re: Watching Casablanca for the 1st time tonight

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it's not even the best one in this movie


Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

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I watched it for the first time about 15 years ago and was astonished at how awesome it was. You can easily tell why it's considered one of the greatest movies ever made, and I was immediately mad at myself for never having seen it before.

And what stood out to me was just how many quotes from the movie are in the pantheon of greatest Hollywood movie quotes. And the closer you get to the end, they just rifle them off every few minutes. That was a pretty cool experience.

"Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"I never make plans that far ahead."
"I'm shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here."
"If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."
"Play it, Sam.”
“Here's looking at you, kid.”
“We'll always have Paris.”
“Round up the usual suspects.”
Etc.

Just banger after banger. By the end of the movie, every few minutes I was just like:

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to me, the most amazing part of the story of this film is that at no time during the production did anyone associated with it think it was anything more than just a run of the mill melodrama

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I know this is a popular take and it isn't "wholly" wrong, but there are issues with this analysis:

1. This was an A-list, Top tier project for Warner

2. Hal Wallis and Michael Curtiz were literally top shelf Warner guys

3. Bogey was not the Bogey of the late 40s/early 50s, but had just broken out with Huston's High Sierra the year before - he was Warner's star on the rise

4. Max Steiner did the score - he was the first call composer at Warner at the time and the greatest film composer of the Golden Age of Hollywood, still likely Top 5.

5. Arthur Edeson shot it - a 30-year veteran at that point, again, a top talent

So, while there were no expectations this would be arguably the greatest film ever made, it was not some journeyman-level piece of workmanship done with limited resources and "good enough" talent. It was a collection of top talent and, in the end, the whole was greater than the sum of the (exceptional) parts.

quote:

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to me, the most amazing part of the story of this film is that at no time during the production did anyone associated with it think it was anything more than just a run of the mill melodrama

all of the former refugees were just Warner Bros bit players who were cast largely because of their ethnicity

famously they didn’t even have an ending figured out until they were already well into the shooting schedule

somehow it all came together brilliantly

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That's showbusiness. I heard Tom Hanks's talking about this very thing recently re: Forest Gump. He says you never know if what you're making is crap or gold until it's released and audiences react. He did not expect Forest Gump to be what it was. On the other side, he said no one sets out to make bad movies either, but sometimes they just turn out that way.

Ingrid Bergman was such a beautiful, classy babe. She glowed in this film.