I watched Casablanca last night.
I used to watch Casablanca much more frequently than I do these days. One year, during college, I watched the film every Sunday afternoon for six consecutive weeks. Doing so has ingrained upon me a preferred way of watching the film, that is almost a ritual. I love to watch the film on an early winter evening, starting it around 5:00 or so, while it is still light out and with no lights on in the room. Then, as the film progresses, it becomes dark outside and as the light in the room diminishes, the light from the television -- from Casablanca -- takes over until it is the only light at all. It's odd, the rituals we create in our lives and the objects we use to create them. I'm sure there are better ways to watch Casablanca. In a theater, perhaps. But this is my way of watching it. And you know what? I just may watch it again today, transporting myself to the heat and desperation of North Africa in World War II, even as the snow falls outside in Upstate New York.
Some thoughts on Casablanca:
:: If there has ever been a film with better dialogue, I've not seen it. This film is a study, a virtual clinic, in how to construct dialogue. It isn't merely that the film is loaded with some of the most famous lines in film history, except one (do I really need to tell you that "Play it again, Sam" is not a line in this movie?). What amazed me so about the dialogue last night as I listened to it is the way the dialogue flows. The conversations in the film all follow a logical progression. So many film conversations sound like characters talking past one another, with lines that don't seem to follow from the context of what's been said, and we sometimes wonder: "Now why did he say that? Where did her line just now come from?" That doesn't happen here. These characters are really talking to one another: exchanging information and viewpoints, feeling out each other's emotions, seeking out weaknesses or strengths.
:: I read somewhere -- I think it was in Robert Silverberg's book Science Fiction 101 -- that Islamic carpet weavers will purposely introduce a flaw into the pattern of their magnificent rugs, on the theory that to fashion perfection by the hand of man would be an act of heresy toward God. I wonder if the same might be true in Casablanca's script, because there are only two false-sounding lines in the entire script. Both come from Ilsa Lund, during the Paris sequence. Once, when she tosses Rick a coin and says, "Franc for your thoughts"; and then a bit later, when the Nazis are coming and she says, "Kiss me as if it were the last time...." There isn't another false note in the entire screenplay, which would be amazing enough by itself. It seems almost miraculous, though, in light of the famous fact that the script wasn't even finished while the picture was shooting.
:: Max Steiner's score is absolutely wonderful. Three main motifs work their way through the score: "La Marseillaise", "As Time Goes By", and a darker theme, characterized by low brass, low strings, and deep timpani rolls. Of course, "As Time Goes By" is totally associated with this film. Fittingly, that melody does not appear in the score until the moment when Ilsa requests that Sam play it, but from then on it is woven into the score with amazing subtlety -- sometimes at the same time as the dark German music, sometimes forming a segue into "La Marseillaise". Max Steiner was one of the greats of film music's Golden Age, and Casablanca shows why. (The quality of his music is even more incredible when one considers that Steiner hated "As Time Goes By, and he was very nearly successful in his lobbying for the song to be dropped in favor of an original song he had written. Only the fact that Ingrid Bergman had moved on to another film and cut her hair for the new role, which made reshooting the necessary scenes impossible, saved "As Time Goes By".)
:: Have there ever been more great close-ups in a movie than in Casablanca? Witness the very long closeup on Ingrid Bergman, as Ilsa listens to Sam singing "As Time Goes By". I can't think of any actors or actresses today who could pull off such a long closeup.
:: A sometime-quoted rule of writing is "Always leave them wanting more". I hold Casablanca as a counterexample to that theory. At the end of this film, I do not want more. I don't want to know what Rick and Louis go on to do when they get to Brazzaville. I don't want to know about Victor Laszlo's work in the resistance once he escapes. I don't want to know if Ilsa and Victor have children after the war, and I don't want to know if Ilsa grows old and wonders about the life with Rick that she passed up. Casablanca does not leave me wanting more. It leaves me satisfied.
:: Only a film as good as Casablanca could have me overlooking the fact that the "Letters of transit" make absolutely no sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment