This is a thread about CASABLANCA because it is utterly awesome and the best black and white film ever.

Dario Argento and Mario Bava are not so much 'avant-garde' as incapable of telling a story in 'classical Hollywood cinema'-style - this is both their strength and weakness, obv ('Suspiria ' is frightening at least partly because it so swiftly flees from narrative 'common-sense')

srsly haters, if you don't tear up at the Marseillaise scene, u probly like Joe Biden.

good job on the calum revive

it's definitely a great movie tho

im sorry. i just hate ingrid bergman.

i've always imagined a great rick & louis witty action sequel, fucking shit up in algiers before operation torch.

How long do you think their beautiful friendship lasted?

as soon as Rick realized that vaseline was involved.

they stay best friends for the rest of the war, and then agree to take a boat to Marseille together. Rick is waiting on the docks as the boat is just about to leave and he's handed a note from Louis that says he won't be coming with him after all and gives no explanation.

years later, Rick owns a bar on Fire Island. out of the blue one day Louis walks in and their passionate affair is commenced anew.

FIN

I like this, but, yeah, it's overrated.

Curtiz seems to have been an odd character. I don't really know that much about him except for the bit in "Hollywood" where they describe him filming the flood scene in "Noah's Ark", and in his frantic desire to make the scene real or memorable or w/e, he put a load of extras into a giant water tank, with a load of animals and poured gallons of water into it. IIRC he killed a couple of extras making the film. Pretty fucked up, eh? His filmography:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002031/

Has a few striking films (Casablanca, Noah's Ark, angels w/Dirty Faces, Female) including 2 of my top "I wish it was on DVD" titles - "Noah's Ark" itself and "The Egyptian". I don't recall seeing most of the titles. Was he a hack who struck lucky a few times, or are there a bunch of films there I shd look out for?

I've watched "Casablanca" a couple of times since C-man kicked this off and I must say I enjoyed it loads both times it's grown on me even more. I think it is one of the best films, and one I'd always want on hand so I can watch it when the fancy takes me.

The list I made upthread would probably now go:

"Ninochka"
"Andrei Rubylev"
"Broken Blossoms" "Way Down East"
"Pandora's Box""Beggars of Life"
"Orphans of the Storm"
"Victim" "Sunset Blvd"
"Sabrina"
"Valley of Song"
"Kind Hearts and Coronets"
"Passport to Piml1co"
"Night of the Demon" "42nd Street"

...tho obv the "black and white" thing is a bit facile. And IIRC bits of "Way Down East" were colour when it came out.

"Sabrina" "Hotel Imperial"

There was a big public screening of this two days ago in a big outdoor square in the heart of what is probably the most commercial part of Toronto, complete with outright hideous sound quality and a stack of lights blocking my view. Seeing it again for the first time since was like 12, these conditions probably are a good way to ruin a filmgoing experience (My friend brought me along with him), and while yes it is very good, I don't see what about it puts it so clearly ahead of the other handful of canonical Classic Hollywood 'best film evers'. Also, best black and white film ever seems like a not so good best-ever category.

As I discovered in class a few years ago, much of its reputation with the young (one of the few "old movies" you'll find in their DVD collections) rests on its enshrinement as a proto-Pulp Fiction: lotsa hip patter with actors good enough to deliver it.

yeah when ice craem was ragging on old movies on that one thread this was one that really stood out as an exeption to the rule - i think it can really be enjoyed by people who dont 'get' old movies without much distance at all

why are you talking about "ice cream" and this "rule" as if it's anything close to "right"

anyway i think its rep with young people comes from being saturated in the culture for 65+ years and being actually very good.

i dont mean its 'right' but its...honest? like how many dramas pre casablanca would you recommend to people who dont watch black & white movies?

it's honestly stupid imo

to someone who refused to watch (if that's what is meant by "don't watch") b&w movies i'd just tell them to rent sin city or some bullshit because that's probably the only b&w movie they'd like anyway, if they have that attitude

only if you dont take it at face value!

xp thats not what i meant by 'dont watch' - i mean, most people dont watch old movies

and that casablanca has an appeal, like alfred was saying, that the vast majority of movies of its era lack

anyway i think ice cream's "argument" was that old movie acting is theatrical and not natural so therefore it's lame. maybe those two points are true but it doesn't make those movies lame.

that the vast majority of movies in this era lack too xpost

hat casablanca has an appeal, like alfred was saying, that the vast majority of movies of its era lack

Well, no, that's not true. Its sheer ubiquity has contributed to its popularity too. The collected works of Howard Hawks and lots of film noir play well to the younger crowd.

i do too, & i think his -point- was that creates a distance b/w the film & the contemporary viewer which isnt so quite much present in casablanca - im not saying that a lot of this isnt because we've been 'told' its good, but i think a lot more people would be down for casablanca than say citizen kane, for the reasons alfred says - bogart + bergmann, etc, are kind of timeless in that movie

xps

because the vast majority of movies from any era are not that great, welcome to the world.

i love this movie. but cmon, its prominent place in the cultural firmament is due to a lot of management, not just its qualities. lots of movies have what casablanca has.

what a lot of them don't have is speed and economy, it's a very fast and breezy watch

xps

what a lot of them don't have is speed and economy, it's a very fast and breezy watch

this. it's also not a genre movie.

My Mam is totally obsessed with France and French in general and loves the French National Anthem, and one Christmas we were all watching this on tv, Mam fast asleep as she usually is from about fifteen minutes into any movie, and when it gets to the Marseillaise bit, she kind of sleepwalk sings along, and not just lying there, sitting upright, eyes closed fist swaying top of her lungs. The second the song is over she's slumped right back as though nothing ever happened. It was pretty surreal.

it's also sentimental as fuck, which always sells.

ok so i guess my point is, in terms of prominent exceptions to a prominent idea (that old movies suck), casablancas one of the first places id point as an exception

yeah there are tons of more obscure film noir type movies that are 'cool' but not in the traditional your-dad-likes-it sense that casablanca is

I love that line about throwing beautiful women away, what is it?

i love this movie. i think it's great because it has pretty much everything you want to see in a movie and it packages it really really really well.

'You shouldn't throw away women like that, Rick; some day they may be scarce.'

xpost

SO FUNNY

yeah, the writing in this is way way up there

i hate to gush but there is something kind of magical about this movie, on the level of trying a handful of different things in one story and succeeding at all of them, the 'witty' characters are witty, the 'exciting' plot is exciting, the 'romance' really is romantic, the 'politics' are very politically real, etc.