As a millennial, I'd never seen Casablanca and this thread inspired me to watch it for the first time.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. Hilarious characters, great lines, good storyline. Renault was my favorite character, even if he was a bit unscrupulous.
This is great! The whole purpose of Movie of the Week in my mind. Get people outside of their usual entertainment comfort zone and see a little more of what is out there!
36 yr old millennial here - like a previous poster mentioned, just never got around to watching this classic. This was a fantastic movie, really enjoyed it! Looking forward to the spoiler discussion *lift* next week
Small movie question tangent: Towards the beginning of the movie - the actors are HUSTLIN'. Getting in and out of cars/planes, saluting. Every time I watch an early era film, the actors are moving incredibly fast. Just an observation that's always interested me.
Here's a history lesson that should make everyone appreciate Casablanca even more. The movie was filmed and released in 1942. Shooting on it started only months after Pearl Harbor and we hadn't even set foot in the European theater yet. Nazi Germany looked unbeatable they had total control over western Europe. Think about it, they filmed that movie with no idea how the war was going to go.
A few scenes should stick out that shows this.
First, the famous one with the French National anthem, the entire room of extras were French exiles and France was wholly occupied and had been for 3 years. Those folks weren't acting the tears that you see on screen.
Another scene that shows the fog of war, is where they talk about Victor Laszlo escaping the concentration camps. They knew there were camps, but they assumed them to at least to be semi-humane prison camps as far as European standards go. They had absolutely no idea the horrors that occurred at the camps and it shows in the movie.
The moral of the story is that in a war of good vs evil, one HAS to pick a side. They had no idea who was going to win but one has to pick a side. The second lesson is that once you've picked a side you have to play your part and to the best of your ability. Victor Lazlo was an inspiring idealistic figure but he had no idea how maneuver the Casablanca underworld to setup his own or Elsa's escape. Rick is too cynical to inspire those around him, but he was a realist that knew how to smuggle a VIP out of Casablanca and how to maneuver law enforcement. When he picked a side Rick was extremely effective in his role and it saved Victor and Elsa. In turn it inspired Renault to join the cause and save Rick. It wasn't Victor that inspired Renault to action, but seeing cynical Rick pick a side and owning his own role did. With that I'll leave my favorite quip:
In my last year at A&M, I had a roommate who exposed me to movies that I'd either never seen or never even heard of. Movies like The Graduate for the former category, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner for the latter category. After I left A&M, it was watching older movies like those that led me to rent a bunch of movies from the local Blockbuster, one of which was Casablanca. I thought it was great at the time, but haven't seen it since. I plan to watch it with the wife on Friday. I expect to pick up on more subtle stuff in the movie this time around.
36 yr old millennial here - like a previous poster mentioned, just never got around to watching this classic. This was a fantastic movie, really enjoyed it! Looking forward to the spoiler discussion *lift* next week
Small movie question tangent: Towards the beginning of the movie - the actors are HUSTLIN'. Getting in and out of cars/planes, saluting. Every time I watch an early era film, the actors are moving incredibly fast. Just an observation that's always interested me.
Not sure if Casablanca is affected by this phenomena specifically, but a lot of old films (three stooges, for example) look really sped up.
"Early in the 20th century the video cameras used for filming recorded at lower speeds, usually 16 frames per second (fps). This meant that 16 still frames were recorded for every second that passed. The films were then shown to audiences using a 16fps projector. Today when we see the videos play, they run not at 16fps, but at 24fps, so instead of having 16 frames taking up a full second of time, it's compressed to .67 seconds which gives the illusion of a sped up film. Another way to think of it is 1.5 seconds of footage being shown in 1 second."
It took at least 20 minutes for my ears to get used to the audio mix. Even so, I had to pay very close attention to understand all the dialogue because of how fast they talk.