Once Again On The - 75th
Anniversary (2017) Of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” -
By Bart Webber
I have spent much ink this
year starting almost at the beginning of the year writing about the classic
black and white film Casablanca a staple
at every retro-film locale including the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts
where I first saw it with a “hot date” back in the late 1960s. A date who did not
mind going on a cheap date (hell the admission was about a dollar maybe two) when
I told her what we would be seeing. (Somehow she had asked her mother about the
film and so was intrigued about this hot on-screen romance during wartime
between Rick and Ilsa.) That movie coupled with a quick after film stop at equally
cheap Harvard Square Hayes Bickford for coffee (always an iffy proposition depending
on when the stuff was brewed also iffy) and some kind of pastry that had been
sitting on the stainless steel dessert shelves for who knows how long got me away
without having to call “dutch treat.” Got me as well another six months of very
nice dates so my memories of that gorgeous film with the six million quotable
and unforgettable lines from “play it again, Sam” (Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa
request to Humphrey Bogart Rick’s main
entertainment provider Dooley Wilson to play the sentimental As Time Goes By) to “We will always have
Paris” (when Rick responds to Ilsa’s bewilderment that he is letting her take
that last plane to Lisbon with those wicked letters of transit provided him to her
husband Czech liberation leader Victor Laszlo so he can continue to do his work against the
night-takers running the world in those days) are still pristine.
I am not the only one
who is crazy for this movie since I am enclosing a link to an interview done by
Terry Gross on her Fresh Air show on
NPR with film historian Noah Isenberg on the making of the classic Hollywood film in
his new book, We'll Always Have Casablanca. " Needless to say when I get my greedy little hands on that item I
will be reviewing it in this space. This guy has me beaten six ways to Sunday
with what he knows about that film. Kudos.
http://www.npr.org/2017/10/11/557101633/75-years-later-a-look-at-the-life-legend-and-afterlife-of-casablanca
No comments:
Post a Comment