Posted on 12/13/2023 3:08:10 PM PST by Rummyfan
One of my favorite films is “Casablanca,” starring Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, an American nightclub owner — and isolationist — in Morocco as the Nazis are goose-stepping across Europe and beyond.
“I’m not fighting for anything anymore except myself,” he tells Ilsa, the elusive love of his life. “I’m the only cause I’m interested in.”
When Major Strasser, an officer of the Third Reich, asks Rick what nationality he holds, Rick replies: “I’m a drunkard.”
Rick tells Louis Renault, the corrupt French police prefect: “I stick my neck out for nobody.”
“Casablanca” was written in 1941 during the months preceding the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7. The film was released in 1942.
And in January 1943, just two months after the Anglo-American landings in North Africa, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in, yes, Casablanca, where he declared his war aim.
It was not a “ceasefire,” an “exit strategy,” or a “responsible conclusion.”
Instead, he demanded that Germany, Italy, and Japan – the Axis Powers – surrender, and that they do so “unconditionally.”
...
Back to our movie: “If we stop fighting out enemies, the world will die,” Victor Lazlo, the Czech Resistance leader, tells Rick. “Well, what of it?” Rick replies. “It will be out of its misery.”
But in the film’s final scene, Rick shoots Major Strasser, and decides to join the fight. “You’ve become a patriot,” Louis Renault observes.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
IMDB trivia:
” Humphrey Bogart was an extremely avid and skilled chess player, and was known to have hustled games for money when he was younger and living in New York in the Depression (reportedly 25 cents a game). He also hustled chess games for money when he was not shooting his scenes in Casablanca and other movies. There is a picture of Claude Rains watching Bogart play Paul Henreid on the set of Casablanca, and Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall appeared on the cover of Chess Review in 1945. The scene with Rick studying a chessboard was a position from one of Bogart’s correspondence games.”
“Conrad Veidt, who played Maj. Strasser, was well known in the theatrical community in Germany for his hatred of the Nazis, and his friendship with Jews. (His wife, Ilona “Lily” Prager,” was Jewish.) He was forced to flee his own country when he learned the SS had sent a death squad after him. Veidt only played film villains during WWII as he was convinced that playing suave Nazi baddies would help the war effort.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/trivia/?ref_=tt_ql_3
And this startling tidbit......At the Academy Awards ceremony, when the award for Casablanca as Best Picture was announced, producer Hal B. Wallis got up to accept, but studio head Jack L. Warner rushed up to the stage “with a broad, flashing smile and a look of great self-satisfaction,” Wallis later recalled.
“I couldn’t believe it was happening. Casablanca had been my creation; Jack had absolutely nothing to do with it. As the audience gasped, I tried to get out of the row of seats and into the aisle, but the entire Warner family sat blocking me. I had no alternative but to sit down again, humiliated and furious ... Almost forty years later, I still haven’t recovered from the shock.”
This incident led Wallis to leave Warner Bros. in April.
The song, featured prominently in the film, has a conservative theme, reminding us that despite the stupendous technological achievements of the 1930s (and the 2020s), human nature remains unchanged.
No matter what the progress,
Or what may yet be proved,
The simple facts of life are such,
They cannot be removed.
*Ever see “The Cheap Detective”?
A good parody of Casablanca and Maltese Falcon.*
How about “Blackbird”? George Segal. The scene where the nude midget jumps into bed with the tall blonde. Unfortunately it’s not on dvd as I remember.
” You despise me, don’t you Rick”?
“If I gave you any thought, I probably would”.
Yet Rick is the only person Ugate would trust....
” You despise me, don’t you Rick”?
“If I gave you any thought, I probably would”.
Same here. North by Northwest has some of the greatest dialogue ever.
“Sahara” is my favorite.
Vaguely remember that one.
One of my all-time favorite movies.
Apparently many of the extras in the movie (like the scene in Rick’s cafe when Victor Lazlo gets them to sing “La Marseillaise”) were refugees from the Nazis.
Exactly. Rick was a commie. Ilsa was a putan. Capt Renault was a rapist extortionist. And when the studio wouldn’t give them any more money to shoot the airport scene at the end they had to use a 3/4 size model plane in the background and hire little people to load the baggage to make it look realistic. They also were afraid to use the Horst Wessel Song as the song the Germans sang because it might be a copyright infringement. They chose an older German song instead. It might also be my favorite movie.
The original song the Germans sang in the script was the Horst Wessel Lied, but Warner was worried about copyright so they substituted a patriotic song from the 1840s.
By the time the movie was out the 8th Air Force was pounding the Reich copyright office to dust. They could have kept the original.
👍
Very much agree.
One of the best ever.
I wholeheartedly agree!
I always was partial to “Go back to Bulgaria”
While I love Casablanca, The Big Sleep is a better Bogart movie.
L
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