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Patrick R

Casablanca (1942)

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I don't wanna rock the boat or anything, but it has to be said (and I'm not afraid to be the one to say it) that Casablanca is a pretty great movie. They play it every Valentine's Day (weekend) in Chicago now, and there's nothing better than combining romantic love with a love of Nazis getting shot. Audience cheered extra loud this year, for obvious reasons.

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I just watched it (not for the first time) last month and concur that it is indeed pretty great!  The Stanford Theater which focuses on old/classic films and is also involved in a lot of film preservation projects had a double feature of Casablanca and To Be or Not to Be and it was super fun.

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I really like Casablanca, it is a good movie. It looks like there's a theater near me playing it too, which is sweet! So I guess I'm going to be the guy going to Casablanca on valentines day. alone. for a matinee...

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Rick ended up alone, and he's the hero. And then at the end, he starts a beautiful new friendship. Take a friend. It's not just a romantic film but a...b-buh....oh no...don't make me....I won't type it....bu-bu-b

 

:barf:

 

bromantic one.

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I've got bro-ing to do. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to bro, you can't be any part of, Ilsa. I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

 

 

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I watched it once and found it pretty boring but I was only 18 or so; I still hope to watch it again at some point and appreciate it a bit more, if only for the sake of appreciating Grim Fandango even more.

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I've seen it as an adult twice and I think it's great, although I wouldn't elevate it as high as seems to be done generally. I don't remember exactly what my qualms with it are, though.

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8 minutes ago, Ben X said:

I watched it once and found it pretty boring but I was only 18 or so; I still hope to watch it again at some point and appreciate it a bit more, if only for the sake of appreciating Grim Fandango even more.

 

I can understand that, for most 18 year olds, enjoying any black and white movie is gonna be an uphill battle. But Casablanca has aged amazingly well. It's very fast paced, there are about a hundred really good jokes and it's gorgeous looking. I think even for people who don't find it emotionally resonant (I, on the other hand, cried multiple times during this last viewing) there's a lot to appreciate.

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It was nothing to do with it being black and white - I enjoyed plenty of those, old and new, at the time. Perhaps I had over-heightened expectations or I got too distracted by the plot, I dunno.

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I had a similar experience to Ben of just being like "Ok?" when there's plenty of old movies I've enjoyed (love me some George Melies) but I want to rewatch it again and see if it ignites any new sparks.

 

I have a strong suspicion that I'm missing a lot of the cultural context though by not knowing that much about life during World War 2. I find I often have that problem with movies assuming more knowledge than I have because it's expected to be ubiquitous, especially if they're American or an older movie. It's not a fault with them really, I just think I'm not in the group the film was intended to play to.

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I saw this for the first time yesterday and got the impression that I'd have loved it as a teen... but of course it's impossible to know. I could just be remembering my extreme fondness for Grim Fandango at that age and projecting from there.

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4 hours ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

I had a similar experience to Ben of just being like "Ok?" when there's plenty of old movies I've enjoyed (love me some George Melies) but I want to rewatch it again and see if it ignites any new sparks.

 

I have a strong suspicion that I'm missing a lot of the cultural context though by not knowing that much about life during World War 2. I find I often have that problem with movies assuming more knowledge than I have because it's expected to be ubiquitous, especially if they're American or an older movie. It's not a fault with them really, I just think I'm not in the group the film was intended to play to.

 

In classic Michael Curtiz form, all the context you need is (almost gracelessly) shoved into a VO info dump in the first couple minutes. I will say that the plot of Casablanca is very hard to follow if you don't pay close attention to all the dialogue in the first 10 minutes, which is part of it's very quick pace. Maybe that's why I like it more each time I see it, because at this point I've internalized all the plot points and character motivations so it's easier to appreciate what a well-oiled machine it is.

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Umberto Eco wrote an interesting essay focused on Casablanca's status as a cult film - the original cult film, really.

Because it was made up as Curtiz went along, it's stuffed with old clichés and classic, archetypal moments that have already worked well in other films. It becomes a collection of disparate but extremely memorable, likeable and endlessly quotable scenes, characters and lines. More than the sum of that 'hodgepodge' of parts, it's inadvertently a cult phenomenon - if not, Eco argues, an aesthetically perfect whole film in its own right.

 

I'll stop paraphrasing the short essay because he explains it far better and with close reference to the film, but the key is: "Casablanca became a cult movie because it is not one movie. It is 'movies'." I think that sort of explains why people have kept coming back to Casablanca - it's like a really great mixtape.

 

After Casablanca, you get films deliberately designed to achieve the same kind of cult appeal, then films referencing those, and then of course it's a cacophony that can never be picked apart.

 

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Hmm, fascinating @Simon. I had noticed that it was one of those movies that every time I went back to it I felt like it was multiple movies whereas I had only remembered my own "fan cut" (pretty much just the bromance). 

 

@Patrick R There's such joy in that kind of experience, I just saw Spotlight for the first time and ended up watching in 4 times in a a week, once I had moved past the plot and surprises I was just enjoying watching those actors turn those conversations and play off one another. 

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Went a saw it on Monday (Multiple days of showings) and it was excellent! Probably in part because knowing me I was a bit tipsy when I first saw it but mostly because I've had 5 or so more years of life to draw from. Theater was sadly barren, but hopefully the later showings drew more of a crowd. 


Random thoughts below, will contain spoilers:

 

It's very easy for me to see, reflecting on the movie, how it became such a beloved film, above and beyond the quotables and setting. The movie has two main plot lines that are very relatable: Rick's encounter with a lover for whom he still carries a torch and Captain Renault's dealings with a less than favorable new boss. Of course there's a lot more going on than that, but those are the two big takeaways from my viewing. In Rick's case, he also meets Laszlo who reminds Rick of the type of life he lived before, and likely why Ilsa was attracted to him. In the end he finally gets over the breakup and reattains a bit of what he lost to cynicism to boot. Meanwhile Renault's story was basically the first telling of Office Space: working just hard enough to not get fired. Then Rick shoots Strasser and he's free to hang out with his friend (This is way over simplified but w/e I'm not trying to write a novel). And it's hard pressed to find someone that hasn't experienced either or both of those things in their own life in some way.

Anyway, just randomly reflecting on the film.

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