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

Really dude, learn to tell Rains from Conrad Veidt. You guys talk about analog recordings the way you do b&w?

"Casablanca" is arguably a great MOVIE -- iconic, beloved, still works its magic (I've likely seen it 11 or 12 times myself) -- but to claim it as some great work of cinema borders on laughable. For all the smart punchy lines the Epstein brothers wrote, there's howlers like "Victor, please don't go to the underground meeting tonight."

It was a happy accident, as described above, and just look at the scenes before Rick's entrance to see what a hoary, jerrybuilt melodrama it might've been.

Isabella Rossellini says her mom often wondered aloud why fans always wanted to talk about "that Bogart picture."

i do like conrad vedit that said. but why this film, not 'the spy in black' or whatever. there are lots of films like 'casablanca' really. (like 'pepe le moko', mofo).

CafePress does better turnaround than that, dude.

You know, I'm still gonna say it's a masterpiece of cinema because of how it all blends, the set, the atmosphere, the romance, the tension...

If cinema is entertainment then Casablanca remains one its masterpieces. Sit and beat your meat over Godard all you want.

P.S. Ned, quite possibly. It's about how long it's gonna take me to get it completed. The first one should be out sooner.

-- Ned Raggett (ne...) (webmail), January 5th, 2005 3:11 PM. (link)

Pshh. I'm saying NOWT!

just like the chanel ads with the girl that walks around in golden water! you know those? way superior to casablanca, and well worth seeing.

ps: yum ;)

BZZZZZT!!!!

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
WHAT AM I SAYING???
-- mark grout (mark.grou...), January 5th, 2005 6:35 AM. (mark grout)

that you're Calum?

TS: Louie, This Could be the Start of a Beautiful Friendship vs. Sebastian, Would You Please Come Inside?

Notorious wins again.

Sam, if it's December 1941 in
Casablanca, what time is it in New
York?

SAM
Uh, my watch stopped.

RICK
I bet they're asleep in New York.
I'll bet they're asleep all over
America.

then dealing with the emotional residue of bitterness that many Americans felt for Europe following WWI would be an important task.

I think 'Sunrise' is the best B&W film, BTW, though I love 'The Third Man'. Something about 'Citizen Kane' irks me, FWIW. I think I prefer 'The Magnificent Ambersons'.

I recommend Dog Star Man

It is perhaps the ultimate anti-auteur film in that it was really a giant fluke

or in that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are very different from Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland

Something about 'Citizen Kane' irks me, FWIW. I think I prefer 'The Magnificent Ambersons'.
OTM. I always thought CK was a little-cold blooded and OW hated his character too much. But the older and more Kane-like I get myself, I now see it as a God-like Fassbinderian statement of: I Love My Character, Therefore I Must Torture Him.

There is a lot of potency to Casablanca, and it was quite obviously a call for America to wake up and go to war - rightly in this case. You can, at the end of the day, analyse films to death (I do it too), but I feel a movie lives or dies - at the end of the day - on how entertaining it is.

I just watched it the other day and despite knowing much of the screenplay almost by heart, I still find it funny and touching.

you seem to have this wrong. The Third Man is the film that plays to Europeans' feelings of superiority wrt America. Casablanca, released a year after America entered the war, is the film for Americans to imagine they were doing the right thing all along.

P.S. Casablanca was actually commissioned and written before America went to war.

This is a very interesting account of the making of 'Casablanca'.

I'm not a film buff. Not seen the Ambersons. The debate is about my level, so I'm here.

OK?

The play on which the movie is based was written before America went to war. It also failed to cast Strasser as particularly evil, per this site. The site also says that Howard Koch sought to emphasize the propaganda value of the story in developing the screenplay. But the script, essentially written by committee, was unfinished when production started in May '42, six month after America entered the war, and, though it's not completely clear, this interview suggests that Koch screenwriters considered the script to be written after American entered the war. Bergman and the writers didn't know for sure until well into production which guy she was going to end up with (which actually explains my problem with Bergman's performance/character).