Casablanca

If you've got a keen eye and happened upon this blog at the right time recently, you will have noted that I rated Casablanca one step below greatness. I guess Max also saw it recently and failed to find it truly great, so here's something from an email.

Charles and I saw Casablanca outdoors in the Seattle Center (home of the Space Needle) a couple weeks back. We were both surprised at I think the same feeling you had, which was that it was obviously good, but not exactly on the same level as, say, AFI lists seem to place it. Among various nitpicky things we or I found:

Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo is far too beautiful. It seems that he should have been strident and uninteresting as a character in order to reinforce Ilsa's preference for Rick. Instead he's both the morally preferable hero and the better-looking one.

Bergman and Bogart's scenes are sappy and maybe the least entertaining parts of the movie. The much more interesting relationship is between Rick and Capt. Renault, the "romantic" pairing that survives the movie. I think Bergman has definitely had better roles.

Michael Curtiz is never satisfied with a simple cut or movement when he could use a crane shot to swoop around and make everything seem gallant and terribly heroic. It makes sense given the types of films he's otherwise known for but maybe not for all parts of the script.

That said, the black and white photography is gorgeous and I doubt it would have looked anywhere near as good in color. Claude Rains, Humphrey Bogart, and Peter Lorre are all terrific actors in their own ways, and I really think the story is a clever allegory of US isolationism/involvement via Rick's character, whether or not it's morally sufficient or complete.

Also note that, for whatever reason, at #5 Casablanca is the lone film from the classic Hollywood era (pre-1948 Paramount Decree) in the IMDB top 20. Beyond that you've got Citizen Kane (#21), It's a Wonderful Life (#30), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (#52), and The Maltese Falcon (#57) rounding out the top 60. I think people must just attribute a lot of the good characteristics of Hollywood movies of that era to the single film they've actually seen or saw first (Casablanca, of course) and thus tend to immortalize it without any sort of rational judgement.