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This film is so remarkably boring. The tone of the Bogart is so contrived and self aware that I can't buy into his character. He is just a two bit actor making a buck and I feel he really didn't give two craps about the film.
He worked with some babes, drank some hooch and got paid. I can't suspend my disbelief. I feel like I'm watching a theater troupe fresh out of college attempt to make a historical debut.
The possibility of getting blown to bits in an instant and nobody thinks it''s a good idea to have fun and hump? The romance of this movie stinks. I don't buy the loving aspect.
This movie is nothing but right wing propaganda to pretend like America knew nothing of the Nazis or had no desire to take part in the imperial war effort.
I think this movie is a landmark in terms of using propaganda in film.
Follow Ups:
Good story/script/acting/direction/sets/continuity/costuming, all coming
together in a whole greater that the sum of the parts. This movie holds
up very well, I think, in the 65 or so years since it was made. Not
many films can make that claim.
Not everyone likes it, of course, and I was one of those people for
quite a while. But I've changed my mind. I have to put it in my top
10 best movies ever made list. And that's saying a lot for a film that
old.
Mike
NT
Everything about it makes it great. It is my very favorite film and the casting is perfect. Different strokes.................
-Wendell
I think this movie is a landmark in terms of using propaganda in film.
That is the only truth in your lines.
But to each its own, as they says.
...and shared history between Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, the stuff that is unsaid yet implied and silences thick with feeling and longing - choices made, and finally accepted.
What's the addage: "having loved and lost rather than having never loved at all"?
Then there is the maturity of adults to let go rather than to take what seems expedient for the moment.
What weirded me out at the end was the implied homosexual relationship between Rick and the Commissioner - or am I reading way too much into "a beautiful friendship"??
I believe you are. I've seen the film, at least, 50 times and never got that impression.
-Wendell
My not being alive in the era of the film places me at a dissadvantage to interpret subtle filmic shorhand and innuendo that had to slip by censors of the time. Sex isn't the only force driving characters in Casablanca.
I need a better understanding of director Michael Curtiz.
A great classic.
Actually, the beautiful friendship comment was only intended to demonstrate they were both birds of a feather - cynical realists. Suggest you watch it again.
The pair were both cynical, self-serving types from the very beginning. The friendship comes from the realization, that, in spite of their supposed nature, they were capable of acting against their nature -- to be altruistic.
The idea that cynical, world weary types secretly long for an opportunity to be noble would appear, to us cynical types, as hopelessly corny. I think modern viewers expect a darker message or moral ambiguity so Casablanca feels somewhat dated. "The Third Man" which also deals with war/post-war profiteering, is to me, a more interesting film, because it deals out its idealism in a more complex and subtle fashion.
...I found this link/reference- (not to be confused with "cynical realism", a contemporary branch of Chinese art.)
I look forward to seeing Casablanca again (and again), as you suggest.
...sounds like you have way too much time on your hands.
I can't imagine seeing any film that much.
I may have CDs I've listened to that many times...
....20 times without getting bored, then I don't think it qualifies as a "great" film. If a movie doesn't hold up under repeated viewings, then it probably doesn't deserve the moniker "great".
There are plenty of commercial films that are enjoyable but don't hold up under repeated viewings, and they weren't meant to. That's OK, and that's the level where most people enjoy cinema.
But a "great" film, one with personal vision and artistic intent, should only reveal more of its magic the more you watch it. There are scores of movies where I find more in them every time I watch them. (I could provide a list but it'd be pretty long! I will if pressed, but you have been warned.)
The same is true of great music, great books...I never tire of Huckleberry Finn, Pride & Prejudice, Great Expectations, Sayer's Peter Wimsey novels or the historical novels of Patrick O'Brien...and I never tire of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Monteverdi, Vaughn-Williams, Bartok, The Beatles, Steely Dan or The Clash.
...I love films but there are few I want to see more than a couple of times.
I never have understood people who collect DVDs.
There are always new films coming out to keep up with.
And I read voraciously, but never the same book twice because there is so much I haven't read yet and always something new.
I will agree with you on music. I never tire of classic rock in particular, but I would include blues, surf, oldies, some disco and jazz - even some new stuff.
I saw it first when I was 8 and I'm now 58. I watch it, at least, once a year. I never tire of it.
-Wendell
What weirded me out at the end was the implied homosexual relationship between Rick and the Commissioner - or am I reading way too much into "a beautiful friendship"??
You certainly have a problem...With yourself!
It's a profoundly romantic film and, understandably, seems meaningless to many in this age of instant gratification. (That's not a cheap shot at anyone who just doesn't like it, but one possible explanation.)
Also, for me, the loveliness of Ingrid Bergman is a major factor, as was Audrey Hepburn's in her earlier films.
Bogart's stilted version of masculinity is, I think, more amusing than anything else. And, yet, we believe that he loved.
The OP is right about suspending disbelief. If you can't, the film means nothing.
I'm still processing your point about a homoerotic subtext: a good excuse to dust off the DVD come the weekend!
...homoerotic subtext myself.
And I don't think it is there by intention of the writers or director.
But I'm not offended by that reading of it.
I guessI've probably seen in 25 times in my 50+ years. Holds up well IMO. If you can't watch something 20-30 times or more then it's not a *great* film IMO.
Donīt look there are not.
.
This movie is full of memorable quotable lines. It has the great stars that are long gone, Bogart, Greenstreet, Lorre. The plot may be cheesy, but I've found this compulsively watchable many times over. The 3 stars were also in The Maltese Falcon, another one I've seen many times. I'd say they are at the top of their game. To each his own, but I've never found this boring at all, nor particularly right wing.
Right wing?
What a curious idea!
I think you had to have lived during WWII to make the connection. People sacrificing love for the greater good and all that rot.
I put it down there with Citizen Kane, all hype.
Share a bowl of grits with someone you love tonight.
nt
.
Share a bowl of grits with someone you love tonight.
Yes...you do. :-)
-Wendell
Not even Hitch could do better.
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