My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Monday, June 13, 2011

Could anyone not like Casablanca?

Could anyone possibly not like "Casablanca"? It has to be one of the most if note the most universally appealing movie ever made - it's got everything, a great story line with a terrific love interest, politics, international tension, history, wit, sharp dialogue, beauty, music, visual interest, great acting, great characters, beautiful ending. Remarking on just a few elements: Humphrey Bogart's Rick and the laconic dialogue that made his image and made this movie so famous and so often-quoted, including: Why did you come to Morocco? For the waters. But we don't have any waters here; this is a desert. I was misinformed. Bogart/Rick is the classic tough guy (I don't stick my neck out for nobody) who is actually a romantic and deeply sentimental. His decision at the end to send Ilsa off with Laszlo is so famous, and so beautifully scripted, that it's been forever memorialized in Woody Allen's hilarious reprise/parody, Play it Again, Sam. It's one of the rare movies in which the protagonist faces a true moral dilemma - should he take the safe passage and leave with the woman he loves or let her go off with her husband, Laszlo, the noble freedom fighter and total stiff? Throughout the film, the tensions between the Nazis and the European refugees in Morocco are huge, serious, menacing - who can forget the great scene when the Europeans at the cafe sign the Marseillaise? - with the two most interesting characters, Rick and the police chief (Claude Rains) in the middle, cutting their own deals, Rains cynical and blithely corrupt, Rick a mystery, a true American existential hero.

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