As Time Goes By--the original.

"Casablanca" is one movie that never grows old and rusty or dated. I first saw it as a 14 year old at the Palace Theater in Athens,Georgia and now whenever "Casablanca" is shown on Turner Classic Movies I settle down for a good time with a tear or two as Rick and Ilsa say farewell on that long ago foggy night

This article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution caught my eye and Jay Bookman captures the continuing appeal that "Casablanca" has for some of us.

Do you remember "Casablanca?"

----------------


Bookman: As time goes by, one movie's magic continues
By JAY BOOKMAN
Cox News Service

Thursday, June 19, 2008

"ATLANTA — We got there early, or so I thought. But no.

Some 4,000 people had gotten there ahead of us, forcing us to take seats in the far upper reaches of the cavernous, historic Fox Theatre in downtown Atlanta. We had all been drawn out of our air-conditioned homes on a warm summer evening, pulled away from our TVs and computers and video games, by the chance to watch a black-and-white movie churned out by the studio system more than 60 years ago, long before most of us in the audience had been born.

We came to watch Humphrey Bogart lament that "of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine."

We came to giggle at Claude Rains claiming to be"shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here."

And we came to hear Bogie tell Ingrid Bergman one more time that "it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

The enduring appeal of "Casablanca" would probably startle those who made the movie, because it's such a product of a unique moment in our history. While actors were saying those now-famous lines on a Hollywood soundstage, hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers were being shipped overseas in the opening months of World War II. It wasn't melodrama to say that the fate of the world hung in the balance, giving the screenplay a power that is sometimes lost on modern audiences. Early in the movie, for example, Rick pinpoints the exact moment in time in which the events take place.

"Sam, if it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?"

"Uh, my watch stopped," Sam replies.

"I'll bet they're sleeping in New York. I bet they're sleeping all over America."

The original audience knew quite well what Rick did not, that on Dec. 7, 1941, a wakeup call was coming in the form of Pearl Harbor.

"Casablanca" is many things — a date movie, a chick flick, a war movie, a spy thriller. But it is also a profoundly political movie about the importance of surrendering individual desires for the greater common good, particularly when great things are at stake. We can't all be Victor Laszlo, the charismatic, virtuous hero, but as Rick finally learns, each of us must sacrifice to do our part. That too had a particular resonance for a WWII audience.

So why does the movie still fascinate us even now, in a very different time and place? The movie supplies its own answer: Because it's still the same old story, the fight for love and glory. The fundamental things still apply.

There is also an undeniable magic to the familiar, like the old family stories that get retold every year at the holidays even though everybody already knows every line and detail. When Rick and Ilsa are first reunited, you anticipate the bitter sting of that line you know is coming: "I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue." And when it comes, it never disappoints.

At the end, after Rick walked off into the fog with Louie proclaiming "the beginning of a beautiful friendship," the audience cheered and applauded. But later, as we made our way to the car, the youngest family member remarked that she hadn't realized how silly the movie was.

Silly? One of the greatest movies of all time, silly?

Yes, she said. Silly because at the end, they made Ilsa out to be so stupid and helpless.

Oh, that. Yes, there is that.

"I ran away from you once," Ilsa says, her head lolling on Rick's shoulder. "I can't do it again. Oh, I don't know what's right anymore. You'll have to think for both of us, for all of us."

Those are not the words of the noble, strong Ilsa we've come to know. They are the words of a screenwriter trying to wrap things up. If you look too closely, the plot creaks and groans in a lot of places, particularly in its reliance on magical "letters of transit" allowing anyone to flee the purgatory of Casablanca.

However, you learn to overlook the imperfections of old friends as you get older — you know, as time goes by."



Jay Bookman writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.