esrosedotblog

THE BEST

Today's movie was CASABLANCA (1942). Enough said. Forget CITIZEN KANE. This has everything. It is the one that is on almost everyone's best list. It has a phenomenal 8.8 on the IMDb User Rating.

We laughed, cried, got excited, jumped when the plane motor starts and, once more, listened to all the lines that we have come to love. We also heard some new lines that we never 'got' before. There are Bogart and Bergman and Raines and a whole cast of familiar character actors running the engine of this wonderful, truly miraculous film.

Why miraculous? It was written as it went along and no one actually knew who would get on the plane until the end. So, it was filmed more or less chronologically. It had historic heft. The allies entered Africa at Morocco just three weeks after the picture was released. Roosevelt showed it at the White House. The first allied conference (without Stalin) happened in Casablanca. There's the guy whose signature is on the transit documents; de Gaulle. The film cost a million to make, a lot for the time. It made back four! Another miracle.

This was the beginning of Bogart's second career as, improbably, a romantic lead. He was a man of his times. Hard and cynical and soft at the core; he personified a type of man that people apparently needed to see. He was no matinee idol.

We love watching him today. Of course, he is a consummate actor. The other day, we saw him close the deal on Captain Queeg in just the few minutes alloted on the witness stand.

I do not have the stats to back this up; but, I bet he is more BestFilms than any other actor. They say that Robert Duvall has that honor for the AFI Best list but that is for all his roles from walk-on to star. My idea is that Bogart is the star most seen in the best.

Of course all this 'best' stuff is just a diversion. The actual fact is that a good movie is a good movie and this one hits max on all the measures of how a film should work. I will give it a 5 on the Netflix5 Scale.