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 ...
Cassablanca is a movie you want to remember
New Movies (ie beauty and the “pc” Beast”) is a movie you wish you could forget.
(you will not laugh, you will not cry, you will wonder why you kissed 20 bucks goodby)
I think one was made in 1929 wasn’t it?
There are actually FOUR iterations of THE MALTESE FALCON, the last one, a comedy/satire with Steve Martin. The first remake, stars a beautiful, rather young, Better Davis and they changed the story somewhat.
The adaptation, but nonetheless a remake, of A STAR IS BORN, is the best one, with the Judy Garland and then Barbra Striesand ones not to good to HORRIBLE. The original, titled WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? IS AS GOOD AS THE REMAKE, imo.
Do kids today even know the classic Warner Brothers animation? They probably know the Disney classics (Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Dumbo) a lot better.
The book was from ‘29, movies in ‘31, ‘36, ‘41 (Bogie) and ‘75 (spoof).
Warner has done a poor job keeping them alive. Which is tragic because not only are they great they’re such a great way to introduce kids to a wider world, with all the opera, literature, cinema and music references. I just that when I watch Mozart in the Jungle half the music I recognize I associate with a rabbit and the other half with a crazy rock keyboardist (Keith Emerson).
We started showing him every single Looney-Tunes ( we have them all on discs and first had them on tapes ), when he was a toddler and he still loves them. He also LOVES old movies: The Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, and the regular movies that we've shown him.
Major Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?
Rick: It's not particularly my beloved Paris.
Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?
Rick: When you get there, ask me!
Captain Renault: Hmmh! Diplomatist!
Major Strasser: How about New York?
Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.
#35 “And the pacing of films before 1970 is “too slow” for the millennials.”
I was watching Star Wars Return of the Jedi from 1983 and the pacing was just right. Dialog where they had conversations. Just enough action and not endless action.
Now contrast that with the last several Star War films. Just a blur of action with too much going on along with horrible acting and dialog.
Hollywood needs people who are older to do the writing and have interacted with real people and not just have virtual friends on Facebook etc.
Airplane! >> Zero Hour.
LOL......me and my kids still talk in snippets from that movie as well as Blazing Saddles. 2 very funny movies.
They should show them before their theatrical films. People would love it.
I find it really unpleasant to go to the movies. Apart from finding a current movie worth watching, it’s so loud you need ear plugs, the AC is on full blast and everything is sticky.
True that!
I had never heard of that recording, either, until I did a Youtube search for Rudy Vallee's recording to post on this thread. Youtube has uncovered a lot of recorded music that I didn't know existed.
Those DC movies could do with some humor.
“I think The Searchers is in a class of its own”
Red River is a good one also.
I’m 68 and I wasn’t particularly enthralled by the movie.
I’m also 68 (shortly), and if it weren’t for Claude Rains, this movie would have been quickly forgotten...
I’m shocked, shocked that it is still being talked about today...
Rick, Bogart's character, was a lefty who fought in Spain.
One of the screen writers went on to write Mission to Moscow and was blacklisted.
Casablanca and the Marx Brothers had a huge following with 60s college kids, often radicals.
Maybe it was a matter of a generation picking something from their parents' generation and taking it up.
Something similar happened with Sha-Na-Na and American Grafitti in the 1970s and with the Rat Pack back in the 1990s.
When you grow older the next generation isn't going get enthusiastic about something from their grandparents' day.
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