Film clips

Watching Casablanca for the umpteenth time - one of those movies I never get tired of viewing - the other night on TCM, I was struck by just how much this movie embodies it all and therefore why it might be the greatest movie of all time, or at least one of the top five. Let's count the ways.  The Michael Curtiz 1942 classic from an unproduced play has drama and strife (World War II refugee crisis and the Nazis gaining on North Africa), comedy (with numerous comic turns by Claude Rains as Capt. Renault – i.e., “I'm shocked to find out that gambling is going on!”, Sydney Greenstreet as Signor Ferrari’s swatting flies at the end of each poker-faced comment, and even Humphrey Bogart’s Rick’s wry “I came to Casablanca for the waters.”) The movie has romance with Rick’s “We’ll always have Paris,” and “Here’s looking at you kid” to Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). It has patriotism (the nightclub crowd drowns out the German officers by singing La Marseillaise). It has a terrific score topped by Herman Hupfeld’s As Time Goes By. There are the iconic characters including Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo, Peter Lorre as Signor Ugart, Dooley Wilson as Sam and S. Z. Sakall as Carl. And, if you want, the movie goes even deeper, portraying Rick as an existential character who looks out only for himself – “I’m the only cause I’m interested in” - until he’s forced to choose. 

Prior to Casablanca that night on TCM, the network showed another Ingrid Bergman classic, Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944). For a reason I still haven’t been able to figure out this old movie has served as the background for one of the most common current political catchwords, “gaslighting.” In the movie, Bergman as Paula is manipulated by her husband Gregory (Charles Boyer) to a point where she is being driven insane. That’s because he keeps denying her perceptions - her truth - until she doesn’t believe herself at all.

I am currently in St. Petersburg, Fla., where last week I caught the Oscar nominated documentary short films (five) as well as the Oscar nominated live action shorts (five). The contrast between the screening of those films here (at the Tampa Theatre) and in Detroit (at the DIA’s Detroit Film Theatre) is amazing. In Detroit, viewing the Oscar shorts is a major event and you better come early to get a parking space. Here, you could count the number of people on your fingers in the extraordinary elegant 1920-era Tampa Theatre, with an interior designed like a Mediterranean village.

Finally, February 2 was Groundhog Day. But do you think I could find Groundhog Day, the movie, anywhere? Not on TCM, not on Netflix. This modern comedy classic (1992) by Harold Ramis and starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, deserves to be screened every year, as an alleged holiday film, just like A Charlie Brown Christmas and Easter Parade.