12/4/2023 0 Comments Casablanca song barThe film’s iconic song ‘As Time Goes By’ – written by Herman Hupfeld and part of the original play – was not the composer’s first choice. Max Steiner, film composer ‘You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss…’ And it does.īut what makes Casablancasuch a beautiful, enduring, and memorable film (for me anyway) is its use of music. The effect, it was later revealed, was intended to make Ilsa seem ‘ineffably sad and tender and nostalgic’. It has elements of film noir and expressionism, with creative uses of shadows across characters’ faces to suggest imprisonment/entrapment, and the way Michael Curtiz utilises the fluid mobility of the camera makes the film feel immersive and realistic, whilst maintaining a sense of romanticism.Įspecially noteworthy is the beautiful cinematography from The Maltase Falcon (John Huston, 1941) and Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) cinematographer Arthur Edeson, who used a gauze filter to soften Ilsa’s face and made her eyes sparkle with catch lights. While Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1942) is arguably the greater film, infamous critic Roger Ebert argued, Casablancais more loved. It seems to have filled a need, a need that was there before the film’. Reflecting on the film years later, Bergman said that Casablanca‘has a life of its own. Humphrey Bogart played many, many characters in Hollywood but his portrayal of Rick is arguably his best, and Ingrid Bergman plays Ilsa with grace, vulnerability, and surprising strength. It is often praised as an intellectual film The Washington Free Beacon noted on the film’s 75 th anniversary that ‘while the first time around you might pay attention to only the superficial love story, by the second and third and fourth viewings the sub-textual politics have moved to the fore’. The story is powerful, a combination of love, heartbreak, politics, duty, and morality. What is it that makes the film so enduring? In 1989 it was selected as one of the National Film Registry’s first films to be preserved for its ‘cultural, historical, or aesthetical significance’. The film grossed $255,000 over ten weeks (around $3.3 million today) and earned $3.7 million overall (around $47 million today). Crowther praised its ‘first order’ cast and screenplay, and loved the combination of ‘sentiment, humour, and pathos with taut melodrama and bristling intrigue’. had made ‘a picture which makes the spine tingle and the heart take a leap’. The New York Times’ critic Bosley Crowther wrote that Warner Bros. It won several Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. The film premiered in November 1942 in New York City, riding on the publicity of the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks prior, and was released nationally in January 1943. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Hollywood was cranking out film after film, more like a factory than anything else, and it was challenging for even the most well-written, well-shot, and well-acted film to make a significant splash.īut Casablancadid. Though it featured well established and bankable stars and had a fantastic production team behind it, no-one expected the film to be as successful as it was. Or perhaps you’ve seen it referenced or parodied in other movies or on television cartoons such as The Simpsons and Looney Tunes refer to it several times.Ĭasablancastars Classic Hollywood anti-hero Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, a cynical bar owner during the Second World War who is forced to choose between his lost love Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) or helping her and her husband, escaped concentration camp prisoner and anti-war activist/rebel, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) escape from Casablanca so he can continue his fight against the Nazis. Even if you’ve never seen it, you’ve likely heard some of its best lines – ‘here’s looking at you, kid’, ‘round up the usual suspects’, ‘of all the gin joints in all in the towns in all the world, she walks into mine’, or ‘Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) is one of the most famous, successful, and quotable films of all time.
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