Speaker 1: Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all you
Speaker 1: can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in
Speaker 1: just two visits. See any standard two D movie anytime
Speaker 1: with no blackoutdates or restrictions. Sign up now on the
Speaker 1: Regal app or at the link in our description and
Speaker 1: use code film spot twenty six to receive fifteen percent off.
Speaker 2: It is another Film Spotting Archive drop, and with Valentine's
Speaker 2: Day just upon us here, Josh, we thought, why not
Speaker 2: check out some of the most romantic films that we've
Speaker 2: talked about in the Film Spotting Archive. Fair number of
Speaker 2: good ones to talk about, but then producer Sam had
Speaker 2: a good idea, put a little twist on it. What
Speaker 2: about the ones that have all been Best Picture winners
Speaker 2: leading up to the Oscars? So we thought, okay, let's
Speaker 2: go back. Let's go back, maybe to the most romantic
Speaker 2: of them all. Casablanca.
Speaker 3: Not a bad choice Casablanca. This is from March twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: I missed out on this review, Adam. It was you,
Speaker 3: Michael Phillips, film prof Catherine Fusco.
Speaker 4: So he got academic on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just kind of making making me feel left out.
Speaker 3: Casablanca also in my mind though, because we are on
Speaker 3: this Friday show going to be nominating our candidates for
Speaker 3: the Film Spotting Pantheon for twenty twenty six, and Casablanca
Speaker 3: was in the.
Speaker 5: Mix for me.
Speaker 3: We'll see, we'll see if it made it. Listeners will
Speaker 3: find out when they listened to the show if it
Speaker 3: was one of those that I put in the mix.
Speaker 3: But definitely deserves consideration for the Pantheon, and obviously for
Speaker 3: this twenty seventeen review as well.
Speaker 2: And not to make everyone's brain short circuit, but if
Speaker 2: it did make your list, Josh, they'd have to listen
Speaker 2: to find out whether or not it was a sacred
Speaker 2: cow title because obviously it got a sacred cow discussion,
Speaker 2: or whether it was a wild card because you didn't
Speaker 2: talk about it with me and the whole exactly this
Speaker 2: Pantheon project exactly, we talk about the movies together. So
Speaker 2: Casablanca is a really tricky one.
Speaker 3: I may have found a loophole. We'll have to wait
Speaker 3: until Friday to see. But for now, for now, from
Speaker 3: March twenty seventeen, here is that review of Casablanca.
Speaker 5: Well, you are asking about Rick, and.
Speaker 6: Here he is.
Speaker 7: Mademoiselle Mary present Illo reck, Oh you've already met.
Speaker 5: Rick pant Brazil.
Speaker 7: Well, then perhaps you won't serve christ Lasla. How do
Speaker 7: you do? How do you do? When he has a
Speaker 7: great deal about Ricky and Casablanca, not about Victor Lazlow everywhere.
Speaker 8: So anticipating the show we're going to do right now, Adam,
Speaker 8: about Casablanca and whether or not it's still the movie
Speaker 8: that it used to be for a lot of people.
Speaker 5: Maybe still is for an awful lot of it.
Speaker 8: Last week, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies gathered
Speaker 8: in Chicago for its annual conference. And that is one
Speaker 8: hell of a lot of movie geeks in one town
Speaker 8: at one time. Let me tell you, hundreds of scholars, academics,
Speaker 8: specialists of all kinds. They gather, They give talks every
Speaker 8: imaginable subject, and I caught a couple of them last week.
Speaker 8: One of them was called Complex Figures in Classic Hollywood,
Speaker 8: and it featured a film and literature professor from the
Speaker 8: University of Nevada Reno named Katherine Fusco. Well, Fusco gives
Speaker 8: this great twenty minute talk on Shirley Temple's profoundly disturbing
Speaker 8: early movie career in what we're known as baby burlesques.
Speaker 8: These sort of precursors to Bugsy Malone, right, and this
Speaker 8: creepy and very kind of like bizarre sexual undercurrents, sort
Speaker 8: of astonishing stuff. Anybody with an interest in old Hollywood,
Speaker 8: who can give you twenty new things in the space
Speaker 8: of twenty minutes to think about? Regarding Shirley Temple subject
Speaker 8: I know nothing about. Okay with me, So Adam and
Speaker 8: I are happy to have Catherine Fusco join us from
Speaker 8: Reno to talk about this question, this monument, this movie
Speaker 8: known as Casablanca.
Speaker 5: Catherine, thanks for being on.
Speaker 6: Sure, I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker 4: Hi film spotting, Hello, Thank you, Catherine.
Speaker 8: Okay, So Casablanca turned seventy five this year, and it's
Speaker 8: either ageless or it's very much showing its age, depending
Speaker 8: on which pundit or film critic or cultural observer you're
Speaker 8: reading at the time. The Warner Brothers movie premiered in
Speaker 8: late nineteen forty two, but went into general release early
Speaker 8: nineteen forty three, and with the Allies invading North Africa,
Speaker 8: the movie felt like the morning news right up there
Speaker 8: on the screen. Humphrey Bogart is the idealistic but cynical
Speaker 8: American hiding out Morocco goes from attractive isolationist. I stick
Speaker 8: my neck out for nobody, he says twice in the
Speaker 8: first twenty minutes, to committed patriotic man of action. His
Speaker 8: love for Ingrid Bergmann, who's hooked up with the resistance
Speaker 8: war hero played by Paul Henried, is sacrificed.
Speaker 5: For the greater good.
Speaker 8: This movie won the Oscar for Best Picture, and it
Speaker 8: is a lot of people's favorite Hollywood movie. Woody Allen
Speaker 8: wrote a play and later a movie called Play It
Speaker 8: Against Sam about a guy hopelessly measuring himself against Bogie's image.
Speaker 8: I mean, you look at Jean Lucadar's Breathless that's entirely
Speaker 8: devoted to Bogie.
Speaker 5: You got you know what.
Speaker 8: It's one of the most revered and satirized romantic dramas
Speaker 8: in cinema history. Several books have been written about Casablanca's
Speaker 8: place in the culture, and most recently that includes Noah
Speaker 8: Eisenberg's Will Always Have Casablanca. And Yet and Yet a
Speaker 8: lot of people think it's basically no longer ready for
Speaker 8: its close up. In a recent Slate piece on the
Speaker 8: book and the film, Laura Miller notes that Sight and
Speaker 8: Sound magazine did a twenty thirteen poll of the fifty
Speaker 8: greatest films of all time, Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtese,
Speaker 8: did not make the cut, and she says this, what's
Speaker 8: changed about Casablanca is the most powerful and intangible element
Speaker 8: in any work of popular culture, its ability to make
Speaker 8: each audience member feel this is about me, about who
Speaker 8: I am, but most of all, who I want to be.
Speaker 8: And she says this to America still underestimates the degree
Speaker 8: to which the Second World War casts a long shadow
Speaker 8: over the last half of the twentieth century. That shadow
Speaker 8: has mostly subsided, and the radiant dreams that consoled us
Speaker 8: as we walked through, while still worth revisiting, now seem
Speaker 8: less captivating and necessary. Adam, Catherine will start with you, Catherine,
Speaker 8: Will we always have Casablanca?
Speaker 5: Or is it sort of.
Speaker 8: Getting lost in the mists of time, the same mist
Speaker 8: we see Bogart and Claude Rain strolling through in the
Speaker 8: last few seconds of the film itself.
Speaker 5: That's question. Yeah, we just have twenty seconds. We just
Speaker 5: have twenty seconds for it.
Speaker 6: Shoot, you know, I was watching the film again yesterday
Speaker 6: to prepare and I actually got a little nervous about
Speaker 6: me on the podcast, and I thought, oh, well, maybe
Speaker 6: I should just watch every kind of great classic film.
Speaker 6: So I rewatched Citizen Kane the day before, and you know,
Speaker 6: I was thinking about that, you know, Cain as great,
Speaker 6: Casablanca as beloved kind of thing, and for me, I
Speaker 6: feel like Casablanca is this sort of gateway drug, but
Speaker 6: it's such a wonderful gateway drug, right to kind of
Speaker 6: get get people in. So you know, I'm all about
Speaker 6: the gateway drug here, you know, whether it's not maybe
Speaker 6: as heady as Citizen Kane, right, it really just gives
Speaker 6: you that kind of gut punch. But I was also
Speaker 6: thinking about those sort of relevance now in the Laura
Speaker 6: Miller article, right, she's talking about how young men identified
Speaker 6: with this kind of cynic and less so with the
Speaker 6: more sincere rick that we get by the end. And
Speaker 6: I was just thinking, man, you know, we could use
Speaker 6: a little sincerity and self sacrifice now. Right, we're sort
Speaker 6: of in this moment of you know, the hot take
Speaker 6: where you kind of take the position that nobody else
Speaker 6: is taking and your cynical and you kind of have
Speaker 6: your kind of anti hero perspective and I feel like
Speaker 6: we're kind of moving past that a little bit now.
Speaker 6: I think, I don't know if it's a post election
Speaker 6: moment or you know, we're kind of worn out on
Speaker 6: Tony Soprano or what. But I don't know, it feels
Speaker 6: fresh to me still.
Speaker 5: Did you see this film at a young age, Catherine?
Speaker 6: You know, I saw it in college, and so I
Speaker 6: was thinking also about the sort of long shadow of
Speaker 6: World War Two part of this retrospective essay. And I
Speaker 6: saw it the year before September eleventh, So I you know,
Speaker 6: I was a nineties teen and I grew up with
Speaker 6: a lot of the kind of flashy indie directors, right,
Speaker 6: So that was my initial film education as a teenagers.
Speaker 6: I was watching you know, Kevin Smith and Tarantino, and
Speaker 6: you know, that's what all of my really film educated
Speaker 6: friends were into. And then I had a friend in
Speaker 6: college who was into classical film and we watched this
Speaker 6: film together and I just felt like, oh man, there's
Speaker 6: this whole other world of film, you know, that's cool
Speaker 6: and affecting, right, And I think that's that's again this.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate the non cynical kind of nature of
Speaker 6: the film, right that I guess you know after watching right,
Speaker 6: I remember having the flu at some point in college
Speaker 6: and watching Natural Born Killers. Right, this is sort of
Speaker 6: the this and it just felt really.
Speaker 5: I would get I would get the flu from that
Speaker 5: movie right, all over movies.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you know it was it was kind of
Speaker 6: it blew our minds really to watch this movie and
Speaker 6: all of those famous lines that you know are in
Speaker 6: the culture, but as someone who grew up being able
Speaker 6: to rent videos and not having to rely on you
Speaker 6: know what was playing on TV, having access to these
Speaker 6: lines and sort of getting hit bam bam bam. Oh
Speaker 6: that's from this film too. That's from this film too.
Speaker 6: That's from this film too. I just sort of felt
Speaker 6: like something cracked open seeing this.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, what.
Speaker 5: About you, Adam, how early on did you bump into it?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: This is a perfect and why are you and why
Speaker 8: are you wearing a fedora right now?
Speaker 4: You know I like to come in character. Okay.
Speaker 2: I saw this for the first time, not until I
Speaker 2: was in college, when I was in film school, so
Speaker 2: it would have been actually the late nineties when I
Speaker 2: saw this movie for the first time. And this really
Speaker 2: is the ideal sort of scenario for one of these
Speaker 2: reviews because watching it again just last night, actually I
Speaker 2: realized I don't think I had seen it in the
Speaker 2: interro at all. Somehow I had never had an opportunity
Speaker 2: to see it. So I really am revisiting a film
Speaker 2: that is regarded as a classic and that I saw
Speaker 2: originally many years ago and loved. And it felt almost
Speaker 2: like I was watching it for the first time. And
Speaker 2: that's what we're usually going for here. And it's funny.
Speaker 2: I picked out the exact same two paragraphs from the
Speaker 2: Laura Miller Slight article as you did, Michael, the one
Speaker 2: about movies in a movie like this making you think
Speaker 2: most of all of who you want to be, and
Speaker 2: then her concluding statement where she says essentially that that
Speaker 2: is no longer the case of this movie. It maybe
Speaker 2: no longer has that power, and she says it's still
Speaker 2: worth revisiting, but less captivating and necessary. Watching it again
Speaker 2: last night, for me, I found it still as captivating
Speaker 2: as I did twenty years ago. I found it even
Speaker 2: more necessary, actually, but we can get into that later.
Speaker 2: The other aspect of that, the first part talking about
Speaker 2: every audience member feeling like this is about me or
Speaker 2: someone who I aspire to be. I made my kids
Speaker 2: watch this with me oldest, so my son Holden just
Speaker 2: turned fifteen, and my daughter Sophie's about to be thirteen.
Speaker 2: Sophie was mostly kind of lost by all the maneuvering
Speaker 2: of the plot.
Speaker 5: Right the film, the political stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, but my son Holden is this huge international diplomacy nerd.
Speaker 2: Those are the kind of games he plays computer games,
Speaker 2: and otherwise was saying.
Speaker 8: Things like, oh, yes, the cost of block of conference
Speaker 8: was right there around that time.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was actually Michael, and he's huge into geography,
Speaker 2: World War two in general. He's certainly not a connoisseur
Speaker 2: of classic cinema. He loved this movie, and I was
Speaker 2: sitting right next to him on the couch and I
Speaker 2: was listening to him audibly react to all these great
Speaker 2: moments and lines, lines that he, for the most part,
Speaker 2: was hearing for the first time. And at the end
Speaker 2: of it, he just said, everybody in that movie was
Speaker 2: so awesome.
Speaker 4: Oh. I knew exactly what he.
Speaker 2: Meant, because that comment Laura Miller had about a lot
Speaker 2: of adolescent boys maybe taking immediately to Bogee and his
Speaker 2: gruffness and his toughness and how unflappable he seems at
Speaker 2: all times except when he's around Ingrid Bergmann's ilsa. You know,
Speaker 2: that's something I think my son probably does sort of
Speaker 2: wish he had a little bit more in him, just
Speaker 2: as I do actually for that matter. And at the
Speaker 2: same time he's this selfish rogue. He's charming, of course,
Speaker 2: and he's funny, and he's in control, and at his
Speaker 2: core he's this idealist. And so I know that Holden
Speaker 2: was reacting to this figure that he admired in some way.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just him. It was Claude Rains, it
Speaker 2: was Peter Lourie, it was Paul Henried, it was Sidney
Speaker 2: green Street. He was responding to the performances, of course.
Speaker 2: And a moment I'll single out that I know work
Speaker 2: for both of us is when we see Renault's devilish
Speaker 2: little grin when he sees the Germans starting to sing
Speaker 2: about the Fatherland.
Speaker 4: It's just like these fricking guys, you know. And I
Speaker 4: just love that we get those those kind of reactions.
Speaker 2: We get so many moments like that, wonderful faces throughout
Speaker 2: this whole film. But he really was invested in not
Speaker 2: just the plot, but just these characters and those lines
Speaker 2: of dialogue. And yes, he did discover that in one
Speaker 2: of his games, there's a badge or something that's called
Speaker 2: the here's looking at you kid badge. Never understood it, well,
Speaker 2: guess what. It's something you get when you go from
Speaker 2: like Portugal to Casablanca or vice versa. So that clicked
Speaker 2: for him and it felt it felt relevant to him,
Speaker 2: that's for sure, but it felt even more relevant to
Speaker 2: me for some of the political reasons that you touched on, Catherine.
Speaker 4: I think we can get into that a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think the thing that I think is a little
Speaker 8: nutty about the Laura Miller piece and Slade is this
Speaker 8: idea that it's not, you know, an admirable architect. There's
Speaker 8: nobody to kind of look up to and aspire to.
Speaker 8: And I think especially I can only speak as a
Speaker 8: high school age you know, male in Racine, Wisconsin is
Speaker 8: probably see him for the first time when I was
Speaker 8: I don't know, fourteen or fifteen, probably on TV and
Speaker 8: then I saw early date. For me, you know, I
Speaker 8: took my high school girlfriend, Sheila Hogan up to Milwaukee
Speaker 8: to see, you know, a revival screening. This is like
Speaker 8: in seventy eight seventy nine, and I mean, think of that,
Speaker 8: that's forty It's almost forty years ago when the film
Speaker 8: was turning seventy five. So you know, it means it
Speaker 8: just lived in the culture for me in a way
Speaker 8: that it does not for even people who adore it,
Speaker 8: who are you know, ten twenty twenty five years younger
Speaker 8: than me.
Speaker 5: It's it's it's just not the same.
Speaker 6: I was wondering about that though. I was looking this
Speaker 6: time at the moment we first see Bogart and we
Speaker 6: see first a cigarette, right, and a cocktail, and then
Speaker 6: we see his face, and you know, I've been sort
Speaker 6: of struggling with that last moment of the essay we're
Speaker 6: talking about where she says that this is less captivating
Speaker 6: and necessary, and I was just thinking, well, you know
Speaker 6: what about Don Draper. Weren't there all these little kind
Speaker 6: of wanna be Don Draper's running around because people are
Speaker 6: really into the fact there's the smoking and the cocktail
Speaker 6: culture and all this stuff, and you know, it's there's
Speaker 6: still that kind of I guess hipness, but you know
Speaker 6: it's much less shallow in some ways. Right, this is
Speaker 6: a character I don't know who who sort of has
Speaker 6: this history of goodness and the sacrifice that he gets into. Right,
Speaker 6: so we get the kind of style and surface here.
Speaker 6: I think that it still does feel, you know, pretty
Speaker 6: you know, he seems pretty cool to me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, I think I think there's a couple of
Speaker 8: things that have been, you know, the best one of
Speaker 8: the best things in that Laura Miller essay. And I
Speaker 8: don't want to talk about that too much, but but
Speaker 8: is she I think she rightly so really dings. Woody
Speaker 8: Allen's play and movie played against Sam Hard for including
Speaker 8: a line like I never saw a dame that didn't
Speaker 8: understand a good slap in the mouth or a slug
Speaker 8: from a forty five. That's what the imaginary Bogie says
Speaker 8: in that play. You know, Bulgart never would have said
Speaker 8: a goddamn thing like that. I mean, that's a mini Ricky, right.
Speaker 8: Anybody Bogart ever played that is not that line. Is
Speaker 8: Mickey Spillane or Mike Hammer. It has not got anything
Speaker 8: with Bogie or or Cozublanca.
Speaker 5: It just isn't.
Speaker 8: And one of the things, if anything, you can kind
Speaker 8: of look at Casablanca and say that the guy you
Speaker 8: can argue that the rick is really mired and self
Speaker 8: pity and and you know, heartbreak.
Speaker 5: And that's.
Speaker 8: But to me, that's what makes makes this kind of
Speaker 8: glorious Hollywood schlock a little bit human. I mean, this
Speaker 8: is not this is I don't want to. I mean,
Speaker 8: it's a film I really love. At the same time,
Speaker 8: I understand completely why the Side and Sound Pole wouldn't
Speaker 8: make room for it in its top fifty. I don't
Speaker 8: think I would either. It's just not it's not the
Speaker 8: kind of classic that you look to for form, even
Speaker 8: though it's for what it is. It's extremely adroitly made, yes,
Speaker 8: and gorgeously cast, and and there's you know, there's a
Speaker 8: reason people go back to it, And a lot of
Speaker 8: it is the writing, which they were, My god, they
Speaker 8: were right. They were the story of how this thing
Speaker 8: barely got made, you know, rewriting every night and every
Speaker 8: morning and not even knowing who is going to end
Speaker 8: up with who by the end of it. You know,
Speaker 8: it gives it gives the movie kind of a peculiar tension,
Speaker 8: and I think you can feel it. It's kind of
Speaker 8: a it's kind of a meta thing going on, where
Speaker 8: you know, all these characters in Cosabonca don't know if
Speaker 8: they're getting out in the narrative.
Speaker 5: And yet and at the.
Speaker 8: Same time, the Epstein brothers and uh and and all
Speaker 8: the other all the other folks working on the movie.
Speaker 8: You know, they didn't really know where they were going
Speaker 8: with this adaptation of an unproduced play.
Speaker 5: You know, they just didn't know. But it's a movie
Speaker 5: that it's a kind of classic quote classic.
Speaker 8: You can show people that it's not an intimidating kind
Speaker 8: of you know, it's more about comforting content and rather
Speaker 8: than challenging form. And therefore, I think it's kind of
Speaker 8: the opposite of something like Citizen Kane, which is not
Speaker 8: trying to make you cry, is not trying.
Speaker 5: To move you in a conventional way.
Speaker 8: You might find Kane fascinating and moving and all kinds
Speaker 8: of things, but it's not I mean, they are completely
Speaker 8: different temperatures, these two things.
Speaker 2: Yes, Kurtis is definitely not trying to show his hand
Speaker 2: at work. And that said, Catherine, you mentioned the intro
Speaker 2: or introduction to Bogie here and Michael you talk about
Speaker 2: maybe this isn't a movie that is drawing a lot
Speaker 2: of attention to its form, but the craft of it
Speaker 2: in terms of how the screenplay and the visuals work together.
Speaker 2: I think this movie has one of the all time
Speaker 2: great setups and introductions to a character, because not only
Speaker 2: do we only see those parts of him first, but
Speaker 2: even before that happens, we see his name when the
Speaker 2: plane is flying in one of the first, one of
Speaker 2: the first shots, we see his name, and so immediately
Speaker 2: we're kind of wondering who is Rick and why is
Speaker 2: he being featured so prominently that early on? And then
Speaker 2: at least three or four times people talk about Rick
Speaker 2: before we even meet him, and there's all this talk
Speaker 2: about what once we do finally meet him, there's all
Speaker 2: this talk about what would impress him?
Speaker 4: Right UGARTI talks about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So by the time we do meet him, we
Speaker 2: can't wait to finally see what this guy is all about.
Speaker 2: It's really heightened in that way. And then, as I said,
Speaker 2: when we do finally get to see him, he's someone
Speaker 2: who we know everyone else is in some way looking
Speaker 2: up to or trying to impress, and that makes us
Speaker 2: then revere him a little bit more even as a character.
Speaker 2: I think another thing that stood out to me this
Speaker 2: time that I really liked is the way the Paul
Speaker 2: Henried character is in a lot of ways equal to Bogie,
Speaker 2: and I can just I can speak for my son
Speaker 2: and say that he felt that way. Like I mean,
Speaker 2: Bogie is still Bogey, don't get me wrong, right, And
Speaker 2: he's the he's the star of the film. I'm sure
Speaker 2: everyone revers him more. But he could have been played Henri,
Speaker 2: could have been played as this sort of bland I'm
Speaker 2: gonna probably get myself into trouble saying us around two
Speaker 2: historians such as yourselves, but a Ray Miland type character
Speaker 2: who maybe is kind of the just the straight guy
Speaker 2: and he's meant to be the foil Ralph Bellamy. That's
Speaker 2: who I am thinking of, exactly. But Bob Cummings maybe so.
Speaker 2: But here we have a guy who is someone who
Speaker 2: actually impresses Rick. Right, He impresses Rick. You see that
Speaker 2: every time they interact with you, nobody else does.
Speaker 5: He's escaped from the concentration camp.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: He's truly brave, he truly acts on his convictions. He's
Speaker 2: also good looking and smart and eloquent. And so what
Speaker 2: that does is that heightens that tension where we are
Speaker 2: legitimately torn. I think as viewers in our allegiances as
Speaker 2: much as we revere Bogie It isn't just about who's
Speaker 2: she's going to choose. It's about the conflict of knowing
Speaker 2: she could be great with both, and yeah, probably better
Speaker 2: off as as Bogie ultimately decides with Victor. But I
Speaker 2: do feel like we're torn partly because we see him
Speaker 2: as an equal to Rick in some ways. Then the
Speaker 2: movie could have chosen another route.
Speaker 7: You must know, it's very important I get out of Casablanca.
Speaker 7: It's my privilege to be one of the leaders of
Speaker 7: a great movement. You know what I've been doing. You
Speaker 7: know what it means to the work, to the lives
Speaker 7: of thousands and thousands of people, that I'd be free
Speaker 7: to reach America and continue my work. I'm not interested
Speaker 7: in politics. The problems of the world are not in
Speaker 7: my department. I'm a saloon keeper. My friends in the
Speaker 7: underground tell me you've quite a record. You ran guns
Speaker 7: to Ethiopia, you fought against the fascists in Spain. Whatever.
Speaker 7: Isn't it strange that you always happened to be fighting
Speaker 7: on the side of the underdog. Yes, and I found
Speaker 7: that a very expensive hobby too, But then I never
Speaker 7: was much of a business man.
Speaker 6: I think I disagree with you a little bit this
Speaker 6: time through, I was feeling that the love triangle was
Speaker 6: really kind of eat it in one point A little
Speaker 6: bit this time I wonder, you know, a lot of
Speaker 6: as you were saying, of what we learn about people
Speaker 6: come through dialogue that other people are speaking. And I
Speaker 6: was wondering, you know, I think so much of the
Speaker 6: respect that we feel for the Laslow character comes through
Speaker 6: what other people say about him. I mean, for the
Speaker 6: longest time, I couldn't figure out, you know, what does
Speaker 6: this guy feel about his wife?
Speaker 4: No, that's that's valid. So yeah, so.
Speaker 6: This this time I felt that I think a little
Speaker 6: more strongly that the you know, the weight of a
Speaker 6: Rick versus Lazlo.
Speaker 7: There.
Speaker 2: There is another one other quick screenwriting thing I really
Speaker 2: like here that I picked up on this time is
Speaker 2: we know why Ilsa left him at the train station.
Speaker 2: We figure it out because the screenplay gives us hints
Speaker 2: along the way before Rick figures it out. And I
Speaker 2: like that when when the movie lets the audience sort
Speaker 2: of figure out something and and then we're waiting for
Speaker 2: him to finally catch up to things a little bit,
Speaker 2: and it allows us also to see him as as fallible,
Speaker 2: like he's he's missing part of the story and he's
Speaker 2: wallowing in self pity and that tempers the coolness of
Speaker 2: his character.
Speaker 8: Yeah, without that, I think you got you got a
Speaker 8: very boring character. And I mean this, And Paul Henriy
Speaker 8: hated making this movie. He thought his he thought the
Speaker 8: Laso character was nothing but functionary and you know, nothing,
Speaker 8: nothing much to play. But I think what, I really what,
Speaker 8: I really noticed this this time through. And I hadn't
Speaker 8: seen the movie front to back in many years, but
Speaker 8: I saw it the other day and and I do,
Speaker 8: I really do think the first forty forty five minutes
Speaker 8: is kind of terrific Hollywood studio filmmaking.
Speaker 5: It's really crisp.
Speaker 8: I mean, Michael Critisis has always been sort of a
Speaker 8: compelling a minus director for me, you know, and I
Speaker 8: just sort of enjoyed things like and this sounds totally
Speaker 8: wonky and like off off narrative, But nobody could film
Speaker 8: a car doing pulling up at high speeds as the
Speaker 8: camera dolly's in on in a diagonal and Michael, it's
Speaker 8: just Critisie is always moving the camera in a dolly
Speaker 8: on a diagonal in a way the totally is dynamic,
Speaker 8: and you know, I love it when he's like zipping
Speaker 8: into a nightclub or just sort of dealing with backlot
Speaker 8: scenes of this sort of airsats Cosablanca, you know, I mean,
Speaker 8: you know, it's a lot closer to Van Nuys or
Speaker 8: Thousand Oaks than Cosablanca, the whole kind of atmosphere of
Speaker 8: the picture. But it's sort of irresistible anyway.
Speaker 4: Now Van Nuys just doesn't have the ring to it though.
Speaker 5: No, it doesn't. No, I wouldn't have called it Van Nis.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 8: But there's there's a close up on Bergmann when she
Speaker 8: finally gets which one, when she finally gets Sam the
Speaker 8: piano player played by Dooley Wilson to play and sing
Speaker 8: as time goes by, right, the Herman Hupfeld song from
Speaker 8: nineteen thirty one, which enjoyed this amazing resurgence after the
Speaker 8: film came out twelve years later. And it's a twenty
Speaker 8: six second close up with just the piano, and that
Speaker 8: there's so many great things about that twenty six seconds.
Speaker 8: A Max Steiner's score, the musical score finally has to
Speaker 8: shut the hell up and just let the piano do it.
Speaker 8: And Steiner's you know, I love some of his stuff,
Speaker 8: but not a lot, and I think he's kind of
Speaker 8: always big footing the action. That's an amazing twenty six
Speaker 8: second and that to me that felt like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 8: in and I'm not in like watching it like in.
Speaker 5: Sort of a you know, interested observer way.
Speaker 8: I just thought, that's that feels completely fresh, and a
Speaker 8: lot of it's just her beauty, I suppose, but a
Speaker 8: lot of it's just every everything else that's conspiring to
Speaker 8: make that moment great. Then then there's a kind of
Speaker 8: a bookend shot where Boguart is drunk and he's you know,
Speaker 8: drunkenly saying you've played it for her, you can play
Speaker 8: it for me, play it. And that shot is kind
Speaker 8: of a medium shot. It's this and that's almost a
Speaker 8: full minute fifty seven seconds, and then that sort of
Speaker 8: fades into the you know what a lot of people
Speaker 8: think is kind of one of the weaker five minutes
Speaker 8: of the picture, which is the Paris flashback, right, But
Speaker 8: that but that minute of just a single shot where
Speaker 8: Bogart is sort of muttering a couple things incomprehensible, that
Speaker 8: again is like, now this is screen acting, you know,
Speaker 8: and this is and that's that's where you realize there
Speaker 8: are feelings at stake, and I think even in this
Speaker 8: sort of Hollywood fairy tale, and I don't want to
Speaker 8: diminish the film and I don't want to inflate it.
Speaker 8: I just sort of feel like if people don't know Costablanca,
Speaker 8: they just kind of need to find out for themselves
Speaker 8: where they land in it. And I, you know, if
Speaker 8: you happen to land on a situation, in a position
Speaker 8: where you feel yourself out, I don't really get the fuss. Well,
Speaker 8: welcome to my experience with It's a wonderful life every year,
Speaker 8: you know. I mean, you know, but Costablanca is not
Speaker 8: that for me. I found myself kind of newly falling
Speaker 8: into it happily, especially the first half.
Speaker 5: I think there is.
Speaker 8: Something a little progressively weaker about the film, although I
Speaker 8: adore the way it ends.
Speaker 5: And maybe it's just.
Speaker 8: Because some of the desperation with the screenwriting as they
Speaker 8: were writing on the fly. Maybe there's just one too
Speaker 8: many scenes where somebody pulls a gun and it's supposed
Speaker 8: to be a surprise and then it's a reversal. But
Speaker 8: the first forty five minutes to me, is like, is
Speaker 8: absolutely irresistible popcorn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the last thirty minutes or so, Michael, I think
Speaker 2: I'm with you a little bit that you certainly become
Speaker 2: aware or I did, that there's a real life lack
Speaker 2: of stakes. The Nazis are never a threat in this movie,
Speaker 2: not even remotely, And I think maybe that's something that
Speaker 2: that Hawks when he did his version of this and
Speaker 2: to have and have not he improved on that one thing,
Speaker 2: which is actually making the Nazis a little bit scary
Speaker 2: well and menacing.
Speaker 8: Right, And even though Warners and hal Wails were very
Speaker 8: we're very forward progressive thinkers in terms of the Hollywood
Speaker 8: power structure about let's deal with what's actually happening in
Speaker 8: the war today, other people took him much longer to
Speaker 8: kind of embrace, you know, the sort of the anti
Speaker 8: Nazi propaganda movement in and this is you know, yes,
Speaker 8: this film in a way defines anti Nazi propaganda films,
Speaker 8: but it does it in a way that, thank god,
Speaker 8: you know, transcends sort of the weaker stuff. And I mean,
Speaker 8: just a year before Bogart did a film with John Houston,
Speaker 8: arguably a greater director, I think, inarguably greater director at
Speaker 8: his best than Curtiche but you know, called Across the Pacific, right,
Speaker 8: And that's a film that's you know, pretty interesting and
Speaker 8: pretty fun. And then it's there's all this kind of cheap,
Speaker 8: you know, really kind of egregious, you know, anti Japanese stereotyping,
Speaker 8: which of course was just rampant all through Hollywood for
Speaker 8: three four years. And uh, and that film it just
Speaker 8: isn't it Just it's instructive, I think, to see Across
Speaker 8: the Pacific kind of in relation to cosmogity, just to
Speaker 8: see how one is you know, interesting for its time.
Speaker 8: One one you know, whether you love it or not,
Speaker 8: has has happily transcended its time.
Speaker 6: Do you think the middle right the sort of turning point.
Speaker 6: I wanted to kind of argue about the or not argue,
Speaker 6: but just say a little about the stakes of the romance.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I really like about the
Speaker 6: style is one of those moments where the gun gets pulled,
Speaker 6: but when Ilsa pulls the gun on Rick. And one
Speaker 6: of the things that I think this this film does
Speaker 6: that's really interesting is the stakes that it brings to
Speaker 6: the romance. Right, that whole scene looks like it's straight
Speaker 6: out of a film noir.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: I think there's even you know, the Venetian wind kind
Speaker 6: of shadows across Ilso's face at one moment, and you
Speaker 6: know that that's the sort of violence that's all around
Speaker 6: these people. It heightens sort of the stakes of the romance.
Speaker 6: But I think I think there is that real sense of,
Speaker 6: you know, the violence in love that comes across here, right,
Speaker 6: that he has been devastated by her, that she, you know,
Speaker 6: has this kind of painful, almost bodily need for forgiveness. Right,
Speaker 6: And we get, you know, stylistically, that feeling of danger there,
Speaker 6: and yeah, we get the gun pull at the end.
Speaker 6: But I think I think this film is good about
Speaker 6: kind of activating the violence that goes along with romantic
Speaker 6: portrayal and things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's valid.
Speaker 2: And yet I did find myself this time feeling actually
Speaker 2: more suspense and worrying more about how that poor Bulgarian
Speaker 2: wife and her husband would end up than I did
Speaker 2: Rick and Ilsa. To be totally honest, I was more
Speaker 2: invested in that almost than I was how things were
Speaker 2: going to end up with this little love triangle. But
Speaker 2: I am curious Katherin for your your thoughts on on Bergmann,
Speaker 2: because Michael talked.
Speaker 4: Their very eloquently.
Speaker 2: But to the surprises this time for me were Bogie's vulnerability,
Speaker 2: and we touched on that a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the all time great playing
Speaker 2: drunk scenes, honestly, and that close up you talk about,
Speaker 2: But maybe Bogie didn't need much practice, and who knows,
Speaker 2: he might have been doing some actual method acting there,
Speaker 2: I suppose in that scene. But it's great and that vulnerability.
Speaker 2: I only remembered the Bogie that sort of gets shown
Speaker 2: depicted in the Woody Allen movie, and it's much different
Speaker 2: than that. But for reasons I can't completely articulate, and
Speaker 2: maybe that's just what you chalk up to being movie magic.
Speaker 2: Bergman really is incredible here, and it's every long and
Speaker 2: close up with that gauzy lighting and that one in
Speaker 2: particular that you focused on Michael. But I just think
Speaker 2: that she ends up carrying the emotional weight of this
Speaker 2: movie on her shoulders. While everyone else gets all the
Speaker 2: snappy dialogue and they get all the entertaining stuff, She's
Speaker 2: actually saddled with most of the conflict and the internal
Speaker 2: struggle and that last line. As much as I love
Speaker 2: the ending, watching it with a modern perspective, let's say
Speaker 2: there is that last bit where he says, Elsa, I'm
Speaker 2: no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much
Speaker 2: to see that the problems of three little people don't
Speaker 2: amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Speaker 2: And then he adds someday you'll understand that, which just
Speaker 2: seems to me, this this ultimate bit of man's planning
Speaker 2: right back in the forties.
Speaker 8: It's important to end a great line with a totally
Speaker 8: patronizing exactly.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 9: I think that so much of it is understood is
Speaker 9: his sacrifice. But she's sort of being packed off with
Speaker 9: the man that I think it's clear she loves less, right,
Speaker 9: I mean, and I think we rarely frame the film
Speaker 9: in those terms.
Speaker 6: But I agree with you. I was watching her. I
Speaker 6: think it's when she goes She's wearing this kind of
Speaker 6: great shirt and she's got this wrap around her waist
Speaker 6: and she strides into a room, and I was just
Speaker 6: thinking about the kind of energy which which she enters
Speaker 6: that room to have her you know, confrontation with Rick.
Speaker 6: I mean, she's she's going to confront him, right. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I agree with you about the way she carries the film.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think she is.
Speaker 2: But I did want to add that last line. By
Speaker 2: that last line, I kind of wanted her to say,
Speaker 2: back to Bogie, wait, I'm the one who needs perspective here.
Speaker 2: I mean, she lost her husband to the Holocaust, thought
Speaker 2: he died, went through all that grief and heartbreak, moved on,
Speaker 2: found happiness, only to go through more heartbreak, and now
Speaker 2: she's fully committed to him in the cause, despite whatever
Speaker 2: suffering that may cause her. But she's the one who
Speaker 2: somehow needs to understand the consequence of all this.
Speaker 8: This is where you really kind of kind of, I think,
Speaker 8: feel the mechanics of desperate screenwriting at work, you know,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, where you just feel whatever,
Speaker 8: whatever the whatever, the need was, the perceived need to
Speaker 8: have a line like that, or you know, there's a
Speaker 8: very fine line I think that separates the wonderful individual
Speaker 8: lines often quoted, endlessly quoted lines from Casablanca from the
Speaker 8: ones you don't you know, And it's just I mean,
Speaker 8: it's all the same people writing them, but it's you
Speaker 8: know that happened. I think I think one thing that
Speaker 8: you talked about this earlier, Catherine, when I saw this film,
Speaker 8: really saw it for the first time in high school,
Speaker 8: back in the seventies. It really came as kind of
Speaker 8: this completely bracing antidote to all the cynical seventies era
Speaker 8: stuff I had been seeing my whole you know, young
Speaker 8: movie going life, I mean everything from you know, I
Speaker 8: saw a movie like the Long Goodbye Almans film, which
Speaker 8: is essentially you know, you got it's basically kind of
Speaker 8: making fun of the Boguart image, the way Elliott Gould's
Speaker 8: playing full of Marlow when Bogart played Marlow obviously in
Speaker 8: the Big Site. But you know, it's like I saw,
Speaker 8: I saw all the really kind of rancid, sour, disillusioned
Speaker 8: stuff after or before I saw where all was coming from,
Speaker 8: which is cosa blanca. And is it a guy's movie?
Speaker 8: Is it a is it kind of a boy's life fantasy?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 8: And it's also kind of a you know, you know,
Speaker 8: the attractive American male loaner. You know, he's really kind
Speaker 8: of the moral compass and the savior and the hero
Speaker 8: and all that. And yet and yet I think I
Speaker 8: think it's kind of crazy to not look at that
Speaker 8: and say, you know, actually, as you know, you have
Speaker 8: a more at least that character starts from at a
Speaker 8: point A and gets the point B or C by
Speaker 8: the end. He you know it is. It is not
Speaker 8: simply a stalwart, boring American action hero. You know, it's
Speaker 8: a guy who you know, it's as you as as
Speaker 8: you say, it's you know, he's an idealist, he's he's
Speaker 8: kind of a failed idealist at the beginning. And you know,
Speaker 8: you hear whispers about what brought him to Casablanca and
Speaker 8: why did he actually have to leave America. You never
Speaker 8: really learned too many details, and you never even find
Speaker 8: out why why he won't be let back.
Speaker 5: Into the country, into the US.
Speaker 8: But you get I think you get notions, you know, however,
Speaker 8: kind of hammily treated, notions of you know, self sacrifice
Speaker 8: and doing doing the right thing and all that and
Speaker 8: and uh and man's plaining absolutely.
Speaker 4: Little bit at that.
Speaker 6: It's distributed though. I mean, if you want to talk
Speaker 6: about those Bulgarians right, the Bulgarian young woman right there,
Speaker 6: they're Bulgarian ran right, you see her really kind of
Speaker 6: taking charge. I mean, if you want to talk about
Speaker 6: an uneven love triangle, right, the triangle between her and Renault,
Speaker 6: and there's this kind of confused husband who's off losing
Speaker 6: money through letwheel or whatever he's doing, right, but she's
Speaker 6: really taking charge in that relationship, and you can sort
Speaker 6: of imagine a world in which that's ilsa.
Speaker 4: I think that's that's a great point.
Speaker 8: And they had to dance around that a little bit
Speaker 8: because the Haze Code wouldn't the Hayes office wouldn't le him,
Speaker 8: They wouldn't let him spell it out too clearly that
Speaker 8: Renaul is basically, you know, sleep with blackmailing him for yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: saying you sleep with me and I'll give you the
Speaker 8: letters of transit, a completely fictional, fictional construct. By the way,
Speaker 8: there was no such thing as quote letters of transit
Speaker 8: in this point, and the screenwriters kept kept waiting for
Speaker 8: them to be kind of found out and called on
Speaker 8: the cover for it.
Speaker 5: Nobody did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't think we want to push the
Speaker 2: comparison too far. But going back to what we started
Speaker 2: with talking about relevancy or timeliness this movie in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight, when I saw it, I appreciated it purely
Speaker 2: as this piece of entertainment and art that I was
Speaker 2: considering and having to write a paper about and all
Speaker 2: those things. But watching it now, when you see and
Speaker 2: hear all the talk of refugees and the sacrifices speaking
Speaker 2: of that Bulgarian couple they have to make in search
Speaker 2: of a better life, and talk of travel permits and
Speaker 2: people being detained in question, and of a country isolating
Speaker 2: itself from the rest of the world, and of a
Speaker 2: resistance to tyranny. It can't help but feel a little
Speaker 2: bit of this time right now. And even more than
Speaker 2: that for me is Michael. What we talked about when
Speaker 2: we did our show, the Live Show post election, where
Speaker 2: we shared our top five movies to console and restore hope.
Speaker 2: And what I kind of argued there was that consolation
Speaker 2: isn't enough, Hope isn't enough. Hope really comes from action.
Speaker 2: And if you're dissatisfied now with our leadership or whatever
Speaker 2: the message we're sending to the rest of the world,
Speaker 2: you can either be rick or you can be Renault
Speaker 2: and accept that this is the way the world works
Speaker 2: and kind of cynically just go ahead with your life
Speaker 2: or even try to exploit it in some way for
Speaker 2: your own gain, or you can actually stick your neck
Speaker 2: out for somebody instead of nobody. And I think the
Speaker 2: value of that message and the vitality of that message
Speaker 2: is probably heightened for certain generations versus others, and we're
Speaker 2: in one of those those times right now. But it's
Speaker 2: also that type of message that I think every generation
Speaker 2: probably could find its own.
Speaker 5: Core totally, totally.
Speaker 8: And this film I got, Like a lot of great
Speaker 8: Hollywood successes, let's say, you can read it any way
Speaker 8: you like, and the politics and the ideology is there
Speaker 8: if you want it.
Speaker 5: I guarantee that in nineteen forty.
Speaker 8: Three, you know, a lot of a lot of Americans
Speaker 8: were probably still not I mean, they were suddenly very
Speaker 8: not you know, kind of like immediately struck by the
Speaker 8: horrors of what it means to send off a son
Speaker 8: or a husband or whatever to war, and they were
Speaker 8: very conflicted about it, even though there was no looking back.
Speaker 8: But I think today, you know, you get when you
Speaker 8: have a president who really is literally rounding up the
Speaker 8: usual suspects all the time, and it's not a laugh
Speaker 8: line like it is when when Claude Raine says it,
Speaker 8: you know, this is I agree. I mean, I mean
Speaker 8: what I what struck me this time watching Cosa Blaco
Speaker 8: was that the the film and Rick as played by
Speaker 8: Bolgart It's really it's really just a Parallel for America,
Speaker 8: kind of blithely not wanting to get into it and
Speaker 8: then realizing, you know, it's the.
Speaker 5: Right thing to do, Let's get in there.
Speaker 8: And you know, I think today when as you say,
Speaker 8: Adam so eloquently, no, truly, I mean that was It's
Speaker 8: it's a film that forces you to kind of reckon
Speaker 8: with this question of you know, you know, luck and
Speaker 8: happenstance and who and where you were born and the
Speaker 8: time you were born in and who's who's what government
Speaker 8: you're sort of you know, you know, at the whim
Speaker 8: of And I think that's why that's why the movie works.
Speaker 8: I think I think it's got this compression even though
Speaker 8: it's complete with fakery. It's back Loot Morocco, you know,
Speaker 8: but it's it. But the casting is what makes it
Speaker 8: feel authentic. You have you know, out of this entire
Speaker 8: speaking cast, there are three American born actors, that is it.
Speaker 8: Everybody else came from somewhere else. And a lot of
Speaker 8: these folks were literal war refugees. As we know, aly's
Speaker 8: a call lost you know, family members in the Holocaust
Speaker 8: who play you know, any number of these supporting character actors.
Speaker 8: You know, they're from Austria, Germany and France, all of
Speaker 8: them and that, and that's why the movie doesn't just
Speaker 8: feel like a Hollywood product.
Speaker 5: It feels like.
Speaker 8: It's it's a Hollywood product, but it's got it's got
Speaker 8: a flavor all its own.
Speaker 2: Yes, Backlot Morocco. By the way, the name of my
Speaker 2: high school band. Catherine Fusco teaches at the University of Nevada.
Speaker 2: A reno for recent book is called Silent Film and
Speaker 2: US Naturalist Literature. Catherine, anything else you want to plug
Speaker 2: any more information about where our listeners can find your work?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 6: I will have a book coming out with my friend
Speaker 6: Nicole Seymour about Kelly Reichhart in the next year, and
Speaker 6: you can follow me on Twitter at Fussco.
Speaker 2: Writes Reikert, one of our favorites here on film Spotting.
Speaker 2: So we'll definitely have to have you back on when
Speaker 2: that book comes out. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you great talking with you, Katherine.
Speaker 6: Good to talk to you.
Speaker 7: It might be a good idea for you to disappear
Speaker 7: from because a black up for a while. There's a
Speaker 7: free French Cadison number of prose of you. I could
Speaker 7: be induced to arrange a passage my letter of transit.
Speaker 7: I could use the trip. It doesn't make any difference
Speaker 7: about it. I bet you still only ten thousand francs,
Speaker 7: and that ten thousand francs should pay out expensive our
Speaker 7: expensive mm h, Louis. I think this is the beginning
Speaker 7: of a beautiful friendship.
Speaker 2: That was fun talking about Casablanca with Michael and Catherine.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everyone who checked out that archive episode. And
Speaker 2: if you're listening and you're not a Film Spotting Family member,
Speaker 2: check that out at film spotting Family dot com. Access
Speaker 2: to the archive just one of the benefits, along with
Speaker 2: bonus shows, a weekly newsletter, early access to events and discounts,
Speaker 2: and you get to be part of the Film Spotting
Speaker 2: Family discord. There's a bunch of good stuff again film
Speaker 2: Spottingfamily dot com.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 7: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good Bye.