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 ...
It’s more all of the films from that era. They aren’t in the pop culture anymore. They are becoming the domain of aficionados.
I loved Casablanca but my all-time favorite was “Laura”. An original chick flick.....;) The 30’s and 40’s were some of the best years of movies in our lifetimes.
It doesn’t hurt that Gene Tierney was gorgeous.
Relax. I’ve shown “Casablanca” to a couple of twenty-somethings recently and both thought it was incredibly great, wondering why we don’t have actors and writers like that now. This article is BS.
It’s a movie that extols freedom. Slate don’t play that.
Thanks !
I’m 68 and I wasn’t particularly enthralled by the movie.
So are we lol
There are many great movies of that general era. Casablanca is one of them, but so is Gone With The Wind, and the movie that made The Duke a star - Stage Coach. Bogart, Gable & The Duke!!
Ten yrs ago or so I took Robert McKee’s screenwriting course. He took half a day analyzing, scene by scene, Casablanca.
Totally engrossing, even more than the rest of the fascinating course. McKee is a tremendously entertaining lecturer.
</I>Laura</I> is great. I’ve seen it on the big screen numerous times.
Slate does not have the best reputation. This article is another prime example.
The popular consciousness is accelerating into oblivion.
Every artist’s creation is affected by the passage of time and the passing away of the first viewers. People used to say the most popular film was Gone With The Wind. A new version came out as a TV mini-series called Scarlett in 1994.
Many were determined to dislike it long before the production was complete. Sometimes an idealized portrayal has a certain shelf life of appeal, no matter who the director or the lead actors are.
I’ve tried to like Citizen Kane. I just don’t.
Slate does not have the best reputation. This article is another prime example.
Today you have to pay a king’s ransom to see one movie(usually garbage) one time. I remember the days of double features, newsreels, travelogues, and cartoons for a lot less money, and worth the money too.
Of old films that hold up in fact get better with age
I think The Searchers is in a class of its own
..Its for more complex then anything you could make nowadays in our PC culture. Really it the start of the anti-hero
Even modern reviewers that appreciate the film still don’t get some of the subtex..
They want to make the Wayne character a basic racist towards the Indians ..yet ignore his empathy towards “Look” the Indian Squaw when they find her kills by soldiers in the Indian camp
It’s almost too complex and primal at the same time for the politically correct mind of today too grasp what’s going on
Great great movie. I always get something new out of it when I watch it
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