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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
Ok, fine. I’ve ordered it. You convinced me. :-)
After all, how can I have The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, and In A Lonely Place in my collection and not have Casablanca?
(The answer is, it’s my dad’s favorite movie, so I gave it to him a couple years ago and haven’t replaced it.)
@jctpatriot Obviously Casablanca isn’t all that’s missing… The Big Sleep? The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? The Caine Mutiny? To Have and Have Not? It is difficult when there is so much excellence.
I know, I know. My collection is reaching 300 Blu-Rays only (I gave away all my DVDs) and yet, I have nothing. The Big Sleep will be soon, for sure. Treasure, Caine, To Have – they will have to wait. The problem is I want new movies and old ones, too, and choosing is difficult.
She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.
Alright fine! I’ll order it. Dang I forgot that scene.
“You despise me, don’t you?”
“If I gave you any thought I probably would.”
“I thought . . . ”
“You thought what?”
“What right do I have to think?”
So this film is a drawing-room comedy with appropriate dashes of drama, actually? Interesting…
Bingo. That’s the kind of man I strive to be.
Maybe they were just headed for the men’s room. Of course, these days…
I strive to be the kind of man who says “round up the usual suspects” and somebody rounds up the usual suspects.
Has it ever worked?
Makes one question your taste in friends, not movies however.
“I’ve got a bottle of rye in my pocket…”
Gregory Peck, in “Gentleman’s Agreement”:
“I don’t know, Maw, I just haven’t been able to come up with the angle for the new story. ‘Anitsemitism?’ How do you put that in words? When I did that story about conditions in the mines, I didn’t just tap some tired, dusty guy on the shoulder and say, “What was it like?” I went down to the mine and I got a job—
“—Wait! I’ve got it. It can’t be the whole answer or the only answer, but–”
“Come on, Phil, spit it out!”
“I–I’ll be Jewish! I’ve got dark hair, same as Dave! Dark eyes same as Dave! Except I won’t be Phil Green, I’ll be Philip Greenberg!”
“Oh, Phil, it’s wonderful!”
You forgot The Petrified Forest. And Dark Victory. And Dark Passage.
You know how to whistle….
Mercy me, you’re right, of course. I probably need a better vetting system.
No no, I’m not doing everything Bogart did, just the best of. I don’t want to go down that road, because then I’d have to do John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Gibson, Costner, Holden, Coburn… no, I am going to stop thinking about it. Shhhh.
Bingo! One of the Panda’s favorite films and actors. (I can even forgive his politics, he’s so dreamy.) :-)
Of all the comment boards on all the websites in the world @she has to post this on this one.
I was over my obsession with Casablanca, free of the need to work inapposite Casablanca quotes into every conversation, content to hide my true cinema self in streaming crapola… to forget what it could be like to experience a truly great flick.
I’m no good at being noble, mind you, but it doesn’t take much to see that my problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world…I do recall like it was yesterday, you wore blue, the Germans wore gray or was that the nurse and an orderly with my pills…