Casablanca: How an unproduced play marched into movie history

Posted by mdp2021 2 days ago

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Comment by compiler-guy 2 days ago

I once saw Casablanca with a friend who hadn’t seen it, and she said, “Wow. This movie jam packed with cliches. It’s off putting. Wait. This is the source of all the cliches isn’t it?”

Which it is. One of the most quotable movies of all time. If memes were a thing in 1942, it would have been the king. Still quotable today.

Comment by leoc 2 days ago

One thing that the Special Edition did for Star Wars was make clear that it had borrowed the Humphrey Bogart and "Little Pete[r Lorre]-Big Syd[ney Greenstreet]" characters which came from The Maltese Falcon via Casablanca. Sam Spade-Rick Blaine-Han Solo; Casper Gutman-Signor Ferrari-Jabba the Hutt (original version); Joel Cairo-Ugarte-Greedo; and of course they're fighting over a celebrated artificial "Falcon".

(Edit: according to Phil Tippett who did the initial character design for the RotJ Jabba puppet, when he asked Lucas directly "if there was an actor that was going to play Jabba the Hutt, who would it be?" Lucas answered "Sydney Greenstreet". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GXrQ-L-ROs&t=599s )

Comment by snarf21 2 days ago

Yeah, this is the greatest movie of all time and I don't think it is even close. No other movie covers everything it is to be human and in such a sometimes subtle way.

Comment by atmosx 2 days ago

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”

I don’t about best of all time but it sure is outstanding.

Comment by agonz253 2 days ago

There’s no such thing as the greatest movie of all time.

Comment by cwmoore 2 days ago

Technically, maybe there was, when Muybridge was also the greatest director, in 1880:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_in_Motion

Comment by jonathanlydall 2 days ago

I watched The Shining for the first time about 15 years ago (at about age 30) and when my friend asked what I thought I said it was good, but seemed pretty typical of horror films, to which he pointed out that it’s because all those films were inspired by The Shining.

Comment by thejazzman 2 days ago

It’s never too late..

https://amphetamem.es/?q=Casablanca

Comment by atmosx 2 days ago

Was it the beginning of a beautiful friendship, by any chance?

Comment by wvbdmp 1 day ago

Surely they were in all but name. People say “play it again, Sam” and are “shocked. Shocked!” to this day. It’s easy to imagine the cultural dominance at its heyday.

Comment by ButlerianJihad 1 day ago

> People say “play it again, Sam”

So, they haven't watched Casablanca?

Comment by rmason 2 days ago

I did not know this back story. The script was so good it called into question for me was why it was ever rejected for the stage. Movies has been repurposed for Broadway.

So I did a little searching and found in the nineties it was in the planning stages. The play ran on London's West End for only six short weeks and the Broadway producers abandoned the idea. Maybe the couple did not realize they were not writing a play but a movie script instead?

Comment by gramie 2 days ago

I have probably watched this movie a dozen times, and I delight in all the tiny, barely-acknowledged references throughout.

The Italian and French soldiers walking into the bar, and the Italian not able to get a word in edgewise.

The German couple saying, "Leibchen, what watch is it?" "Six watch" "Such watch" because that is the literal translation into English of the German "uhr".

The singing of "La Marseillaise" by extras who were mostly themselves refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe -- the emotion was real.

I've heard a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlor downstairs. "Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid," it always began. (Rick is calling Ilsa a whore.)

Every scene is a gem.

Comment by poisonborz 2 days ago

For correctness, the reply to "six watch" was "such much?". But yes literal german translation and still understandable in english.

Comment by gramie 1 day ago

Wow, I've had that wrong for several decades. Thanks for the correction!

Comment by diego_moita 2 days ago

The Italian author Umberto Eco had an interesting explanation on why he likes Casablanca[1] : no other movie was able to pack so many cliches together. It is like a whole cathedral of standard myths.

[1] https://biblioklept.org/2013/05/26/casablanca-or-the-cliches...

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Comment by kergonath 2 days ago

Brilliant essay. Thanks for the link.

Comment by xg15 2 days ago

A Moroccan city founded by Spanish traders following Portuguese colonists, then part of a French colony which is controlled by the Germans until freed by the Americans and becoming the icon of an American movie...

Comment by ghaff 2 days ago

There are SO many reasons why Casablanca should just have been a studio film that went through multiple directors with a bunch of unplanned casting decisions forced by existing contracts.

But, of course, it didn't end up that way.

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