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“Play La Marseillaise. Play it!”
A few weeks ago, I was arguing with a friend about a movie. I was strongly in favor; she was apathetic, to say the least.
Some of you, like my friend, may not be fans. It’s possible you are offended by the many continuity gaffes. Perhaps you can’t get past the clunky, rather claustrophobic, sets. Maybe you’ve never liked Bogart, even in The African Queen. (Gosh. I hope that’s not it. Really.) Possibly, you can’t abide the fact that they used ¾-scale cardboard airplane models in the final airport scene and that they hired a gaggle of midgets in overalls to run around on the tarmac, to make the planes look bigger.
Or perhaps you consider yourself a fashion maven, and you simply despise that absurd flying-saucer hat thing that Ingrid Bergman wears on her visit to the market.
I forgive it all. And more.
Casablanca is my favorite movie of all time.
And it sports the only scene, in the entire world of moviedom, that makes me cry every single time I watch it (probably at least fifty times and counting).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU
There’s no kissing. There are no promises of eternal love in the face of impending death. There’s no sex. There’s no violence. There’s no real action of any sort.
There’s hardly even any dialog. As with much good acting, most of it is done with the eyes.
And so we see first, Captain Renault’s knowing glance up to the balcony where Victor Lazlo stands, outraged, and where Rick is realizing, for the first time I think, that his days as a bystander in this particular fight are over. And as Lazlo stalks down the stairs and over to the musicians and orders them to strike up La Marseillaise in opposition to the Nazis singing of Die Wacht Am Rhein, and Rick permits it, we see Ilsa’s beautiful and troubled face, etched with worry, fear, and pride, as she contemplates the two men she loves in such very different ways.
Yes. It makes me sob every time.
Because, for me, in the simplest way, and without any special effects or action heroes, it’s the story of one man who understands the consequences, because he’s already lived them, standing up for what he believes in, against the odds and in the face of evil.
And, for the people he touches, he changes everything.
Paul Henreid, who played Victor Lazlo in Casablanca, died 25 years ago today, on March 29, 1992.
Published in General
Glad I’m not the only one.
OK, maybe I don’t sob. A manly tear or two.
“We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re MUTTS! Here’s proof: his nose is cold!”
Casablanca is my favorite movie. I watch at least once a year.
Thank you for this great post. I’ve enjoyed the comments immensely too.
Thanks @marcin, we watch it pretty often too.
It was years before I realized that it must be set just a day or two before Pearl Harbor:
Love that scene, and love that movie. Seen it hundreds of times. Guarantee if you start a line I can finish it.
I came to Ricochet for the waters. I was not misinformed.
We’ll always have Paris. (A guy actually said that to me once)
That scene depicts a quaint notion, what with people being all sentimental about their country and everything.
Did it work?
Oh please. hahaha
We’ll always have Paris, the guy Leonard Nimoy played on “Mission: Impossible”.
A couple of decades ago, Mr She and I, my stepdaughter and her husband, and my late mother-in-law trekked up the road to Bridgeville, PA, to see Casablanca on the big screen, where it was being revived for the weekend.
It was a lovely summer’s day, and we could not but notice, when we pulled into the parking lot, a large group of guys, all in their leathers, and with their Harleys, apparently getting ready to set off somewhere.
My mother-in-law, a tiny, feisty lady who was, I suppose, almost eighty at the time, and who’d always had a soft spot for fellows on motorcycles (don’t ask me . . . ), was beside herself with excitement.
We dropped her off with “the nice young men” and went to find a parking space. By the time we got back to Grandma, we found she was trying to work out whether there was enough time before the movie for her to go for a spin on the back of the bike with her new best friend the motorcycle guy. It was quite surreal.
The movie was great, too, BTW.
You sure have quite the family.
From the comments on this thread, it looks like you might have some competition . . . So many wonderful scenes and quotable quotes. Hard to pick a favorite, although I’m particularly fond of:
and
I’m jealous. I never hear people going around quoting the sizzling lines from my favorite film:
“Moon. American. Floyd, Heywood R”
“Are you sure about that drink, doctor?”
“You know, Heywood, that was one hell of a speech you gave us”
“Thanks, Ralph. Um, is there any ham?”
“Ham, ham, ham, ham. Ah here we are”.
“Thank you, Hal. A little flatter, please”
“Its origin and purpose still a total mystery”.
I’m with you. That scene brings tears to my eyes every time.
That along with “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
I came to Casablanca for the waters…
2001!
No question. Greatest movie. Ever.
The scene you cite is one of many, just like it: memorable, moving, poignant, even humorous (often, in a wry way).
Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it, I could sing it for you.
Gosh, Dad Dog, it’s great to have another fellow believer, another true fan of that wonderful scene on the lunar bus when Dr. Floyd chooses an artificially-grown “ham” sandwich, and we realize that Stanley Kubrick has invented the Kosher ham sandwich, with all the irony and poignancy it deser–
–what?? You were talking about “Casablanca”, one of the most beloved films of all time, the subject of the original post?
Never mind.
Well, after Casablanca, that is my second favorite.
“Open the pod bay doors, Hal.”
I prefer Round Up the Usual Suspects, from 1992.
Warners was the leftmost studio (and that’s really saying something) in this period. It’s true they made lots of left-tinged boosterism for our Soviet allies: “North Star”, “Mission to Moscow”, but they also made a lot of WWII’s most patriotic films at a time when that wasn’t as contradictory as it would be a few years later. Even Disney, no bastion of Communism, made “Peter and the Wolf” as a cultural exchange, good will project, with Cyrillic lettering on the signs (“Bolk”). “Casablanca”, like “Mrs. Miniver” and “Since You’ve Been Away”, was made in the heart of the war, at least the part we were in.
I’m sorry Dave, but I’m afraid I can’t do that.
By the Seventies, “Casablanca”, like “Citizen Kane”, was one of those movies that every intelligent person was supposed to have seen. Woody Allen’s “Play it Again, Sam” did a lot to remind the general public about the film. “Sam” undoubtedly played much better as a quirky, beginning to be famous author’s first play in 1969. As an early Seventies film that Allen didn’t direct, it’s clunky and even a few years later, oddly out of sync with the times.
Last fall the Los Angeles Philharmonic did a series of concerts where the orchestra played the score to a classic film while the film was shown. The venue was Disney Hall, a tremendous place.
We were lucky to have as part of our annual subscription tickets to the showing / playing of Casablanca. So we got to see the film on the big screen, with a nice, new, clean digital print (no reel change spots in the corner), with the LA Phil playing the score. It was wonderful.
And yes, I used a fair amount of kleenex during the film as it always gets to me.
I also watched it again flying over the Pacific on a recent business trip. I must have looked silly sitting there weeping.
“What’s the problem?”
[BTW: Clavius . . . 2001 . . . hmmm.]
Regarding classic movies on the big screen, this Sunday 4/2 (and then Weds. 4/5 in some locations) there will be showings of North by Northwest.
https://www.fathomevents.com/events/north-by-northwest
There is also now a restoration of The Third Man that made the rounds at theaters last year. Brilliant.
That’s my birthday too! Well not the 1992 part