Posted on 03/06/2017 8:47:12 PM PST by nickcarraway
The End of a Beautiful Friendship
Why America fell for Casablanca, and why the classic film is losing its hold on movie lovers.
In 1957, the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square kicked off its Humphrey Bogart series with the 1942 classic Casablanca.* Bogart himself had just died, and the response to the film was rapturous. By the fourth or fifth screening, “the audience began to chant the lines,” the theater’s then-manager told Noah Isenberg, author of We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie. It was the dawn of the art-house era, the moment when film was beginning to be taken seriously as an art form by college students who flocked to theaters like the Brattle to see the work of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Casablanca didn’t exactly rank among those auteurist masterpieces—even the movie’s most ardent champions have always described Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz and credited to screenwriters Howard Koch and Julius and Philip Epstein, as the quintessential product of the Hollywood studio system. But it nevertheless became a cult object for a generation or two of cinephiles, particularly young men, over the next several decades.
Allen Felix, the fictional film-critic hero of Play It Again, Sam, Woody Allen’s 1969 play and 1972 film, epitomizes that breed of young man. The film begins with the closing scene of Casablanca, in which Rick Blaine (Bogart) nobly parts from Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) on a misty North African tarmac. Then the camera cuts to Woody Allen’s rapt face, his mouth gaping, as he inhales the movie’s glossy, yearning romance. Felix lives in an apartment wallpapered with movie posters, most of them featuring Bogart, and as he bumbles his way through a largely unsuccessful love life, the phantom of the movie star in his trademark
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
For later
Once the SHTF, those names were all of interest to the Alien Property Custodian.
I was never a fan...of the movie or Bogart.
But then my son says I have no taste in movies since I hate The Matrix and Star Wars...
It's hard to think of a remake of a classic film that improves on the original. Some things are so well done that it's futile to try to top them. Even if the modern production is technically as good, the viewer still scratches his head and says "why?"
Just checked and Netflix actually has it available for streaming. Thanks for the tip!
The “hero” (Rick) fought for the communists in Spain. Along with other movies (Sahara/1943, Guns of Navarrone/1961), “Casablanca” wanted to maintain the myth that Franco was the Devil and he’d beaten the “good guys”. Casablanca and Sahara also maintained the illusion that the US and France were allies; the hundreds of US & British dead from the invasion of North Africa would disagree.
This movie should be consigned to the dustbin of history as the wartime propaganda it was.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed the “Play the Marseillais” scene.
sigh....
The Nation liked Bogie. The movie is boring and pointless.
I’ve tried to watch it.... I could never understand the fuss
“Searchers” is one of my top five films ever made.
The best movie ?
It has to be “The Best Years of Our Lives.”
Ugh. Hated that movie.
Me too...I LOVE that movie. Took my two sons to see it at a theater when they were ~ 16 & 18, and they loved it too.
" I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But, well, if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon."
LOLOL!!!
funny.
That was bedford falls.
Pottersville was the honky tonk town it became without George Bailey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCFePlm0Gkw
As Time Goes By—Jacques Renard (1931)
Interestingly, This record shows only Jaques Renard, but not the name of the composer (words and music), Herman Hupfeld. I have done a lot of research on ATGB and I have never come across this recording.
Rudy Vallee was the first to record the song, also in 1931 and it was later in a play “Everybody’s Welcome” whose box office failure but the Schubert Organization into bankruptcy.
I’ve tried to watch 2001. But it starts out as long and pointless. And at 2 hours and 41 minutes - I’m not going to find out if it gets any better.
As a classic movie fan, how is it that I’ve never seen “Wonderful”?
I’ve seen bits and pieces of it. Read many critiques and reviews. But never seen the entire movie.
For ME going to the movie today is a HUGE punishment, pure and simple !!!
I am 65 and I was, heh heh
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