{"id":316,"date":"2008-03-18T20:14:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T20:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.wordpress.com\/2008\/03\/18\/reviews-of-two-ancient-movies"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:35:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:35:03","slug":"reviews-of-two-ancient-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/reviews-of-two-ancient-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviews of Two Ancient Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
I saw Casablanca<\/span> for the first time last night.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of those movies that, as a theatre guy, I\u2019m supposed to have already seen. But I\u2019ve never really wanted to see it, and now that I no longer pretend to be artsy, I\u2019ve felt no obligation to watch it. I\u2019ve also never seen Citizen Kane<\/span>. It\u2019s supposedly the best movie ever made, yet I don\u2019t know anyone personally who loves it. I think it\u2019s one of those things that highbrow people are compelled to appreciate, so no one wants to admit that they\u2019ve either not seen it or have seen it and didn\u2019t care much about it.<\/p>\n

Casablanca, though, is different. People love Casablanca<\/span>. Even my wife, who makes no attempt to appear artsy, had good things to say about it. So last night, while we folded the laundry, we cranked up Bogart\u2019s classic and watched it after the kids went to sleep.<\/p>\n

Did I like it?<\/p>\n

Well, it was interesting in the same sense that going to a fine museum is interesting, but I can\u2019t say that the flick really did anything for me.<\/p>\n

In the first place, it\u2019s very hard to overlook that everyone is smoking all the time. That\u2019s consistent with most films of the \u201840s, but all I could think about was how Humphrey Bogart must have reeked. Even in the love scenes, Humphrey is chugging away like a wood-burning stove. It\u2019s distracting and unpleasant. Bogart is undeniably charismatic, but he also looks 327 years old, especially in the flashback scenes where he\u2019s supposed to be young and in love.<\/p>\n

And Bergman? I just don\u2019t get it. First off, she\u2019s not that pretty. She\u2019s not ugly, certainly, but everyone in the film is so gaga over a fairly plain-looking woman that I just didn\u2019t understand the appeal. And why would you fall head over heels for a chick who cries a lot and not much else? There\u2019s a sort of distinguished elegance to her, but the stilted formality of her line delivery became tedious very quickly.<\/p>\n

And what to make of the plot? It\u2019s actually quite thrilling to think that this movie was made during World War II, several years before anyone was sure whether the Allies or the Axis were going to win. Now, in hindsight, it feels creaky and labored. It\u2019s indisputably a fine example of filmmaking of its time, but the whole thing feels frozen in amber. There\u2019s no immediacy to it, no life.<\/p>\n

Sam was good, though. Although it\u2019s jarring, in our politically correct culture, to hear Ingrid Bergman refer to him as a \u201cboy,\u201d despite the fact that he\u2019s probably twenty years older than she is. Racist anachronisms abound in old movies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Compare Casablanca<\/span> to another old classic I saw recently \u2013 Arsenic and Old Lace<\/span>. I had seen the play done well at the Utah Shakespearean Festival years ago, and I\u2019d always wanted to see the Cary Grant version.<\/p>\n

I was startled by how dark the film was.<\/p>\n

The premise is black comedy to begin with \u2013 two unassuming old ladies who murder unsuspecting travelers and bury them in their basement – but I assumed they\u2019d have brightened the thing up to make it an appropriate 1940s feel good comedy about happy people with happy problems.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

At one point, Cary Grant\u2019s character is tied up and shown the instruments that are going to be used to torture him in the most gruesome way possible. And while the torture never actually happens, it\u2019s remarkable that they let the character be so violently descriptive.<\/p>\n

There is some softening from the stage version. Cary Grant rejoices about being the \u201cson of a sea cook\u201d instead of a \u201cbastard,\u201d which his character announces in the play \u2013 and the old ladies are dragged off to the sanitarium before they can kill one final time like they do in the play. (Which yields one of the play\u2019s best exchanges: The victim says \u201cI can\u2019t remember my last glass of elderberry wine,\u201d to which one of the old ladies says \u201cHere it is!\u201d)<\/p>\n

Unlike Casablanca, this movie feels almost contemporary. Certainly Cary Grant has more life to him than Bogart does, and nobody on earth wears clothes better than Cary Grant. It\u2019s just not the frothy romantic comedy that one would usually associate with Cary Grant. Maybe that\u2019s why I liked it so much.<\/p>\n

I still haven\u2019t seen Citizen Kane<\/span>, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\" I saw Casablanca<\/span> for the first time last night. It\u2019s one of those movies that, as a theatre guy, I\u2019m supposed to have already seen. But I\u2019ve never really wanted to see it, and now that I no longer pretend to be artsy, I\u2019ve felt no obligation to watch it. I\u2019ve also never seen Citizen <\/span> ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4904,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/4904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}