And Our First Film Is...

Casablanca (1942)

For our first night back in the cinema, I wanted to choose something that was suitably epic, and was also an undisputed classic. And so Casablanca it is.


Casablanca is not only one of the great films of all time, it is also a film that is especially apt for this particular moment in history. 

Made just as the US was entering the Second World War, Casablanca is a film about immigrants and refugees, made by immigrants and refugees. The isolationists, xenophobes and nationalists would do well to note that one of the all-time beloved American movies was made with almost no native-born American involvement whatsoever. 

The only Americans (by birth) in the cast were Humphrey Bogart and Dooley Wilson (and many xenophobes out there would probably say that Dooley Wilson doesn't count).


For the rest, there was of course Ingrid Bergman (Swedish), Conrad Veidt (German), Paul Henreid and Peter Lorre (both Astro-Hungarian) and the irrepressible Claude Rains (who was from Clapham, bless him).



 


The director, Michael Curtiz, was from Budapest (his name was actually Miklos Kertesz) and composer Max Steiner was from Vienna.


This diverse and international collection of talent came together in Hollywood to produce a film that is quintessentially "Amercian" (or at least what America was supposed to be, once). 

Anyone who has ever thrown around the term "indigenous population" or has used the word "multiculturalism" as an insult, really needs to sit down and watch Casablanca.

Humphrey Bogart was several inches shorter than Ingrid Bergman. Whenever you see him like this in the film, he's actually standing on a box. Just saying.

If you haven't seen Casablanca recently, then this is your chance to renew your acquaintance with something very special. If you have never seen it, then I envy the treat that awaits you on the 16th of September. 

Come along and see why virtually every line of dialogue has become iconic. This will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)


Casablanca

7.30pm 

Thursday, 16 September, 2021

at the 

Victoria Park Baptist Church

186 Grove Rd, 

Old Ford, London 

E3 5TG


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Wife in Every Room

Image
In Bringing Up Baby , Cary Grant became the first person to use the word Gay (in its modern sense) in a Hollywood movie. One might hypothesize that by 1938, the film censors were starting to become more permissive about the subtext that was regularly being slipped into films of the era. One would be completely wrong to thusly hypothesize ( to hypothesize thusly ; excuse me). Film censorship in the late 1930s was just as draconian as ever: a year earlier they had insisted that a shot of a  gravestone  be cut from a film because the character in question had committed suicide, and it was "inappropriate" to show her receiving a proper burial. The word gay had only slipped through in Bringing Up Baby because no one at the Hays Office knew what it meant in that context. (I won't tell them if you don't.) Cary Grant certainly knew what it meant, and it's very interesting that he was the one who got to introduce the word to American film audiences. Because Cary Grant, th
Read more
Image
  Movie Nights at the  Victoria Park Baptist Church And so life goes on. Some of you may remember that our film series in early 2020 was rudely interrupted by a Global Pandemic. The subsequent year and a half has been, well... You know things are pretty bad when you find yourself wondering if there is a plural for "Apocalypse". But at any rate, here we are ( Apocalypses? Apocali? That's going to bother you now, isn't it?) facing the prospect of attempting to pick up the pieces of Civilisation - assuming of course we don't go into another Lockdown first. ( Apocalyae?   Apocalim? ) Movie-going, like so many communal activities, has taken a severe hit during the Pandemic, and I'm willing to hazard a guess that most of the films you have watched over the last eighteen months have been from the comfort of home, with, at most, a family member or two. But watching a film like this: ....isn't really the same as watching a film like this : Sadly we don't quite
Read more

Down With... Architecture!??

Image
  Okay, folks, this one is just plain bonkers. We've had a month or so of fairly heavy films that tackle some difficult topics (Evolution; Witch-burning; Segregation; Rape.. nice, uncontentious subjects) so it's about time we pause for some refreshment. The rest of March is going to be fun, fun, fun. Say hello to Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was born in Russia to a well-educated, upper-middle class Jewish family. The October Revolution of 1917 brought her comfortable childhood to a very sudden and violent end (she was twelve at the time) and her family lost absolutely everything. By the time she was able to travel to the United States in 1926, she had cultivated what was to become a life-long visceral hatred for Communism, or indeed for any remotely collectivist philosophy. She wasn't merely opposed to the Soviet Union (which you can sort of understand, given what happened to her family); she was violently opposed to any obligations that might be imposed upon the individual for the b
Read more

We re-visit stage comedy (in more ways than one) on Thursday the 7th of October

Image
 We are continuing with the "stage comedy" theme next Thursday, after last week's screening of The Importance of Being Earnest. Noises Off began life as a stage comedy which premiered in London's West End in 1982. It is a farce about a farce, which presumably makes it a meta-farce.  This meta-farcical comedy(!) centres around a company of actors rehearsing (and then performing) a play (entitled Nothing On ) which becomes increasingly incoherent as the story progresses.  The original stage version is a merciless (and painfully funny) analysis of just how a farce works - or doesn't work, as the case may be. The film adaptation cranks things up a notch by attempting to film the staging of... the staging of a farce (a meta-meta-farce?) and in the process shows just how difficult it can be to translate a stage play to the screen.  While the film may not be 100% successful, it does manage to be one of the funniest things you will ever see (the first time I saw it, I la
Read more

Down With... Heresy

Image
  Okay, folks, this really is it. The time has come. The moment is now.  We have been running these film nights for over eight years, and in that time, it's safe to say that I have shown many different kinds of films. Some have been iconic classics, and some have been incredibly obscure. Some of them were silent films. A few were in 3D. In fact, we've shown pretty much every type of film by now: old films, new films and films from in between. French films, German films, even films for Halloween. In all these years, however, there is something that I have consistently resisted, but have always wanted to show. I have just been waiting for the right moment. This is the moment. The moment we've been waiting for. (...and if you get the reference, you will know what I'm about to say.) That's right, ladies and gents. On Thursday, the 30th of March, and for the very first time, I'm going to show an opera. Down With... Lady Parts So far, in our exploration of Cancel Cult
Read more