Casablanca - 80!
On November 26, 1942, Michael Curtiz's movie "Casablanca" premiered in New York.
The film was based on the play by Murray Burnett and Joan Ellison "Everybody Comes to Rick's". In the summer of 1938, Murray Burnett, a 27-year-old English teacher at a New York vocational school, and his wife, Frances, traveled to German-occupied Vienna to help Jewish relatives smuggle money out. The trip inspired Burnett to create an anti-Nazi play in which an embittered saloon owner helps a militant Czech newspaper editor escape Casablanca with a woman the saloon owner loves. Upon returning to the United States, Burnett wrote a play with little-known aspiring writer Joan Ellison. The play was written in 1940, but was never staged. Theaters that Burnett offered to stage his play refused to perform.
It is difficult to say what was the real reason for the refusals: the presence of a pronounced anti-Nazi narrative in the play or the lack of professionalism of novice playwrights. But everything changed after December 7, 1941, when, after the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, America finally decided which side to take and declared war on the Axis countries. After that, it became at least unprofitable to express disdain for the anti-Nazi narrative, and theaters, as well as film companies, rushed to search for anti-Nazi material. The editor of the story department of the film company Warner Bros. Irene Lee Diamond, who, on behalf of the company to find new plays for their subsequent adaptation, selected a play by Murray Burnett and Joan Ellison and presented it to her boss, Hal Wallis, producer, "Jack Warner's right hand". Jack Warner paid the authors of the play $20,000 (the equivalent of $386,000 today) for the film rights. And it turned out to be the highest payment for an unproduced play at that time.
It's hard to believe that such a sum was paid for an unprofessionally written play. However, Warner Bros. was known for its anti-Nazi orientation. It was the first Hollywood studio to openly declare its opposition to the Nazi regime, and the first to ban the distribution of its films in Nazi-occupied territories. Back in 1936, when many representatives of the American establishment openly expressed sympathy for the Nazi regime, Harry M. Warner made speeches condemning the activities of the Nazis in Germany.
In fairness, it should be noted that the management of Warner Bros. did not intend to create something close to the concept of "masterpiece" on the basis of the play by Murray Burnett and Joan Ellison. The task was much more modest: to make another, passing, on-duty film, one of the 50 scheduled for 1942. Accordingly, the budget for the creation of the picture was allocated as usual for a regular film - about one million dollars (in fact, 1.039 million dollars were spent - about 20 million dollars today).
The filming of the film was scheduled to begin on April 10, 1942. However, in fact, they began only on May 25. The fact is that a lot of complaints about the script were expressed by censors guided by the norms of the Hayes Code in force at that time. The censors saw hints in the script that Captain Renault extorted sexual services from his petitioners, and that Rick and Ilsa slept together in Paris, that Ilsa pays with sex with Rick for transit documents, etc. They had to constantly make serious changes to the script. As a result, only a third of the script was approved for the start of filming, and Ingrid Bergman was forced to constantly ask the director and screenwriters who she should love in the film. But neither Michael Curtiz nor the screenwriters, who were replaced by several during the work on the film, did not know this until the very end of filming.
Ingrid Bergman, who was offered the role of Ilsa, initially declined as she was preparing for a role in For Whom the Bell Tolls, based on Hemingway's novel. Then Michelle Morgan was appointed to the role of Ilsa. But then the influential producer David Selznick intervened, under whose patronage Ingrid Bergman was at that moment. He heard rumors that Sweden was going to enter the war on the side of Germany, and he was afraid that this would negatively affect the career of his ward, a Swedish national. He convinced Bergman to play the role of Ilsa.
The actor for the role of Rick was not immediately determined as well. This role was originally assigned to Ronald Reagan, the future president of the United States. And he even started to participate in the filming. But then the film's producer Hal Wallis came up with the idea that Humphrey Bogart would be a better fit for the part. The idea was perceived by many at that moment with bewilderment, since until that moment Bogart had played exclusively in gangster and criminal action films. And here for the first time he had to act in the role of "hero-lover". Moreover, to play love with an actress who was 5 centimeters taller, and he had to remember to substitute a bench in time. In addition, shortly before filming, Bogart's wife stabbed him with a knife in a fit of jealousy, and he was terribly afraid to give her another reason for jealousy. He was afraid not so much for himself but for Ingrid Bergman.
In fact, despite the belief of many, not just Bogart's wife, that Bogart and Bergman were having an affair, they barely spoke, and the only time they interacted off set was lunch with Geraldine Fitzgerald. According to Fitzgerald, the only topic of conversation during lunch was how they would quickly "get out" of this film, which, as they thought, was doomed to failure due to what they considered funny dialogues and improbable situations. And this is the only thing that united Bogart and Bergman. Bogart dreamed of returning to his usual action movies and detective stories, and Bergman was worried that her role in the film the budget of which was more than 3 times the budget of "Casablanca" could float away from her.
But unlike the stars who played the main roles in the film, the actors involved in supporting roles and extras had a completely different motivation. Many of them were real refugees from Nazi persecution from Germany and other European countries. For example, Conrad Veidt, who played Major Strasser, was well known in the German theater community for his hatred of the Nazis and friendship with Jews. (His wife, Ilona "Lily" Prager, was Jewish.) He was forced to flee his country when he learned that the SS had sent a death squad after him. Veidt played exclusively movie villains during World War II, because he believed that by creating convincing images of suave Nazi villains, he helps to increase the combat potential of Allied soldiers. For the same reasons, Peter Lorre, the star of pre-war cinema ("M", "Maltese Falcon", "Arsenic and Old Lace") agreed to play in this film for a fee of only 500 dollars. The Nazis in the mass scenes in this film were played, and often for free, mainly by German Jews who fled Nazi Germany.
Genuine, unfeigned emotions of actors and extras appeared during the famous scene, when the "Marseillaise" was performed over the German song "Die Wacht am Rhein" ("Watch on the Rhine"). It should be noted that in this scene, Michael Curtiz deliberately copied a scene from Jean Renoir's "Grand Illusion" (1937) in which French soldiers in a German POW camp sing the song as a similar gesture of defiance.
Being released on the screens, the film by Michael Curtiz "Casablanca" very quickly disproved the fears of many about the failure of the picture at the box office. The film grossed nearly $7 million worldwide, a huge success for wartime. In 1944, the film received 7 nominations for the Academy Award, of which it won three, and the most important ones: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
But, in fairness, it should be noted that the success of the film was not only due to the talents of its creators. In many ways, the success of the film was due to the fact that it was made and released at the right time. Initially, the premiere of the film was planned for the beginning of 1943. But in early November, Anglo-American troops liberated the city of Casablanca from the Nazi invaders. And the name of the city literally did not leave the front pages of newspapers in the USA and the UK. Moreover, information was leaked to the press about the meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill planned for early 1943 in the same Casablanca. And then the producers of the film moved the premiere date in New York to November 26, 1942. Newspaper publications about the successes of the Allied forces in North Africa and the upcoming conference played the role of additional and powerful advertising.
As for the reviews of film critics, laudatory reviews prevail. Although there are also negative ones. And, characteristically, negative reviews came mainly from European critics (George Sadul, Umberto Eco), and laudatory ones - from American ones. Bosley Crowther, who is usually very picky, devoted an exclusively laudatory review to the film, not allowing a single taunt in the address of the picture. The main conclusion contained in his review is that:
"they (creators of the movie - FG) have so combined sentiment, humor and pathos with taut melodrama and bristling intrigue that the result is a highly entertaining and even inspiring film."
Roger Ebert, who gave the film 4 stars out of possible 4 stars and included it in his list of "Great Movies", wrote in his 1996 review:
"Stylistically, the film is not so much brilliant as absolutely sound, rock-solid in its use of Hollywood studio craftsmanship. ... Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar."
Russian film critics, for the most part, also devoted laudatory reviews to the film "Casablanca". For example, the famous Russian film critic Yevgeny Nefedov, who rated the film 9 points out of 10 possible, noted in his review:
"The uniqueness, if not the genius, of Michael Curtiz's picture is in an absolutely organic combination of the seemingly incongruous: infectious anti–fascist pathos, likened to a detective intrigue, with powerful melodramatic collisions typical of Hollywood."
By the way, despite the "infectious anti-fascist pathos" the film was not shown in the Soviet Union.
Despite the fact that several decades have passed since the release of the film on the screens, modern moviegoers rate it at least no lower than the audience of the 40s. 79% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. And 29% of users rated the film to the maximum - "ten". Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Michael Curtiz's film "Casablanca" according to FilmGourmand version is 8,638, which allowed it to take 268th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
As a confirmation of the fact that the film "Casablanca" is very popular with modern moviegoers can serve the following fact. In the mid-2000s, the show diva Madonna, apparently feeling a decline in popularity with the public, had an intention to make a remake of this film with her in the role of Ilsa Lund and Ashton Kutcher in the role of Rick Blaine. She presented this project of hers to literally all film companies, but none of them met with understanding. Thank God that there was one head of the company who explained to her that "the film is considered untouchable." However, despite the "untouchability" of the film, in the 80s, the famous media magnate Ted Turner initiated and financed the colorization of the film. Among fans of this film, this action caused, to put it mildly, an ambiguous reaction, and Humphrey Bogart's son said that coloring classic films is like attaching hands to the Venus of Milo.
And in conclusion: in the 80s, as an experiment, the script of the film under the original title "Everybody Comes to Rick's" was sent to major film companies and production centers. Some have recognised the script, but not all. And those who did not recognize the script replied that it was not suitable for creating a decent film. As the main flaws were mentioned "obsolescence", "abundance of dialogues" and "too little sex". That's why they don't make such films anymore.
