Bogart learns to love La Resistance: Casablanca vs To Have And Have Not

triumphant studio-assembled star vehicles

to have and have not is a pretty good exemplar of general, all-star studio assembly, though: faulkner adaptation of hemingway novel, music by carmichael, starring bogart and bacall and whoever plays the crazy old guy.

casablanca -- it really is a pretty perfect movie

Which is not to say that the other isn't great because it is but Casablanca for all time.

lol lj u crazy predictable.

What e said.

i am excited for the forthcoming jaws vs jaws: the revenge poll

I do think Casablanca's somewhat overrated. I like it fine, but when it sometimes shows up on polls as the second- or third-greatest film ever made, to me that's overrated; in terms of Bogart films in close proximity, I don't think it's as good as The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon. It's been quite a while since I last saw To Have and Have Not," so I'm not sure which one I'd prefer today. Probably Casablance.

Typos are easily decoded.

i am excited for the forthcoming jaws vs jaws: the revenge poll

― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, February 19, 2011 7:42 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

bogart deserves a more expansive poll than this

otm

Another vote for The Big Sleep

m falcon
casab
b sleep
k largo
d passage
s madre
h sierra
h + h not
a queen
caine

I'm a big fan of his last film, The Harder They Fall.

have not seen, and tragically unavailable on netflix instant view :(

Didn't C-man do something similar to this?

xpost: It doesn't really have any kind of a critical reputation--Mark Robson directed, and I suppose it's kind of stagy compared to the noirs from the '40s--but for Bogart's performance (Steiger's great too), and as a sports film, I think it's great.

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

m falcon
casab
b sleep
k largo
d passage
s madre
h sierra
h + h not
a queen
caine

no in a lonely place, really

aw ffs. just dashed off top of head, fig'd i would forgot something but didn't expect to miss one of fave films + no/jd songs. put that in at #4

Didn't C-man do something similar to this?

aw ffs. just dashed off top of head, fig'd i would forgot something but didn't expect to miss one of fave films + no/jd songs. put that in at #4

ha, i'm just gettin at you.
my grandfather was a lifelong bogart fan, and talked about how if he hadn't been aware that, as a man of grandfatherly years, he only had so many books left in him, he'd sit and re-read hammett & chandler all day. i mentioned in a lonely place to him once after seeing it re-screened and found he hadn't seen it, and managed to send him a copy to watch in the couple of months before he died. i'm so glad, & would've so regretted it if it had slipped by - such a kinda typical but extreme bogart role, such a good movie.

when it sometimes shows up on polls as the second- or third-greatest film ever made, to me that's overrated

Yeah, that's ludicrous, but it's not the movie's fault.

btw schlump, Walter Brennan played crazy old guys for about 40 years, and "Was you ever stung by a dead bee" is the only line I can quote from TH&HN that isn't in the whistle scene.

ha ha; that's the only line of his i remember, too. he could spend the rest of the movie spittin' string theory, to me he is the crazy old guy bitten by a bee forever. he actually kinda reminds me of a guy in a similar role in vigo's l'atalante.

became the go-to geezer in westerns by or before Rio Bravo, well into old age on TV. He even released albums as a singer, none too pretty.

oh yeah: before TH&HN, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor three times!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dRvS2_8Geac/Sh3nukF1sTI/AAAAAAAAAcE/lxPKBGqozYw/s320/Walter%2BBrennan%2Bcover.jpg

really, his version of "Old Blue" made me wanna shoot every mule in sight.

I like that anecdote in McCarthy's Hawks bio, when Brennan first auditioned for Hawks:

"Do you want me to play it with teeth or without?" [Removes his dentures.]

Hawks hired him on the spot.

no way!, never knew he was the old timer in rio bravo

Knew that line about the dead bee long before I saw that movie. In fact I still haven't seen it properly

well, in Rio Bravo he DID take out his teeth. He's also dad of the Clantons in My Darling Clementine.

He's great in Clementine and in a retake of that role in Support Your Local Sheriff.

http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon_video/4313-Bacall_To_Arms.html

This webpage might have "Bacall to Arms" on it, but it's not YouTube and I'm on my phone, so I can't check what the big white square in the middle of the page is. Second-to-last Clampett cartoon.

At Warner's, I mean!

Casablanca is silly as all-get-out, but I voted with my heart. Casablanca it is. I give a lot of credit to Claude Raines for this triumph.

As star vehicle and excuse for one-liners, THAHN has never entertained me as much as other Hawks movies in the same vein; it's agreeably minor.

Fans of Claude Rains should check out a little-known David Lean movie called The Passionate Friends in which he plays a variant of his Notorious cuckold, only this time his rival is Trevor Howard and he makes more of an effort to stick up for himself.

Rains was superb. He's the only reason to watch Mrs Skeffington.

I recall somebody mocking his technique because apparently it involved a lot of counting - count to four, sit down, count to three, pick up teacup, count two, put down teacup- but the results speak for themselves

also, "I am shocked...shocked" among the most-quoted character actor lines of all time.

also, "I am shocked...shocked" among the most-quoted character actor lines of all time.
--kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius)

Sorry. Didn't mean to do that. Was just going to say that line and the one about rounding up the usual suspects.

"but everybody's having such a good time"

also fantastic as prince john in robin hood, if that's not too off-topic.

morbs otm

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

casablanca is so goddamn contrived. i cannot for a moment believe in any of the stories - there's no romantic chemistry for a start and the lines are glibly tossed-off. 'here's looking at you kid' is almost physically painful by the 3rd time. the whole thing's a lumpen and completely alienating experience for me - only the actor who plays Louis has me in any way convinced

THAHN is otoh genius and the most fun you can have in a cinema and bogart/bacall are juuuuuust the best and YAY and 'what are you trying to do, guess her weight' is better than all of casablanca's lines put together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48rz8udZBmQ

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Your job is to work out which one is which, and agree with me.

Anarchy reigns in ile. Or at least utter freedom from agreement with acoleuthic. Thus was it ever.

agh, ignore bad editing

of the Hawks I've seen, 2 or 3 are all-time great (THAHN, BUB, maybe The Big Sleep altho I need to see that again), one is great (Red River), His Girl Friday wasn't actually anything like it's cracked up to be and I still need to see Rio Bravo, still a good success rate

My friend (still in his twenties) confessed that he loves Hawks mostly because he wishes men and women talked like the characters in Hawks films. It's "mature" instead of mature.

gilbert adair said much the same abt art house audiences and rohmer. it doesn't make for bad films in either case.

His Girl Friday wasn't actually anything like it's cracked up to be

U H8 THE MOVIES

down ilx avenue we was goin 65 miles an hour ... can u imagine bumping into lj? opinions come rolling out like oranges.

lj, I am happy that you love THATH.

However, ILX has spoken and the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line. We prefer Casablanca, however silly and unbelievable it is (and it is silly and unbelievable), because those qualities do not override its other excellences.

also, you have gotten me to dl th&hn

I'm shocked to find myself mostly agreeing with LJ on these two, but it's not by much. Actually I think I like them equally as films, but Bacall gets me harder than Chinese algebra in TH&HN, as the saying goes.

confession time: saw THAHN on the big screen (at the NFT) and casablanca on an airplane

ban me

'his girl friday' is the most entertaining movie ever if you see it on the big screen -- pretty much just nonstop lols, and the most amazing cary grant performance there is -- even the way he moves is kind of hilarious. i used to think the serious bits slowed it down, but they worked for me last time i saw it.

has anyone actually read the hemingway novel 'to have and have not'? is it anything like the movie?

the really great hawks movie that no one talks about is the original 'scarface.' it's also the meanest and most atypical of his movies: still kind of bracingly harsh and violent, and not a wisecracking, boyish dame or lovable band of misfit professionals in sight.

I think Hathaway is a hack who made many more bad and mediocre movies than hawks.

I have the feeling you'd decided all this before actually even seeing this film. STICK IT TO THE CLASSIC FILM FAN GERONTOCRACY LOUIS, YUO ALONE CAN REWRITE FILM CRITICAL HISTORY!#@.

hawks knew how to tell stories, curtiz knew how to...point a camera?

This is really pretty sad and ignorant IMO.

not true. went into THAHN thinking 'well my friend's invited me to this and it might be ok' and had my mind blown. went into casablanca thinking 'this is meant to be awesome, please make my 30-hour plane journey more tolerable' and i guess it did at least do that

Maybe, but The other is a strong candidate for the most overrated film of all time. Your job is to work out which one is which, and agree with me. and suchlike doesn't come across like that, it comes across like your main motivation is to be ilx gadfly #1. This is probably why ppl are not engaging w you and just taking potshots for the most part.

only the actor who plays Louis has me in any way convinced

i am convinced as well ... that louis is trolling

next he'll be calling Verigo unbelievable and silly, which will put me in a slowly-I-turn lather.

I prefer romantic desperation to sassy seductions, so I don't think there's anything in the Hawks movie like Bergman balling her fist after she says "Kiss me as if it were the last time" to Bogart in Paris. Also, the Marseillaise scene makes me cry every time, and I won't even stand for The Star-Spangled Banner.

I think Hemingway made some joke about how there's almost nothing from his book in TH&HN. I would like to see it again, along with the fucking thousand other movies I'd like to rewatch. Does LJ know that Curtiz remade this movie in '50 w/ John Garfield?

love Scarface '32.

vertigo's stupid, never saw the big deal about it

also, "I am shocked...shocked" among the most-quoted character actor lines of all time.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Saturday, February 19, 2011 9:45 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

haha i only recently realized where this thing i have said lots of times came from

haven't seen either of these films in a long-ass time

even though bacall and bergman set new standards for screen beauty, they're both pretty far down my list of 'great movies', but 'casablanca' is better

I said upthread that I think Casablanca's a little overrated, and I'll stand by that. One Curtiz film I think is underrated is Mildred Pierce. It was a long time before I watched it--always assumed it'd be really stagy and drippy--and when I finally did, I was surprised by its weirdness, how it's much more of a noir than the soap opera I was expecting, and how artful the camerawork is.

my challops of the day: Bergman's performance in Casablanca (distracted, confused, which makes sense if you know the movie's back story) is one of her least persuasive.

Mildred Pierce is great, but is it really underrated?

As I said, I much preferred Carol Burnett's Mildred Fierce, after which the Crawford version can only seem a giggle. The Cain book is sumthin, lookin fwd to the Haynes miniseries.

I don't how you measure such things, by my sense is that Mildred Pierce is underrated--that what's great about has been overwhelmed by Crawford's persona, and that it's been reduced to caricature by things like the Carol Burnett parody (which I don't remember, but I'm sure it's great).

Well, but I've seen a major Crawford reevaluation in recent years: from renewed appreciation of her terrific no-frills performance in Daisy Kenyon to Denby's long essay a few months ago.

Also, the Marseillaise scene makes me cry every time

morbs! me too!

has anyone actually read the hemingway novel 'to have and have not'? is it anything like the movie?

It has been many years, but iirc this was kind of his attempt to hack out a crime novel to a) make some quick money and perhaps b) show his hardboiled imitators how it was really done. It doesn't come off as a sustained narrative, maybe because it was written as short stories for magazines. It is much wilder than the movie, very violent and macho -- not as tough as Hammett, but a good imitation of the imitators. All the World War II stuff in the movie is Hollywood, not Hemingway.

I've picked it up a few times to re-read, but the creepy 30's racism keeps putting me off.

Hawks claimed Hemingway told him the book was "junk," but HH was known to embellish the truth.

I don't how you measure such things, by my sense is that Mildred Pierce is underrated--that what's great about has been overwhelmed by Crawford's persona, and that it's been reduced to caricature by things like the Carol Burnett parody (which I don't remember, but I'm sure it's great).

― clemenza, Saturday, February 26, 2011 2:40 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

it's not really underrated. example: it's been adapted by todd haynes with kate winslett for hbo.

haven't read the book, but it's not a particularly interesting film, unless you specialize in a certain era of hollywood.

one of Crawford's most boring performances too.

I always laugh when, during the diner montage, Crawford in voice-over says, "I got good tips and was happy to get them." I go, YEAH CUZ IF YOU DON'T GET THEM THAT POOR GUY'S GONNA BE SORRY.

it weirded me out when I found out winslet was playing MP because she feels so young to me still, but then i found out crawford was only 40 when she did it - still seems weird to me though

Mildred sposed to have been a young mother I think... (Anne Hathaway is going to be playing 'old' Judy Garland in a biopic, THAT's weird)

yeah that's part of the character, but STILL. i just don't want to accept winslet no longer being an ingenue or w/e i guess

she's been through two husbands, don't think she gets to be an ingenue

perhaps costume will show off breeder hips

Also, the Marseillaise scene makes me cry every time

this is one of the best bits

THAHN is not ALL about sassy seduction - the main love-story is underplayed slightly (the kisses are passionate but fleeting) and the seduction stands for something grander and more escapist about grasping the moment. Plus, when the French couple come in later, injured and tired and deadly serious, there's grit and worry all right, just that it doesn't dominate the mood - it places bogart'n'bacall's happy-go-lucky shenanigans in perspective and gives the picture a more rounded feel

Did not know about the Curtiz remake. Probably owe it a watch now.

I think I've got it straight now with regards to Mildred Pierce: with rest of world, not underrated; on ILX, underrated.

Surprisingly, I couldn't find any Bogart threads (perhaps time for a poll?), but I'm reviving just to post this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqoxk3SrZRw

Damn.

Boo! Anyway, it was the bookstore scene from The Big Sleep with Dorothy Malone.

Only watched African Queen for the first time the other day and it completely changed my perception of Bogie. He's so goofy in it!

btw that second go at THAHN, The Breaking Point w/ John Garfield, Phyllis Thaxter and Patricia Neal, is amazingly good.

When you see a '40s vehicle of Bogart's like Dead Reckoning come up second-rate, you realize how great the great stuff was.

watched CASABLANCA last night for the first time in years. few other films are so easily affecting: ilsa’s first appearance, rick’s drunken reminiscing, that rendition of “la marseillaise”...
fuck nazis!!

As I said in another Casablanca thread, several impressions why it is wonderful, but not exactly perfect:

• Fabulous photography!!! Moody, striking, atmospheric, dramatic - the whole ball of wax.

• The plot is total cornball, but the pacing and dialogue are so crisp that you never have time to dwell on the silliness of it all. Each vignette is a perfect little bon-bon of entertainment. No waste. No chewing necessary.

• Claude Rains was having a ball and so were the scriptwriters for him. Every line he spoke was a gem. Probably a commentary on Hollywood studios in there.

• Not a good scenery-chewing Nazi to be found anywhere, just the ho-hum cardboard kind.

• It is very rainy and foggy in Morrocco. Who knew?

It is very rainy and foggy in Morrocco. Who knew?

Prior to climate change altering things everywhere, Casablanca has slightly higher average rainfall than Southern California does.