Playing it over and over again: how Casablanca was made (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Playing it over and over again: how Casablanca was made (2018)

newstatesman.com

46 pointshighway-trees33 comments

> “Casablanca is best described as cinematic magic that occurred accidentally on purpose,” writes [Alan K Rode, biographer of the director Michael Curtiz]

This is also the message of Umberto Eco's essay called "Casablanca, or, The Clichés are Having a Ball" — https://biblioklept.org/2013/05/26/casablanca-or-the-cliches...

> Casablanca brings with it, like a trail of perfume, other situations that the viewer brings to bear on it quite readily […] it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control. And this is the reason it works…

I've seen Casablanca more times than A Beautiful Mind, and I worked on that movie.

My first viewings were indeed from the balcony of the Brattle Theatre, where one could get books of ten tickets cheap as a grad student. My last viewing was just before the pandemic, in the Stanford Theatre.

I vowed to let go of all inhibitions, and let the movie guide my emotions. That's how Casablanca deserves to be seen.

The Brattle Theatre is a treasure.

I have to confess that I haven't been to the Brattle in ages; I go into the city for a lot fewer evening events than I did. But that's pretty much the last relic of quirky Cambridge theaters. And even campus film events get a lot less traffic than they used to.

I had a film professor who told us that he thought Casablanca should be #1 on AFIs list of the best films. Citizen Kane is a masterpiece of cinematography, but otherwise I think it’s kind of weird. Casablanca is beautiful, complex, and approachable.

If you’ve never seen this film, give it a shot.

> If you’ve never seen this film, give it a shot.

The atmosphere in the film is quite special, you almost feel like it was made in modern times, just adjusted in post to be black and white.

A different way of putting the above is that Casablanca's aesthetic was so influential that it guided decades of subsequent work.

My 2¢: this could be a consequence of both the movie's strengths as much as of the trade-offs taken that did not overshadow the strengths. For example, the movie's wartime moral dichotomy is carefully offset with reminders about the limitations of moralism.

> I had a film professor who told us that he thought Casablanca should be #1 on AFIs list of the best films.

I'm surprised that the professor never saw The Godfather :)

Maybe he did. Casablanca is a superior movie.

> Maybe he did. Casablanca is a superior movie.

Wait, you haven't seen The Godfather either???

I have. All three if it matters. Your point?

I was pretending to be so in love with The Godfather that I saw this as an objective fact, rather than a matter of opinion.

I was also making an oblique reference to the meme that The Godfather is "the perfect film".

I was trying to be amusing, but apparently I failed spectacularly. I am ashamed.

I was amused!

This explanation makes it especially amusing.

godfather is bad and violent. but i was enjoying their cluelessness and your insistence.

"It insists upon itself." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYAi5aI_NPc

I've seen Citizen Kane a number of times but Casablanca is more approachable and rewatchable IMO.

Discussed at the time (of the article):

Playing it over and over again: how Casablanca was made - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844423 - April 2018 (16 comments)

One of the most common use-cases for a cinema camera is to point it at a beautiful woman... In this regard, "Casablanca" remains unsurpassed.

Having recently rewatched it. I think the only thing I somewhat objected to was the use of gauze filters to soften the close-ups of Bergman as they felt jarring in relation to the other cinematography. It was popular at the time, but I feel like it has aged poorly. Other than that, what a movie it is. Looking forward to when I again (inevitably) watch it again.

I created this account to agree with you.

Casablanca is my favorite movies, and an absolute masterpiece of chance and time.

It is a film about world war 2 filmed during world war 2.

And as you noted, the use of gauze filters was very “of the time”, but it was always jarring to me as a kid and still is.

I grew up in a generation when those filters had been repurposed for signaling dream sequences.

I completely agree with your even tempered observation.

A contrarian take on Casablanca from Cowen:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/02/my...

I am a great admirer of Tyler’s but he often does too much thinking and too little feeling, particularly in the context of art.

strikes me as an outside observer, lacking in empathy for the characters.

Interesting perspective none the less.

> A more Benthamite Rick might have been a happier and better-adjusted guy.

I'd like to think Cowen was taking the piss out of stereotypes of economists, but I don't think he was.

Fine article, though I would have liked to know more about the playwright than the director.

> Nearly all of the 100-plus actors and actresses in the film were immigrants hailing from more than 34 different nations. Bogart was the lone American;

Uhm, hello, Arthur Wilson? Born in Texas, died in California. "Play it again, Sam".

He led an interesting life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dooley_Wilson

Also Joy Page. She's really bad or maybe her style of acting doesn't transcend the era.

There are probably a number of melodramatic elements in Casablanca you have to tune out a bit which would be out of place in a more recent film.

She was the stepdaughter of Jack Warner (as in "Warner Brothers"). But supposedly she got the part on her own without his help at all. Not sure I believe that.

Trivia. (Because I lost a bet once--that I was very setup for :-)) The phrase "Play it again, Sam" doesn't actually appear in Casablanca. ("Play it Sam" does.) I assume the phrase was popularized by a 1970s Woody Allen film which wasn't really one of his better works but is somewhat memorable for having a running gag that is one of those things that is totally alien in a world with cellphones.

I wish, I wish, I wish that Ronald Reagan had taken the role played by Paul Heinreid (he was considered for it). Then it would be conservatives who bore one about Casablanca, and they are less ubiquitous in the press.

And if you want to be anti-colonialist, you can look at Edward Said's take on the movie in Orientalism.

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