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 ...
Thanks slate you clarified the question that has bugged me so long. NOT
Probable reason why less people rank it less high is cause they dont understand wartime. So when they watch it...it doesnt effect their emotions and their reason as much. To them its just a period piece broken hearted love story...like a billion other movies...it gets as high as a rating cuz of vrry good acting..crispwriting , unrequited love, threat of death., bravery in the face of death and military defeat and the excellent staging
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.
Sorry for multiple posts. Internet outages like crazy tonight.
And then there's "Schindler's List". I don't think the movie would work as well in color, because we associate that era with the black and white newsreels.
Casablanca will outlast the pop cult and the pathetic millenial generation that produced this narrow shallow article.
I know that from my film class, so I guess it’s a movie I admire but just don’t like. I agree with the Angry Video Game Nerd that King Kong should be considered for best movie ever made when you see the sheer craft that went into that and how they were basically writing the book on special effects on the fly.
It will certainly outlast whatever that movie was that recently won Best Picture at the Oscars.
Yup!
If millenials were lumberjacks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlTGRlF_zSI
“The Communist cultural revolution in America is almost complete.”
Yep.
People don’t even realize it.
However, I think the real reason the movie-going millenials prefer today's films is because they are into vehicle chases, crashes, explosions, planets colliding, graphic murders and death scenes, the Capitol blowing up, planes colliding, zombies on the march, etc. etc. and so forth...and Hollywood is churning out just what they want to see.
Movie star-wise, Arnold Schwartzenegger is the new Humphrey Bogart and Lady GaGa is the new Ginger Rogers.
Leni
Leni
They think Matt Damon is the new Humphrey Bogart.
This line from “The Searchers” always resonates with me as to the difference between the quality of movies and audiences then and now;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy_v_MtPx0A
These days they would “draw a picture” and show what happened. Modern movie makers don’t want people using their heads and the audiences don’t care to.
I also do not like Its a Wonderful Life. But I do like Casablanca. I’ve been there, I speak French, and Bogart was somehow pretty hot.
Kong has spectacular stop-motion effects. Fantastic.
It doesn’t have Humphrey Bogart trading dialogue fraught with meaning with Claude Rains or Peter Lorre.
There’s a big difference.
Sometime in the 90s a lot the cable programming became virtually unwatchable for me. If I had a slow motion button, maybe it would be OK. They’ll be panning some old car or artifact or something, and it’s just bam! bam! bam! bam!, they don’t linger on anything more than a split second. Damn near induces a seizure in some folks, flicker vertigo.
Some of the pre-code musicals were tremendously entertaining - especially the trio of 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade.
Then the Hayes code came in and they had to tone everything down.
“I’ve tried to like Citizen Kane. I just don’t.”
Me neither. I found it mostly to be boring.
Just watched for umpteenth time “Lawrence of Arabia.” Leave aside all the homosexual imagery, what an astounding movie in photography, what it says about Arabs, and friendship.
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