Casablanca (1942)
Casablanca (1942), directed by Michael Curtiz.
A disillusioned man regains his soul when an old flame surrenders to him completely. You need to load a man up with responsibility before he gets self-respect and does the right thing.
Miscellaneous notes after a lifetime of I-have-no-way-of-estimating-how-many viewings:
Do you hear Sam playing "The Very Thought of You" in the background a couple of times?
"Rick's" looks like a great saloon. I wish I'd had somewhere like that to hang out. Minus the nazi jamboree and gunplay, of course.
My best viewing of this was long ago in a campus venue. The crowd was not composed of film buffs but they were willing to be entertained. When the camera rose from the chessboard to show Bogart's face: a deep and heartfelt gasp. When he said "Here's looking at you, kid": total meltdown.
Set in December 1941, just before the US entered the war -- and made just after -- this was a model for Warner wartime entertainment over the next few years, although never equaled. Well-intentioned without being too heavy, plenty of colorful characters, with an ordinary guy American hero who is tough enough to see it through.
Note how "America" is the promised land. Everyone flees the Old World for the New.
I was on a discussion list where a film professor found the camera work "risible", which is how you have to talk when you are an academic. I still don't know what she meant. It is a studio-bound film with the attendant degree of fantasy, but looks gorgeous throughout. I notice a lot of radial motion away from the camera, unusual for that time.
Notice how Rick's office/apartment has an invisible wall?
Look how Ingrid Bergman's eyes shine!
The singing battle of "The Watch on the Rhine" vs "La Marseillaise": no one can resist it. One of the great moments of cinema.
The unquestionable "letters of transit" are, of course, ridiculous, but we don't mind.
Marcel Dalio, Rick's croupier, doesn't even get credit. He'd been a star in France before the war. See The Rules of the Game (1939)
The Bulgarian groom is played by Helmut Dantine, who later had a career as nazi villains. Actually he was an anti-nazi activist and had been in a concentration camp.
It's startling to hear Ilsa call Sam "boy". That was the term for grown men in certain jobs, for example the little old white bus conductor in It Happened One Night (1934), but I don't know if it was usual for musicians. The Boys in the Band?
Max Steiner score.
I try to find something new every time. After another rewatch:
When the camera first enters Rick's the doorman is struggling not to look into the camera.
The pickpocket ("Vultures, vultures everywhere!") is played by the credited Curt Bois. His last film: Wings of Desire (1987):
The woman desperately selling her diamonds is played by refugee Lotte Palfi Andor, later the woman who spots war criminal Szell on a New York street in Marathon Man (1976):
Another background tune from Sam: Parlez-Moi D'Amour when Ilsa and Victor first enter the café. The IMDB entry for Jean Lenoir shows how many times it has been used in film. I remember it best from The Moderns (1988) and Legionnaire (1998).
I suppose the audience is meant to keep track of the piano hiding the magical Letters of Transit but I usually forget. This time I noticed how many scenes it is in. The Germans pound on the lid during one of their drinking songs.
Available on lovely Blu-ray with velvety-smooth grain.
