I typed "C A S A B" in the YouTube search line just now and "casablanca la marseillaise" autocompleted, because a whole lot of people look for that scene in times like these.
I watched over Christmas and said the same exact thing to everyone I saw the next day! It’s really good. And that they made it while WW2 was going on! Just made it even better.
I thought it was …fine….when watching it for the first time all the way through, on a TV.
But seeing it in an actual movie theater — The Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman just glowing, thirty feet high on the screen - that's when it was really clear why it was such a great film.
Legend has it that while riding in a car on Sunset Boulevard, while they were still stumped about finding the right ending for their script, the Epstein twins—who had stopped at a traffic light--
suddenly turned to each other simultaneously and shouted, “Round up the usual suspects!” which became the key, final turning point in the plot near the end of the movie.
It's funny that almost everyone (including myself) who sees Casablanca has the same reaction, like oh right it's considered one of the greatest films of all time for a reason, gotcha
I think it’s because the movie that you think it is going to be is different than what it is. You think it’s a movie about a love triangle but it’s really not. That’s part of it but it is a story about cynicism and finding hope.
I’d already seen it a million times, but years ago, a friend put it on and I kind of groaned. And then watched it again and remembered it’s one of the best movies ever made.
I have to constantly remind myself that when it was made...no one knew how it all would end. I try to watch through that lens even though I can't wrap my head around it.
There were *tons* of taglines my friends at university constantly copied - playing RPGs as we did, there was a lot of opportunity to deploy those lines.
When I finally got to see Casablanca (at the home of a Swiss woman with a fine video collection), hearing all those lines was dislocating...
My friends @jbwoodford.bsky.social and another (I have to look up his sign-on here, as it's not coming up on the preview) plus a couple others would just continually bounce these off one another.
Love the Resistance Film Festival at the Roxie! I have to work this weekend, so missed going out for it, but we've tried finding where selections are streaming. Besides Casablanca, we found To Be or Not to Be, on the TCM division of Max.
Extraordinarily the plot line is ridiculous, the camerawork mediocre, the male star downright plain and the ending a let-down - AND THEREFORE it worked perfectly for this viewer and millions, for decades. We see ourselves on screen.
There was a little butcher shop near my sister's in New Hampshire some years ago and the owner was Lebanese, and got to talking about the gardens everywhere before the war, everything grew there
The Marseillaise scene always gets me. A lot of the people in that scene were actual WW2 refugees who had to flee Europe and their tears were real. One of the greatest moments in cinema.
That moment where Rick nods to the band was filmed separately. The director told Bogart to nod. Bogart asked what he was nodding at. "We don't know yet," was the answer.
S.Z. Sakall is a badass who fought in WWI and he managed to get out of Hungary in time to avoid the Holocaust. Much of his family did not survive the concentration camps.
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Also, Bergman and Bogart are fine, but it's Claude Rains and Bogart whose rapport really zings.
And yeah I'm watching it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM-E2H1ChJM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kiNJcDG4E0
But seeing it in an actual movie theater — The Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman just glowing, thirty feet high on the screen - that's when it was really clear why it was such a great film.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_J._Epstein
When I finally got to see Casablanca (at the home of a Swiss woman with a fine video collection), hearing all those lines was dislocating...
Oh yeah, that was another.
My friends @jbwoodford.bsky.social and another (I have to look up his sign-on here, as it's not coming up on the preview) plus a couple others would just continually bounce these off one another.
🤣
https://roxie.com/series/the-resistance-film-festival/
It seems to h