The SmarK DVD Rant for Casablanca: Special Edition
“I am shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here!”
“Your winnings, sir.”
“Oh, thank you very much.”
– I think a lot of people are sort of intimidated by great movies and thus left unaware of what fun they can be. Citizen Kane, for example, is an awesomely intimidating movie for someone who’s never seen it before, and very often the viewer is left feeling like they should be getting more out of it, like they’re missing some great experience that the rest of the world is in on.
Hey, man, they’re just movies. Some like them, some don’t. In the grand cosmic arch of it all, “Casablanca” is no more of a great achievement of humanity than “Daredevil”. That’s not to say they’re equal as movies or even on the same playing ground, but in the end it’s all subjective — if you liked it, then to you it’s a good movie. You’re not being graded while watching the movie, and no one is going to think you’re a bad person if you don’t “get it”. However, in a world where “Weekend at Bernie’s” is considered classic film-making, I think, just to be fair, everyone should at least do themselves a favor and rent one of those scary “great movies”, even just once to watch in the background while making out with someone.
That being said, I personally LOVE Casablanca, and here’s why
The Film
Originally released on DVD way back in the early days of the format in 1997, Warner is finally giving one of the greatest films of all-time a long-deserved 2-disc special edition, complete with cleaned-up print and sound.
Now, I’m not the kind of guy who would claim by any stretch of the imagination to be an auteur of great cinema. I leave the hardcore critiquing to those who get paid for it. My function is mainly to serve as the voice of the unwashed masses (i.e., you) and tell you why a movie works for me or doesn’t.
So for a moment let’s ignore all the accolades and praise heaped on this movie over the years. We’re just a couple of regular people talking about a movie.
First of all, and I think this is pretty important, Humphrey Bogart is COOL. He delivers lines with the kind of cynical irony that sounds like something out of a Seattle coffeehouse at times. He’s totally believable as a badass and a romantic leading man at the same time. And although smoking is disgusting, he manages to look more complete with a cigarette on his lips and the smoke drifting mysteriously out of his mouth.
Second, this is a movie filled with smart people. REALLY smart people. For those who are tired of dumb people delivering dumb dialogue from cue cards, this is a movie filled with intelligent people having verbal sparring matches, without being truly insulting or mean.
Third, this movie is romantic as hell. Chicks LOVE this movie. If you want to impress a girl with your sensitivity, pop this one in and watch her melt around the point where Rick is having flashbacks to Paris and Sam is singing “As Time Goes By” in a futile effort to cheer him up. You can even impress her by quoting some of the more famous lines from the movie, because everyone knows them by now.
Fourth, it’s about Nazis getting humiliated. That never gets old.
I think you get the idea. While a movie like “Citizen Kane” was made by Orson Welles as a way of showing off (and a damn fine way of it, too) this is a movie made in workmanlike fashion by the studio and director for the purpose of ENTERTAINING, not making any big point or flashing symbolism at you to make you feel inferior for not getting that that the ice-cream truck in Act Two really represents the lost innocence of America or whatever. There’s very little beneath the surface here, but the surface is so loaded you can watch it 50 times and still not get sick of it.
Casablanca is the story of Rick Blaine, who has retreated to the city of the movie’s title in 1941, while the Germans occupy France. Why he left America for France in the first place we don’t know, and why he couldn’t stay in France during the Occupation is equally mysterious, and also not important to the plot. The point is that he’s a man in exile, running an Americanized bar in a Northern African French colony over-run by Germans. Rick’s a nice guy, but in his words, he doesn’t stick his neck out for anyone. This is immediately tested when the Germans want to put on a show of arresting a dissident named Ugarte (played in a memorable short role by Peter Lorre), who tries to take sanctuary in Rick’s bar and finds no sympathetic ear. Rick has been burned by getting involved before, and obviously doesn’t want it to happen again. However, before getting dragged off by the Gestapo, Ugarte leaves Rick some “letters of transit”, which will magically allow the holder to travel out of the country without getting hassled by the Germans. This is of course quite a silly idea, but that’s beside the point. Rick now has the letters, and the holder can leave the country.
On the side of the Germans (maybe) is local prefect of police, Louis Renault, played brilliantly by Claude Rains. Renault is an implied womanizer (you couldn’t outright be a cad in 1942 due to censors) who is quite happy to exchange “favors” for passage out of Casablanca, or for lenient treatment in general. He has kind of a delicate détente with Rick, since the Germans annoy him as much as the natives do. In short, he’s totally amoral and casts his line in whichever pond has the best fish. He also makes for some of the best lines in the movie (although not the most famous). He’s not so much a villain as a reactionary force, trying to avoid getting in trouble with higher-ups in the Third Reich.
Rick’s life is pretty empty as he wanders through his nights in the bar with the aide of liquor and vapid women (when asked his nationality by the Germans, he quips “I’m a drunkard”, and Renault adds “That makes him a citizen of the world.”) until the beautiful and mysterious Ilsa Lund walks into his gin-joint (of all the ones in the world she could have picked ) and sends him into a tailspin. Unfortunately, she brings her husband with her, freedom fighter Victor Laszlo. Now, Laszlo is actually supposed to be the moral center and hero of this movie, but many people, myself included, think he’s a bit of a self-righteous dick. He’s not a BAD person — in fact he’s hopelessly straight-laced and dull for a guy who was captured by the Germans and escaped from concentration camps 5 times. You’d expect a LITTLE bitterly ironic commentary at some point, but it’s like he just stepped out of a country club.
Anyway, Rick is immediately bummed because he and Ilsa shared a tryst in Paris prior to his arrival in Casablanca, and she left him standing in the rain at the train station in an endlessly parodied and referenced scene. At the time she also thought that Victor was dead, and it’s implied that she found out about his being alive and picked him over Rick. So now you’ve got Rick, who only looks out for himself, faced with the problem of his former love and her current do-gooder husband, looking for a way out of the city, and Rick with the only two tickets out of there. But with the passion rekindled between Rick and Ilsa, will he leave with her, or do the right thing and let her leave with her husband?
Well, of course everyone knows the answer 60 years later and can probably recite Rick’s speech at the airport, too, but that’s not the joy of watching the film. The joy is seeing the subtle dance between the unscrupulous Renault and Rick (they have a bet on whether Laszlo will escape his predicament — Rick wants 20,000 francs, but Renault protests that he’s just a “poor corrupt official” and settles on 10,000 instead) as Renault changes allegiances with every twist of fate. It’s a wonderfully written relationship, funny and complex, as both men play headgames with the German overlords and always teeter on the brink of pissing them off enough to get shot over it. And when Rick finally DOES stick his neck out for someone, you know there’s a good reason for it.
It’s probably one of the closest things to a perfect movie as you’re going to get, as noted by Roger Ebert during his audio commentary. There’s no bad scenes in this movie, it’s nearly two hours long and flows from one moment to the next, never dragging or needing trimming. All the characters are very likeable and good in their own way, even the bit-part scoundrels like Peter Lorre (who would probably be played by Steve Buscemi given a Hollywood remake these days). The only real villain is Major Strasser of the Nazis, but he’s only portrayed as a minor character doing his job, and he gets his comeuppance in the end anyway.
Really, in the long run, what more can I add about Casablanca that thousands of others haven’t already? It’s brilliantly executed and written, funny and charming while at the same time exciting and suspenseful, and features both the coolest leading man ever in Bogart and one of the most beautiful leading ladies ever in Ingrid Bergman. And it still works today, 60 years later, just as well as it did during the war. This is generally the movie that sits at #1 on my all-time list of favorite movies, and for good reason. No DVD collection should be without a copy of Casablanca.
Here’s looking at you, kid
The Video
Shot in Academy standard ratio of full-screen 1.33:1 (widescreen didn’t start until the 60s), the black-and-white print has never looked better. All the dirt and scratches are gone, contrast is amazing (as it should be) and all the lights and shadows are finally the way they’re supposed to be again. Compare with even the trailer for the 1992 restored version (included on the first disc) and be amazed at the difference. A truly excellent transfer for a very old movie.
The Audio
Presented in Dolby Digital Mono, as was intended. Everything is crystal clear, and that’s all you can ask.
The Extras
Here’s where the long wait for a special edition pays off.
On the first disc, containing the movie, you get a pair of audio commentaries. The first one is by Roger Ebert, as he once again shows why he should do more of them and breaks down the movie scene-by-scene, explaining why it’s so great and talking about the urban legends behind the movie, and Bergman’s superb job of conveying the confusion about who she should be with. The other is by historian Rudy Behlmer, and I’m sure I’ll listen to that one the next time I watch the movie.
You also get the same intro by Lauren Bacall that was on the VHS version and previous DVD version (and looking like a fourth-generation dub at that), the original trailer for the movie, the 1992 re-release trailer for the movie, trailers for “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (another one I’m anxiously awaiting!), all due at the end of September in 2-disc sets, and the usual cast & crew stuff.
And then there’s ANOTHER disc of stuff
The second disc is dealing with the historic look at the movie and Bogart in general. Tons of stuff here. You get
– A 10 minute featurette that has interviews with the children of Bogart & Bergman, talking about the movie. Nothing exciting here.
– “You Must Remember This”, a 30-minute making-of feature hosted by Lauren Bacall, which was included on the original release and is still very good.
– “Bacall on Bogart”, a 90-minute documentary about Bogart’s life and career, featuring a great deal of clips of Warner movies and not much else. Honestly, there wasn’t much here that was really groundbreaking in terms of information about his life, and much of it was focused (surprise surprise) on his relationship with Bacall. Still, all the great clips were neat to see again, especially overlooked stuff like “The Big Sleep” and “Key Largo”.
– There’s actually a couple of quick deleted scenes, although there’s no audio. You also get some outtakes, without audio again.
– You get a real oddity, the TV adaptation of Casablanca, intended as the start of a series of shows based on the movie, with Charles McGraw playing Rick Blaine. REALLY bad stuff, and it only went 10 episodes according to IMDB.
– Also, you get the radio play adaptation of the original play, featuring the stars of the movie. I find it hard to listen to audio-only things on DVD, but this was pretty interesting for as long as I listened.
– Scoring session outtakes, featuring alternate versions of the songs in the movie. Nothing too different, but it’s nice to have clean versions of stuff like “As Time Goes By”.
– The oddest extra is the 1995 cartoon “Carrotblanca”, which is basically the entire movie compressed into 8 minutes with Bugs Bunny playing Rick Blaine. In Dolby 5.1 sound, too. Not particularly funny or anything, but it sure makes you appreciate what a great movie it is.
– And of course the usual production stills that no one ever looks at.
A very interesting mix of stuff, history-wise, although the movie is of course so old that it’s hard to get comments from anyone actually involved in it. Still, what’s here pretty much covers all you could want to know about the movie in as much detail as you’re going to get 60 years later.
The Ratings:
The Film: *****
The Video: *****
The Audio: ***
The Extras: *****
