Casablanca

KurtF

KurtF

Well-known member
Flashback Cinema is putting some classic pictures back into theaters this March. Of particular interest is Casablanca and Blade Runner, both coming in the next few weeks. I've seen bits and pieces of Casablanca on television, but never the whole thing from beginning to end, and never on the big screen. Really looking forward to this.
 
Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to keep an eye out for it in case it comes to a theater around here. Casablanca is one of my all-time favorites. I've got it saved on all my DVRs and have it on Blu-ray as well. Almost a perfect movie with no wasted scenes or bullshit.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Blasphemy!
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There are quite a few colorized versions out there. The first few back in the 80's, when TNT owned the rights, were quite awful. This one looks tons better. I'd have also tried stretching to 1:66. I think the original framing allows that.

 
DLD said:
There are quite a few colorized versions out there. The first few back in the 80's, when TNT owned the rights, were quite awful. This one looks tons better. I'd have also tried stretching to 1:66. I think the original framing allows that.
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Doesn't matter how well it is done technically. It is completely unnecessary and ruins the artistry of the original. If the producers has wanted it to be in color, they could have done it color. Might as well colorize Last Picture Show, HUD, Paper Moon,The Artist, Sunset Blvd, Paths of Glory, To Kill a Mockingbird, Dr Strangelove, and Schindler's List.
 
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Actually, in 1942, a lot of colored film patents were tied up with AGFA (part of IG Farben at the time) and the most of WWII era Hollywood films were in black&white, including all of Bogie's classic 1940's six-pack - the Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, the Big Sleep, the Treasure of Sierra Madre and Key Largo. He had to wait until the African Queen (1951) to shoot again in color.

And then Sabrina (1954) was again in B&W. And was remade with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond in 1995. Poorly.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Blasphemy!
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Exactly! One night it was on local TV and I thought I'll watch that again. Settled in and started watching. Something wasn't quite right?? What was it? Then I realized it was in color... as you say "Blasphemy!". Still wanted to watch is so just wound the color out of it. "That's better." I remember thinking.

Chris Young
 
The worst travesty was when they colorized Captain Blood (1935).

In reference to Citizen Kane, Orson Wells purportedly said, “Don't let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons.”
 
There is something about art that wants to be frozen upon publication. With nonfiction, go ahead and release second and third editions. And with fiction, before publication, go ahead and fuss with it, in the editing room week after week, in private.

But if it has been published and it is fiction, I feel that everyone else feels the way I feel which is that we all feel, for some reason (again these are just feelings), that it should not be changed --- like, at all.

This goes for colorizing black-and-white films as well as updating the special effects in science-fiction movies. Steven Spielberg agrees. At a reshowing of Raiders of the Lost Ark, someone in the audience asked if he considered fixing parts of it, like erasing the reflection of the snake in the glass protecting Harrison Ford. He said something like, Oh no, let George do that (a good-natured joke at which the audience laughed), but he doesn't believe in changing things after release. Once it's released, it's finished.

I think that the artistic process is a process. First there is the process of making it, which is done in private (thinking of the idea, developing the idea, maybe bouncing it off of collaborators, editors, a few friends, etc.). There is a lot of changing and developing and working it, like clay, while you're making it, as everyone knows. And this is true of any art form, whether it be sculpture, novel, film, or whatever. That's all right. In fact it's unavoidable. But I believe the final stage of the process is the release. Then it goes from the artist's hands to the audience's. At that point it is crystallized, frozen, etched in stone.

I don't think it should ever change after that, not even if there are imperfections, not even if they are easily fixed. All those imperfections become endearing nostalgia, for one thing. They are not mistakes anymore but things that make it special.

----

Related, with a movie like Casablanca in particular, it is not loved just because it was well-executed. In fact anyone who has watched it will probably say that it is great and all but maybe not worth the rapturous exaltation that certain movies seem to get after a certain age. It's like they're considered better than modern movies. When they first came out, Shakespeare's plays were considered well written by a talented dude but still popular entertainment, complete with raunchy humor --- maybe the way you and I would think of something by Steven Spielberg. In 500 years I wonder if they will look at Spielberg the way we look at Shakespeare.

Anyway, there is a certain patina that forms on old movies, where they become more loved than they were on release. Casablanca is not just the story. For as you can see whenever they try to remake Casablanca it just isn't as good. This would be the case, I think, even if they pulled it off with better direction, better acting, and an even better script. This because Casablanca is not just the story but it is Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and Dooley Wilson and Claude Rains. It is black and white, and it is the movie that my grandfather watched in Casablanca in World War II, and it is the movie that my film professor talked about and those film books wax on about. A remake is none of those things. And in a way it's not fair because a remake can never be those things, because they're one-time things. But I say that's just the nature of art, and an artist should not attempt to remake something beloved from long ago, he should make a new thing, which might one day be loved for what it is, something unique and new.

So just speak to the world with your own voice, about what you think is important, in the way that you think is the coolest way to do it, and hope for the best --- that it finds an audience. But then it's theirs, so let it continue to grow and develop in their imaginations.
 
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I'm reminded of Cézanne - who apparently snuck into people's houses and retouched his paintings that peeps had bought. If you were returning home from a day out in yer horse and buggy and saw him walking down a rutted road near yer house yer heart stopped. ha. I'm with Welles - keep yer crayons in yer kids room.
 
OK, seriously now.

"Casablanca" is a masterpiece (duh, you say) and it's nice to see it in a restored but original version. That said, I am totally pro experimentation, including the aspect ratio change (if possible). Like I said, I think it can handle 1:66.

 
DLD said:
OK, seriously now.
"Casablanca" is a masterpiece (duh, you say) and it's nice to see it in a restored but original version. That said, I am totally pro experimentation, including the aspect ratio change (if possible). Like I said, I think it can handle 1:66.
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I never suggested you shouldn't watch it however YOU want, but I won't be watching with you. :-)
 
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