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 ...
The author can do all the navel-gazing and mod psychological parsing of the film she wants to wallow in, but it will never "lose its hold" on me.
I could take the movie and analyze it virtually scene by famous scene and point out its total relevancy to the politics and culture today.
This is why the film is timeless.
The movie output today pales in comparison with that of the 30's through the 50's in comedy, drama, musicals, historical epics....and the sheer talent and magnetism of the stars of that golden era is still unsurpassed.
I wonder if the author is putting together a lint-picking article of some of the crappioli that Hollyweird is putting out today?
Leni
You are so right........beautiful!
Americans refused to watch movies in black and white starting somewhere in the 1980s.
And the pacing of films before 1970 is “too slow” for the millennials.
“Of old films that hold up in fact get better with age
I think The Searchers is in a class of its own”
I agree with that. The Searchers has only gained in reputation with time and is a very good example.
How about 2001 ? There’s a loser! Nobody even remembers it. Great movie, though.
The Communist cultural revolution in America is almost complete.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Leni
I’m one of the 25 people on the planet who gets next to nothing from ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’. It just doesn’t pull me in very much. The appreciation may be a learned thing.
My family always watched “Miracle on 34th St.” from 1947, with Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwenn and a very young Natalie Wood. After that movie, Christmas Season had officially begun in my home. It was, as they now say ‘Settled Science!’
There are many who just refuse to watch a B and W film. They can’t relate to them as realistic.
Nick, Hub was a police officer in Houston for many years. As you probably know, she married a Houston oilman and lived here for several years. Hub took a call of a possible burglary at Miss Tierney’s high rise. Of course he didn’t know who she was at first but when he saw that portrait of “Laura” hanging above the fireplace it clicked. She died not long after that...........sigh
I’ve never seen it. M is incredible, though. For a film barely out of the silent era, it feels so modern and relevant.
Me too. You hear all the time about a movie being historically one of the all time best but when I’ve tried to watch it I get nothing.
I have NEVER seen a remake of any movie that would even hold a candle to the original. I’m so set in my ways.....lol
“And the pacing of films before 1970 is “too slow” for the millennials.”
And yet, Casablanca moves pretty rapidly. New twists and characters are added throughout the film that keep the viewer interested.
I love this movie. It’s a step above some other good ones of the era, in my opinion (and that’s what counts in this thread.)
I knew it, I just knew it....he couldn’t do a song without the old Spike Jones zaniness.........rotfl
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.
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I agree. Casablanca has a terrific pace, snappy lines, a classic story, and two famous actors at their best. It will always be popular.
C.K. is the movie in which cinematography became an art form. The story isn't what really makes the film great, but the way it was filmed. It totally changed the way movies were filmed. Welles didn't follow the traditional cinematography methods at all. He was the pioneer of movie camera angles. Just watch a typical movie made before 1939 and compare it to C.K. and more modern movies to see the differences.
Leni, it’s just a bad article by someone trying to be “postmodern.” It’s like someone criticizing the Mona Lisa because she’s not sporting a tattoo.
Leni, it’s just a bad article by someone trying to be “postmodern.” It’s like someone criticizing the Mona Lisa because she’s not sporting a tattoo.
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