I still tear up every time I watch the scene in Casablanca when Paul Henreid’s Victor Laszlo gets the band at Rick’s American Cafe to play “La Marseillaise” and even Yvonne jumps up and starts singing. It’s a reminder that even the heartbroken and seemingly comfortable can’t stay on the sidelines forever when faced with evil. It comes for us all, eventually, and you can’t deny that no one is truly safe when we let that kind of ideology persist (although Rick also shows the importance of timing).
The movie is dear enough to me that I’ve even read a book about it, from film historian Noah Isenberg. I highly recommend We’ll Always Have Casablanca for any film nerd in your life. In theory, writing by committee shouldn’t work, but the script for Casablanca passed through many hands (the original screenplay is based on an unproduced play) and somehow came out perfect.
While the film itself is as precise as storytelling gets, as a car person there’s a couple of things you can’t help but notice. The protagonist Rick, played with mesmerizing pathos by Humphrey Bogart, runs up against a couple of characters who have, ahem, kind of lazy seeming names. Let’s see, there’s an Italian fixer played by the British actor Sydney Greenstreet. What can we name him? Oh, I know, Signor Ferrari! While people now typically associate the name with Ferrari, the carmaker, when the film came out it wasn’t yet a household name so this is probably a coincidence.
Ok, ok, there’s an even more important character, a Frenchman (also played by British actor, this time Claude Rains) who is both tenuous ally and rival of Rick. What should he be named? I’ve got it, Louis Renault! That one seems like less of a coincidence because Renault had been around for a number of years. Who names a character after a car? That seems a little obvious.
Anyway, our own… Mercedes Streeter is on an amazing mission to rescue some beagles, and that opened up member Zipn Zipn to share his own beagle story:
Thanks for the update! Keep ;em coming!
Our Beagle, Johnny B. Goode (also a rescue from a foster home) does some of the same behaivors. Sweetheart of a pup.He’s incredibly strong and very dense (honestly he feels like he weighs 3x more than he should when you pick him up).
He was also was traumatized by something before we got him and still hides whenever there’s thunder / loud noises within 100 miles (we call him a k-9 barometer if his tail tucks in) and gets the shakes if it’s real stormy.
He has separation anxiety. Doesn’t like being alone but he’s gotten much better over the year we’ve had him.
He loves to jump up and put his paws on you when you’re sitting down, waiting to get petted, chin-rubbed, and he sort of grunts and tries to talk to you once you start and doesn’t want you to stop. Ever.
He comes up to me when it’s time for a walk, and since he can Houdini out of any simple color, we strap him into a complicated body harness to put the leash on him.. so it sticks his head in it and also helps you to put it on him. Smart animal.
Beagles are amazing, soulful animals. It sounds like Naomi has your number Mercedes…
I think it may be the start of a beautiful friendship!.
Based on some of her Slack posts, I think the odds that Mercedes comes back with 16 beagles aren’t as bad as you might guess.
A new Honda Accord is also coming, which is good timing for Honda’s CEO, who is in trouble for losing focus on China and instead spending too much time on links which, 96Z26 notes, is a uniquely Japanese problem:
We can oust people for focusing too much on golf and not having productive meetings with China? Why didn’t anyone tell me this???
What? I am shocked, shocked, to see golf being discussed in this establishment.
Top photo: Casablanca
At least Rick’s last name wasn’t Ford.
Full disclosure: not a dog person. And beagles are way down my list. If there’s a dog around, that dog had better *goddamn* obey commands.
“Oh, but Sir Worthington Smythe Price-Price (Sir PP for short) is just a *food-driven* dog, he can’t help it.”
No. I’m not spending the barbeque protecting my fuckin’ burger from your four-legged terror.
…it may be a sore point for me. ????????
“Rick, how extravagant you are throwing away women like that.” “Someday they may be scarce! ” Yep.
When I was at Bard College, Howard Koch, one of the credited screenwriters of Casablanca would come to talk to film students about making the film.
One of the interesting things about the process of making the film was that the script was ostensibly being written as filming was already underway, and there would be days where they would film reaction shots and cutaways, with the actors, told to look sad or exasperated or simply making a knowing glance to each other. There was a scene shot where the actors are jostling each other, and someone asked if they were supposed to be crowding into the room, out of the room, or escaping, and Howard Koch told them that he hadn’t figured that out yet, and made the characters didn’t know either.
He was asked if some of the famously disorganized production was a way to make a film that the studio might not have let them, and he said that Warner Brothers didn’t really know what was going on, but that there ware a lot of German refugees working on the film.
The highest paid cast member was Conrad Veidt (Major Heinrich Strasser) who was an international star. He was a vehement anti-Nazi who had fled Germany with his Jewish wife.
Interestingly Strasser is common German and Ashkenazi Jewish surname meaning a person who lives on the road. The name is famously associated with the Strasser brothers (Gregor and Otto Strasser), who were prominent early members of the Nazi party, one of whom was killed in the night of the long knives, and lent their name to Strasserism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism
Way too complex to go into and depressingly familiar in light of current political news, but the name of the character is obviously not random. Also automobiles and roads go together like Bagels and preserved fish,
Not that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preserved_Fish so that’s on topic at the Autopian.
Anyway, Howard Koch had quit a few interesting stories ranging from working with Orson Wells on War Of The Worlds to the Hollywood black list,
Of course mentioning Casablanca without mentioning Michael Curtiz is simply unacceptable, so I am mentioning him now.
Louis Renault (the car manufacturer) was already considered to be a collaborator in the West, as shown in a 1942 Life article on the French Resistance cited on his Wikipedia page. (His collaboration is why Renault became state-owned.) Perhaps it was a reference – sly or otherwise – to that.
Louis Renault, probably gets treated unfairly. The alternative was for the Germans to move his factories to Germany and take his employees as slave labor. Instead he keep them in France and built sabotaged trucks and military equipment with defective bearings and mis-marked dipsticks that failed on the Russian front. Also, in his will he had left his company to his employees.
I think his reputation in the modern day has more to do with how inconvenient it would be for the French government to admit that they were wrong, and probably murdered him in prison.
And pay compensation to his family for the expropriation of Renault.
This ^^^
Aren’t you confusing Citroën with Renault ? They are the ones who sabotaged trucks.
You’re right, and I am wrong, the engineers at Citroën designed the defects into their trucks including the famous dipsticks.
The sabatoge at the Renault was less organized and more random,
Had Germany won, the Citroën engineers and management, or at least Pierre Boulanger, would surely been discovered and executed.
Casablanca is truly a movie that lives up to the hype. Perfect film. If you haven’t seen it, watch it this weekend. You will not be disappointed.
I never got the hype of Casablanca. Maybe it’s because I think Animal House is the best movie ever!
Mentioned to the wife as I was reading this that I’ve never seen Casablanca. Shocked, I tell you she was shocked. Looks like I’m watching it this weekend.
Really, other than Ilsa referring to Sam as “that boy” – which always has me bracing and wishing they’d re-written that line – it’s as close to perfect as a movie drama ever will be.
First on my list of movies that should NEVER be remade.
For sure!
A round of golf takes like 4 hours, most people spend more than that staring at a screen at home.
Poor golf, always the bad guy of sports.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure it’s the massive environmental cost that most people are upset about when it comes to golf.
Like Scottsdale, it’s not like Arizona has any water shortage issues right?
I think it’s also the whole thing about the highly placed and wealthy upper echelon corporate types out stroking each other and reinforcing the power elite out on the golf course while the rest of the poor dweebs slave away, doing the “real work”. And yeah, having lots of golf courses in central Arizona seems kinda not great, environmentally.
It’s all just a rich people cycle. There’s a course a few miles up the road from me, and it’s like $10k/yr to be a member.
I learned it’s all business owners writing off the cost, and they basically use it as a hub to network with other people (a lot of construction and renovation businesses, as an example).
When I worked for two of the big six consulting companies back in the 90’s my coaches were always pushing me to get out schoozing and getting my face known on the golf course. They insisted it was a requirement for promotion beyond associate.
Stuff like that is exactly why I keep dodging offers to move up to management.
I mean, I could use a 40% pay bump, but there’s no job security and I hate playing their games.
Usually lots of unpaid overtime, dragged into solving any crisis they imagine you can help in solving and loads more backstabbing weasels competing for your seat.I worked for Anderson Consulting (Accenture) and Deloitte and Touche. Spent a couple of years at each of them traveling the world. It sucked, and was very stressful. Convinced me that was not what I wanted to do.
The irony is that one could make a desert scrub course in Arizona that leans into the local terrain, then market it as unique. One of my uncles used to self-publish a golf newsletter (that got mailed! to people!) mostly about Florida…I asked him once how different the various courses *really* were. He admitted that in the end one manicured course is much the same as another. So why not lean in to what makes a place unique?
I don’t golf, but that sounds like a cool idea.
Way, way back around ’85 we lived in Phoenix and we were playing disc golf a bunch. Our favorite course was a desert course, with all of the attending cacti, scrub brush, and other dangerous living obstacles. We loved it. We decided that that location was not a rational place for humans to live, so we left after a year at our jobs.
Yeah. They need to save that water for the vegetable farmers adjacent the river, not for those foolish citizens, golf greens, or overly green grass lawns.
I don’t have a problem with golf courses per se, but I have a huge problem with golf courses in Arizona, smack in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. Why? Because I lived in Tucson for five years. I don’t even know why turfgrass is even legal to plant in the ground in Arizona. It looks out of place everywhere that’s not a golf course, and Arizona is not exactly London, so your verdant English garden is a bad idea there.
Fun fact! Living within one mile of a golf course dramatically increases your chances of developing Parkinson’s.
Which is not new info, we’ve known that herbicides/pesticides are directly connected to Parkinson’s, but now there’s studies out on golf courses specifically.
Here’s a reputable source if you’d like to know more.
It also dramatically increases your chances of getting hit with a golf ball.
I lived in a company condo on a golf course for a couple of months and lost count of how many balls rattled around on my balcony. The amazing thing was that it happened rain or shine. Golfers are relentless and would rather play in the rain than watch it on TV.
Coincidentally, being within 100 yards of me in any direction at a driving range ALSO increases your chances of getting hit with a golf ball. Or the club. Or both.
And even in places with plenty of water, there’s still a ton of herbicides and fertilizer used to support a pristine monoculture.
While they probably use gray water for the course, I never got why there was so many of them in Arizona.
Lots of old people would be my guess, although I’m considered old and register a negative interest in golf.
Ain’t much else to do in that desert if you’re in such rotten shape that you need to ride around in a cart for five hours (and lie and say that it was four hours) rather than carrying your own clubs.
California too, big ol’ drought.
I’m with Wilde on this; golf is a great way to ruin a nice walk in the countryside.
“I tell ya, country clubs and cemeteries are the biggest waste of prime real estate.”
To be completely fair to Golf, it works at a great scapegoat. How many times do you look at a management decision and think “What have them been drinking?”
Golf doesn’t provide an accident to this question, but are least you know the where. Because I can’t think of a business activity that allows you to day drink like Golf.
Yeah, the three-martini lunch is a thing of the past, so golf is all you got.
No matter how hackneyed you can’t beat Stan Lee and the guy who actually wrote Spiderman when it comes to lazy character names. And they used their kitch even on the ledes.
We may not talk Golf that often but yesterday’s shatchback article was full of Jetta.
In fairness, it was a movie made in the early 1940s, and at point, most Americans hadn’t ever left the country, unless they were rich or working on behalf of their uncle. So to engage a general audience, it had to be something obvious or ethnic slur-related. Glad they went obvious.
I’m pretty sure none of my ancestors ever left the UK until the 1940’s when several of them got an all expenses spared cruise, courtesy of the government, to various far flung places, where occasionally unpleasant people shot at them. Most of my mum’s family had probably never been further than 100 miles away from Gloucester until then.
From 1900-1940, race relations when through a giant transition in the US. Before the big waves of immigration around 1900, the US saw many Europeans as being a different race. Italians, Irish, Slavic, etc. were “other” races than the classic WASP. Not difficult cultures, different RACES. With all sorts of stereotypes (like Irish were generally portrayed as monkeys in the 1800s).
Meanwhile, you had things like what my dad, mom and uncle experienced. They went to the local grade schools, where kids from various enclaves of different races all showed up. My dad’s 1st grade class spoke 8 languages and there were only 14 kids. Dad grew up with these kids. When they reported to school after working all summer in the farms, they were various shades of brown with guys like my dad (with a Scot father) being a much lighter shade than most of his classmates, but this wasn’t really remarked upon. To dad, these kids were just friends, rivals, whatever and not different.
Two stories to show how this impacted things.
My dad had a rival all through school for being the best student. When he went to a 40th reunion, he was shocked to learn this girl had grown up to be a black woman. Her parents didn’t own a farm and she worked indoors and was naturally lighter skinned, so she was not significantly darker than the Italian and Greek kids that worked in the fields. To dad, since she spoke English at home, she was much closer to the same race as him then the kids that spoke other languages. It wasn’t until 30 years at a high school that he realized she was African American.
My uncle remarried late in life. He married a classic old white woman in her 70s. He couldn’t understand how she could make such great lasagna that she claimed was her mother’s recipe. Her name was Mary Ricci. She grew up speaking Italian at home, but 70 years of speaking English and working indoors meant that my uncle really didn’t realize she was second generation Italian American.
So the younger Americans being completely clueless about cultural identity lead to a lot of the “LOOK, THIS GUY IS FRENCH!” stuff you see in movies of the era.
Thanks for sharing my sentiment, the world is much smaller today than it was then. I see this as making clear delineations of where the characters are from in a way that the audience of the time will understand. I too am glad they avoided the slurs.
An aside, I finally watched Casablanca about a year ago, and was surprised at how good it is, and how well it has held up.
All of the Bogart – Bacall outings are fantastic IMO, and their skill and chemistry elevate even pedestrian stories into art. I rewatched Key Largo late night this weekend, and was once again amazed at how much energy and tension is packed into a film with largely a single location.
I absolutely need to watch more of their films.
To put in an unsolicited plug for one of my favorite Bogart noirs, check out In a Lonely Place. One of his absolute best, he plays a volatile screenwriter who’s accused of murder, and has a girlfriend who gradually begins to suspect he might actually have done it. It’s good they’ve never remade it as it’s probably impossible to improve.
Amazing, I will indeed check this out! Thanks!
Many members of my family travelled abroad. They just happened to be carrying rifles when they did it.
Puts down clubs and slinks away in the rain.
The most incredible thing about that scene: those extras in the background singing La Marseillaise? Those are real French refugees. This movie was released in 1942, at the height of Nazi power, back when they seemed unstoppable. Madeleine Lebeau, the actress playing Yvonne, herself had escaped Paris ahead of the occupation.
Those refugees — who had no way of knowing if they’d ever return home, or if France would ever be free again — were given a chance to sing their national anthem and defy the Nazis, on camera, to the world.
All those tears are real.
https://seveninchesofyourtime.com/cinemas-greatest-scene-casablanca-and-la-marseillaise/
I was well into my fifties before I ever saw Casablanca and by then I knew all the spoilers.
Casablanca spoofs, though, those I knew well. For unrelenting shtick, one liners and sight gags (and ensemble cast of second bananas) you can’t beat Neil Simon’s The Cheap Detective. For sheer WTF made-for-TV oddity American Playhouse’s Overdrawn At The Memory Bank (with Raoul ‘Gumball Rally’ Julia) will serve.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077321/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089759/
Oh man, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is quite the trip, especially with the MST3K treatment. “He’s trying to pass a ham through his left ventricle!” gets me every damn time.
While they may have been lazy about some of the names…
….Gambler #3 comes to mind….
….the producers did go to some extra effort in making a 1927 Lincoln Model L look like a Mercedes-Benz.
Ferrari is the Italian version of Smith, so it’s not exactly an uncommon surname over there!
More interestingly though, a famous French jurist by the name of Louis Renault represented France at the international court of arbitration in 1909 for the “Casablanca Case”.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2186704?seq=1
The case itself (although in the wrong time period and with some of the roles swapped around) might have been an inspiration for the original story if my understanding of Edwardian-era legalese isn’t lacking.