My appreciation of Casablanca and its star in this grand cinema setting was enhanced by the fact that I was at the time reading Bogart (1997), by A.M. There was no way he could have known that most of his greatest performances would lie ahead, that after multiple failed marriages (one still unraveling that very night) a young starlet he had only just met would come to be the love of his life and mother of his children, and that he would at last achieve not only the rare brand of stardom reserved for just a tiny slice of the top tier in his profession, but that he would go on become a legend in his own lifetime and well beyond it: the epitome of the cool, tough, cynical guy who wears a thin veneer of apathy over an incorruptible moral center, women swooning over him as he stares down villains, an unlikely hero that every real man would seek to emulate.
He was already forty-four years old on that disappointing evening when the Academy passed him over. He didn’t really expect to win, but we can yet only wonder at what Bogart must have been thinking. This turns out to be a familiar story for Bogart, who struggled with a lifelong frustration at typecasting, miscasting, studio manipulation, lousy roles, inadequate compensation, missed opportunities, and repeated snubs-public recognition of his talent and star-quality came only late in life and even still frequently eluded him, as on that Oscar night. And although the film won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as in almost every other major category, Bogart was nominated but missed out on the Oscar, which instead went to Paul Lukas-does anyone still remember Paul Lukas?-for his role in Watch on the Rhine.
Signpost reviews 123 floor movie#
Such a movie might have been made, but it could hardly have achieved a greatness on this order of magnitude.īogie never actually uttered the signature line “Play it again, Sam,” so closely identified with the production (and later whimsically poached by Woody Allen for the title of his iconic 1972 comedy peppered with clips from Casablanca). There’s no doubt that without Bogart, there could never have been a Casablanca as we know it.
But Bogie remains the central object of that universe the plot and the players in orbit about him. Even so, most would concur with me that its star, Humphrey Bogart, was indeed the greatest actor of that era.Īttendance was sparse, diminished by a resurgence of COVID, but I sat transfixed in that nearly empty theater as Bogie’s distraught, drunken Rick Blaine famously raged that “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine!” He is, of course, lamenting his earlier unexpected encounter with old flame Ilsa Lund, splendidly portrayed with a sadness indelibly etched upon her beautiful countenance by Ingrid Bergman, who with Bogart led the credits of a magnificent ensemble cast that also included Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. Although over the years I have watched it in excess of two dozen times, this was a stunning, even mesmerizing experience for me, not least because I consider Casablanca the finest film of Old Hollywood-this over the objections of some of my film-geek friends who would lobby for Citizen Kane in its stead. Early in 2022, I saw Casablanca on the big screen for the first time, the 80 th anniversary of its premiere.
0 kommentar(er)
