CASABLANCA - wonderful contradictions

What can I say about CASABLANCA that hasn't already been said by more articulate reviewers - that hasn't been confirmed by continuous sales over the last sixty-odd years and countless accolades in those AFI Best Of.. lists? As with THE THIRD MAN, all I can give is a personal response. I first watched CASABLANCA on a scratchy video copy at college and was struck not so much by the famous love story but by the dry wit of the script. And as I continued watching it - and I have watched it many times since on video, DVD and restored at the cinema - I am always struck by the inherent contradictions in the movie and I am convinced that it is this tension and subtle complexity that make CASABLANCA such an outstanding film. *Spoilers follow*

So to take it from the top....The protagonist is a bundle of wonderful contradictions. Rick Blaine is a wry, apparently cynical night-club owner who professes to protect no-one's skin but his own. And yet, he has fought on many a losing side in Europe and ultimately makes a sacrifice not merely for love but also for the Czech independence movement. He is played by Humphrey Bogart, an unconventionally handsome man, famous for his roles as wry private eyes with a penchant for white knight behaviour that gets them beaten up and not much love or money when all the fighting's over. In other words, despite Rick's superficial cynicism, he is a romantic.

The heroine is a superficially modern woman called Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman at the height of her beauty. She had an affair with Rick in Paris, but left him for the Czech freedom fighter, Victor Lazlo. Despite the fact that she is beyond the conventional morality of the time - she will eventually leave Casablanca with Lazlo rather than staying with Blaine, to become, essentially, a conventional First Lady figure and emotional support. Blaine may push her onto that plane but I believe Ilsa has a strong enough character to refuse if she really wanted to.

The supporting characters are also a rich rogue's gallery of witty, politically slippery refugees, black marketeers and military officers. The contradiction here is in the film-makers deliberate attempt to make the rogues likeable and to allow Rick to find a certain camaraderie among these slippery people.

Further to this, we have a lushly romantic film - with one of the most emotionally devestating final scenes - wherein the best remembered lines are remarkably ordinary - remarkably colloquial and everyday. "Here's looking at you kid" is a classic example: hardly a dramatic, flowery declaration of passionate love, and yet the fantastic chemistry between the two leads makes us believe that that's exactly what they feel. But let's take this further and look at the tone of the film in which this passionate love story is played out. I give you the following dialogue as an example:

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

This dialogue is funny in its own right, but I think it does more than that. It's sharpness cuts through the heavy romance of the core story and stops it from becoming cloying. Which is why, while we adore CASABLANCA because it is a noble story of love renounced for a greater good, we watch it again and again because it is also good fun. To wit, up with all those famous lines of dialogue about love, perhaps one of the most famous lines has nothing to do with the love story at all: "Louie, this could be the start of a beautiful relationship."

You know all about this, of course. CASABLANCA is a genuinely great and popular movie. Memorable characters, general character development, a narrative that keeps you hanging even when you've seen it before, witty dialogue and an emotional payoff at the end...... But it is worth seeking the movie on re-release because you'll better really appreciate the skillful and economical direction of Michael Curtiz (ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES) and the photography of Arthur Edeson (THE MALTESE FALCON) on the big screen.

CASABLANCA was originally released in 1942. It won Oscars for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay but bizarrely lost out on the Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Photography and Orchestral Score gongs. It is currently on re-release in the UK.

WALLACE AND GROMIT, THE CORPSE BRIDE and NANNY McPHEE - kids movies you can watch without feeling like a big girl

Do you remember the days when no self-respecting adult would go to the cinema to watch a kids movie without taking an actual kid? This was back when Disney had cornered the market, producing schmaltzy fairy-tales where the handsome prince rescued the virtuous girl while cute animals did comic turns. How times have changed. Now it is the done things for adults to proudly read HARRY POTTER on the metro and discuss computer games at dinner parties (or maybe that’s just me?!). And Hollywood has not been slow to cotton on to the box-office pay-dirt that is the crossover movie.

These crossover movies usually have the bright colours and simple narrative structure that are necessary to sucker in the under-tens. But they also have a sophisticated, subversive sense of humour and knowing references to current events and cultural icons. And while they started off as kids films with added bite, such as the CGI animated Shrek, they are increasingly adult films with a comic book sensibility. KUNG FU HUSTLE and ARAHAN are both live-action martial arts movies that will spawn action dolls marketed at children. Both have the sensibility of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. We’ve seen the future, and it has big ears.


All of which is a rather long-winded introduction to my review segment on kids movies. All three are flicks that you may find yourself watching at the multiplex this weekend despite the fact that you are a twenty-something professional who hasn’t been within half a mile of a kid since 1998. So let’s kick off with the hysterically funny box office smash WALLACE AND GROMIT-CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT. Wallace and Gromit are two well-loved British clay-mation characters. Wallace is an inventor – sort of like an old, bald, love-able Inspector Gadget – and Gromit is his long-suffering side-kick who just happens to be a dog. Gromit never speaks, but like Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, his facial expressions are side-splittingly funny.

In this, their first full-length feature, Wallace and Gromit are hired by Lady Tottington to rid her country estate of the Were-Rabbit that is ruining the garden. In the mean-time, the nasty Lord Victor Quartermaine is out to get the rabbit by less humane methods, and to marry Lady Tottington into the bargain. The humour is many-layered - slapstick comedy, sly visual jokes, British toilet humour, and spoofs of famous scenes from horror movies. In addition, the filming is superb. Though created out of clay, these characters are filmed with real cameras on real celluloid with real lighting. Believe me - this makes all the difference and this helps create one of the most visually stunning movies of the year.


Tim Burton’s THE CORPSE BRIDE is a very beautiful, charming movie but I am not sure that charm alone is enough to carry the average adult through 85 minutes of animation. The stop-motion animation looks fabulous but jokes are thin on the ground and even the running reference to the creepy actor Peter Lorre, most famous as the oleaginous Ugarte in CASABLANCA, wears thin. In fact, despite its Disney with necrophilia twist, this is a remarkably conservative movie. Boy meets girl, boy falls in live with girl, boy mistakenly marries another girl who happens to be a corpse……, they sing some jaunty songs and then it ends happily.

Next up is NANNY McPHEE, starring British luvvie, Emma Thompson (The one with Sense in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY) and Colin Firth (the *real* Mr. Darcy). Thompson plays a Nanny brought in to subdue some obnoxious kids in Sound of Music style. Every time she improves their behaviour she loses a wart. I kid you not. No self-respecting adult should go see this, and no self-respecting kid should find it funny. But NANNY McPHEE is raking in the cash, so what do I know?

WALLACE AND GROMIT and THE CORPSE BRIDE are on world-wide release. NANNY McPHEE is already on release in the UK and hits the US on the 27th January 2006 and Germany on the 9th February.