"I'm shocked, just shocked."
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 ...
I am 65 and I was, heh heh
“Citizen Kane is yesterday’s outrage over Hearst and his newspaper empire. Kane is not a pleasant man and so enduring a film about him isn’t a joy. And if you don’t have stones to throw at Hearst you don’t have that pleasure either. Modern audiences today are left with camera tricks and composition. Okayyyyy. Looks nice but not “the end all” of cinema.”
that’s exactly right, and it’s truly amazing that the leftist outrage of Hearst’s era has been passed down by so many generations of film school professors who worship it as “the greatest film ever made”, which is as much about the film being prototypical propaganda in the guise of fiction as the supposedly brilliantly innovative “techniques” that it embodies.
Agreed. It remains a superb film.
I've seen it dozens of times and it holds up very, very well.
The power of Citizen Kane is in the image of the sled being tossed into the furnace in the closing seconds. It is the one image that makes the whole thing work.
I could sit here all day and watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Eleanor Powell.......just wow. I pull them up on Youtube and waste away the day......lol
You’re right, I didn’t know it. I never really liked the early, early movies anyway. The lack of good sound and cinaphotography just turned me off. I think the 40’s were the true golden age of Hollywood but the 2 blockbusters of the 30’s GWTW and Wizard of Oz were priceless and even though I don’t think I’ve ever seen either movie in it’s original state before it underwent improvement. Heck, they might have stunk too.......lol
"I'm shocked, just shocked."
cinematography.....(sigh)
I have never watched one Star Wars movie. I could never muster up enough interest to waste my time watching it.......;)
You must be a Democrat resorting to name calling for someone disagreeing with the popular opinion. I guess you didn’t watch the movie Braveheart. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and I think that you are nothing but a follower for not thinking for yourself. I’ll repeat it here. I don’t see what the big deal is about Casablanca. The acting was typical of that era as it was cheesy and overdone. I’ve seen better Bogart movies. Your parents obviously didn’t teach you manners.
I love Ingrid Bergman. I thought she was wonderful in Gaslight and Bells of St. Mary’s. I’m just saying that in my opinion, Casablanca was just an OK movie, and not worthy of all the hype.
This isnt rocket science - they aren’t available on Netflix or Roku.
My kid discovered swing, big band, 20s, and 30s music from Bioshock. Favorite artists - Sinatra, Bennett and Torme.
That’s fine. But for years I had heard about how great Casablanca was, and that everytime it showed somewhere, there were lines outside the theater and it was always sold out. So I sat down to watch it and was expecting something on the order of Gone With the Wind. After watching it, I looked at my husband and shrugged my shoulders. What is the big deal about this movie? It was just an ordinary love story from the 40s and to me nothing special. But if you loved it, that’s fine. But I didn’t.
I blame the death of Saturday morning cartoons. The foundation block of my classical education (and classic movie education) is an animated rabbit. I don’t think anybody is doing that kind of thing anymore, Speilberg did a pretty good job of rebirthing it with Animaniacs, but I think their primary audience was adults looking for another lap in the WB animation pool. And Animaniacs ended 20 years ago. Want to get kids interested in the great movies again, stick a Peter Lorre imitation in a popular cartoon.
Have you seen the Humphrey Bogart version of Maltese Falcon? How about the Charlton Heston version of Ben Hur?
I hate CGI and all of the garbage that they put in today's movies! Movie makers now assume that special effects are the ONLY "important" thing there is and so movies wind up being acted by actors who can't act and mumble, scripts that a 7th grader ( from when I was in that grade ) could have written better, car crashes, blood & gore, and gratuitous nudity and sex.
It's a very rare movie, indeed, made today, that I can watch and enjoy; unlike the many films from the '30s-'60s.
Maltese Falcon yes, Ben-Hur no.....just never thought Ben-Hur would be something I’d like........dunno why really.....;)
I adore Sidney Greenstreet and have seen every ( too few, really ) movie he was ever in. He and Lorre, where a GREAT team; to drama, what Laurel & Hardy, Abbot & Costello, were to comedy.
And I should know, because I saw both kinds of films, as well as 20001, when it first came out.
Both are remakes. Bogie’s Falcon was the 3rd time in 10 years that story was turned into a movie. Remakes are a part of Hollywood that goes all the way back. Movies are a very expensive undertaking, and the folks that finance them like guarantees (like an existing audience) and cut corners (like a property that’s already been bought). And some of those remakes are classics.
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