kane. He's a guy broken in half through loss, something that touches virtually everyone and makes for a strong emotional core. The characters in Casablanca are really what makes it a classic. Finding a script, acting or characterisation like that is hard - whether today or whether almost sixty five years ago.

if you had time to write that then why you couldn't you have done so at the beginning? this board suffers from yours and others usual 'X is Y cos i say so' route, as does your reputation as a critic. i can't believe you get any satisfaction out of that. be surprised if anyone else does either. just some friendly advice from the amateur critics critic...

I have a love of classic Hollywood too though.

CC, perhaps you would prefer the feel-good remake starring Michael Richards, Citizen Kramer.

Actually my favorite output of those bald Epstein twins are the Hollywood novels of son and nephew Leslie.

it's honestly stupid imo

to someone who refused to watch (if that's what is meant by "don't watch") b&w movies i'd just tell them to rent sin city or some bullshit because that's probably the only b&w movie they'd like anyway, if they have that attitude

only if you dont take it at face value!

xp thats not what i meant by 'dont watch' - i mean, most people dont watch old movies

and that casablanca has an appeal, like alfred was saying, that the vast majority of movies of its era lack

anyway i think ice cream's "argument" was that old movie acting is theatrical and not natural so therefore it's lame. maybe those two points are true but it doesn't make those movies lame.

that the vast majority of movies in this era lack too xpost

hat casablanca has an appeal, like alfred was saying, that the vast majority of movies of its era lack

Well, no, that's not true. Its sheer ubiquity has contributed to its popularity too. The collected works of Howard Hawks and lots of film noir play well to the younger crowd.

i do too, & i think his -point- was that creates a distance b/w the film & the contemporary viewer which isnt so quite much present in casablanca - im not saying that a lot of this isnt because we've been 'told' its good, but i think a lot more people would be down for casablanca than say citizen kane, for the reasons alfred says - bogart + bergmann, etc, are kind of timeless in that movie

xps

because the vast majority of movies from any era are not that great, welcome to the world.

i love this movie. but cmon, its prominent place in the cultural firmament is due to a lot of management, not just its qualities. lots of movies have what casablanca has.

what a lot of them don't have is speed and economy, it's a very fast and breezy watch

xps

what a lot of them don't have is speed and economy, it's a very fast and breezy watch

this. it's also not a genre movie.

My Mam is totally obsessed with France and French in general and loves the French National Anthem, and one Christmas we were all watching this on tv, Mam fast asleep as she usually is from about fifteen minutes into any movie, and when it gets to the Marseillaise bit, she kind of sleepwalk sings along, and not just lying there, sitting upright, eyes closed fist swaying top of her lungs. The second the song is over she's slumped right back as though nothing ever happened. It was pretty surreal.

it's also sentimental as fuck, which always sells.

ok so i guess my point is, in terms of prominent exceptions to a prominent idea (that old movies suck), casablancas one of the first places id point as an exception

yeah there are tons of more obscure film noir type movies that are 'cool' but not in the traditional your-dad-likes-it sense that casablanca is

I love that line about throwing beautiful women away, what is it?

i love this movie. i think it's great because it has pretty much everything you want to see in a movie and it packages it really really really well.

'You shouldn't throw away women like that, Rick; some day they may be scarce.'

xpost

SO FUNNY

yeah, the writing in this is way way up there

i hate to gush but there is something kind of magical about this movie, on the level of trying a handful of different things in one story and succeeding at all of them, the 'witty' characters are witty, the 'exciting' plot is exciting, the 'romance' really is romantic, the 'politics' are very politically real, etc.

Michael Curtiz on ILF

"If he gets a word in, it will be a major Italian victory."

I love how Paul Henreid looks and acts like a Ronald Colman smoothie yet is supposed to be a concentration camp (and torture!) survivor.

I love how Paul Henreid looks and acts like a Ronald Colman smoothie yet is supposed to be a concentration camp (and torture!) survivor.

Dude. Its Victor fucking Laszlo. He is The Man.

http://badattitudes.com/MT/paul_henreid.jpg

i get a quasi pre-echo of the manchurian candidate from him, like war and torture have hollowed him out and he's just a vessel for a set of ideas that he may not completely understand. the fact that he's a handsome eurosmoothie just makes him seem even more insane and unloveable.

and the terry lennox character from the long goodbye, too, someone very damaged. i always imagine lots of scars under the white suits.

wow

i get a quasi pre-echo of the manchurian candidate from him, like war and torture have hollowed him out and he's just a vessel for a set of ideas that he may not completely understand. the fact that he's a handsome eurosmoothie just makes him seem even more insane and unloveable.

This sounds so convincing that I want to believe it, but, unfortunately, Henreid's performance doesn't carry this weight (as Lawrence Harvey and Sinatra did in TMC). I always found it hard to believe that the audience is supposed to sympathize with Ingrid Bergman for foregoing a life with Reeee-ck for early burial alongside this mummy with a noble cause.

"Production Code requirements," blah blah blah.

I'd have to watch it again but that actually shifted my whole idea of that character about six feet to the left

I always found him a bit unfathomable, and vaguely unlikable.

xps fighting nazis, it's important.

...ha well we're REALLY supposed to believe the guy is the lynchpin in the entire global antifascist effort! still, not many movies sell 'sacrifice' convincingly.

It's enough that Curtiz and Henreid suggest that Lazlo (can one imagine calling him Victor even after knowing him for years?) is fully aware his wife is fooling around.

NOBODY gets what they WANT in the movie but the AUDIENCE gets to be FREE do you SEE

nice, brief analysis of play-to-script here:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/02/understanding-screenwriting-105-django-unchained-amour-banjo-on-my-knee-and-more/

The 1980 Charles Bronson/J. Lee Thompson remake Caboblanco is coming to blu. ILX only mentions it once, and only then because of a copy/paste of Jerry Goldsmith's IMDb resume. Anyone seen it? Bad, or hilari-bad?

@OscopeLabs
CASABLANCA, one of the greatest films of all time, came out 75 years ago today. What's your favorite quote?

@labuzamovies
"Sam, play that song about the guy and his sled, Rosebud!"

(btw gen release was actually 74y ago)

I haven't called it a criminally overrated hill of crap beans itt yet, so here goes

but everybody's having such a good time

imago, why do you hate fun?

(btw, I stand by my initial post itt.)

Orson Welles loved it -- sort of!

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/01/31/reluctant-enthusiast-orson-welles-casablanca/

It's a good film and all, but Casablanca wouldn't even make my Top 100 for B&W movies.

Funnily enough, I watched it on Monday for the first time in years. Not my favorite Bergman performance. I was struck this time by the ease with which Curtiz shoots the scene b/w Ilsa and Sam: it's rare to see a period film in which a beloved white woman talks casually to a black man. Also, Rick includes Sam in the champagne toast, even pours him a glass.

A couple of Curtiz films around '50 are similarly generous to characters played by the Afro-Puerto Rican actor Juano Hernandez: The Breaking Point and Young Man with a Horn.

Claude Rains's last-minute transformation from opportunistic jerk to hero is such a classic bit of old-school acting and charisma

sweetnessheart, what watch?

ten watch.

such much?

Huh, always thought it was "such watch?"

that's how i recall it

Rains drops
such watch

I believe it's such much watch

Super Borges just made an appearance on another thread.