I remember watching at least part of the film as a child (too young to appreciate it at all), and seeing this scene particular later as an adult. It's intense, and as mentioned towards the end of this analysis, the actual words of the anthem are brutal. They're not singing "God save the king", but rather "we will water our fields with the blood of our enemies."
What I don't think I ever realized is that the film is from 1942. Pretty much every WWII film is from long after the war ended, but this was released early in the France occupation. That adds so much to its meaning and power.
I mean, God Save The King/Queen is not exactly passive either. For a period it briefly had a mask-off moment, where my people were to be "crushed":
> Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
> May by thy mighty aid,
> Victory bring.
> May he sedition hush,
> and like a torrent rush,
> Rebellious Scots to crush,
> God save the King.
So that's nice, when your own national anthem called for you to be crushed. This verse is not used anymore, but the UK national anthem is obviously not popular in Scotland. I have never learned the lyrics to it and haven't the faintest interest in doing so. For me it starts "God save our something Queen, bleeh bleh bleh bleeeeeeh bleh bleh, god save our queen..."
I know "Kde domov můj" more than I know that song.
I feel like a lot of national anthems have some bits that people gloss over, or have quietly done away with. Part of the charm innit. The Irish national song talks about the 'Saxon foe' in the English version[1] (the English version isn't normally the one sung, and only the chorus of said song is the national anthem proper).
Yeah it's possible that by now many anthems don't truly mean what they currently or originally said, or reference things that are kinda irrelevant today. They're just rousing words that fit a tune, and people sorta go along with it. And tbh as I said the UK anthem doesn't currently openly call for my slaughter and I don't live in fear that I'll be persecuted by the UK government on account of my national identity. But I think it's one thing to have a "Remember this external foe we defeated in our independence struggle" section in your anthem and another to have had one saying "A very large part of our nation must be defeated and its people subjugated", particularly if you are one of those people
Hey greentext andrew163623, I'm very pleased you discovered wikipedia! However the existence of that verse is already known by many Scots, it's not some Forbidden Knowledge that only nationalist papers talk about.
Well it was in reference to the original independence movement (which would just have installed a different fancy lad as King) in the form of the Jacobite Rebellion so yeah :D
But in honesty, the anthem isn't technically prejudiced against the Scottish identity today, it's just sort of ... weird due to this history and some accumulated shit, and many of us just fucking don't like it, but can't really do anything about it.
Flower of Scotland is very slow and brings an odd vibe to sporting events. I prefer Loch Lomond and how it builds :D
> It's intense, and as mentioned towards the end of this analysis, the actual words of the anthem are brutal. They're not singing "God save the king", but rather "we will water our fields with the blood of our enemies."
La Marseillaise, if you boil it down to a single sentence, is basically "Fight on, Frenchmen... because we are utterly screwed if you don't."--almost all of the violence in the song is about the violence directed towards the French by the various coalitions arrayed against it at that time. (Also extremely notable for a national anthem of that period, it never specifically identifies an enemy--contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem.)
> contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem
Yes, OTOH it seems to have a mere passive, defensive spirit: “a guardian of the river” – “the watch on the Rhine” – “protects the sacred border of the land” – “remain”,[1] written afraid of annexation:
“Repeated French efforts to annex the Left Bank of the Rhine began with the devastating wars of King Louis XIV. French forces carried out massive scorched earth campaigns in the German south-west. This policy was fully implemented during the Napoleonic Wars with the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806–1813. In the two centuries from the Thirty Years' War to the final defeat of Napoleon I, the German inhabitants of lands by the Rhine suffered from repeated French invasions.
The defeat and exile of Napoleon gave the Germans some respite, but during the Rhine Crisis of 1840, French prime minister Adolphe Thiers advanced the claim that the Upper and Middle Rhine River should serve as his country's "natural eastern border". The member states of the German Confederation feared that France was resuming her annexationist designs.”[2]
Maybe itʼs even meant as a signal of dishonesty that it is sung by soldiers whose army didnʼt watch at the Rhine but occupied France brutally? Anyway, I donʼt intend to praise the Wacht am Rhein, itʼs certainly not great poetry, rather a rattling and clattering from the dustbin of history.
> the violence directed towards the French by the various coalitions arrayed against it at that time
I’m not extremely deeply familiar with the history and consequences of the French Revolution, but I recall that it was the French who started the War of the First Coalition.
As an ironic aside, it looks like the fellow who commissioned La Marseillaise lost his head to the Reign of Terror.
> contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem
Die Wacht am Rhein? The lyrics on Wikipedia don’t mention the French at all so far as I can tell. They claim that ‘Frenchman’ is a literal translation of ‘Welscher,’ but I think the literal translation is ‘foreigner.’
I mean "started" is maybe too implicative a word. They did declare war but considering the general rasespone of monarchs to Republicanism in that period as well as the territorial ambitions of those monarchs, it's hard to imagine revolutionary France not finding itself at war with most of Europe.
it's actually a common misunderstanding (even amongst french) : the "impure" blood the french anthem is talking about is their own blood, not the one from their ennemies.
Nobility was calling them impure (since not from noble blood), and they reversed it to something to be proud of (kind of).
La Marseillaise was written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle and the "impure blood" clearly refers to the enemies of France. Take a look at the lyrics immediately following the controversial section.
Here's a translation from Wikipedia:
"Let an impure blood
Water our furrows!
What does this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiring kings want?
For whom have these vile chains
These irons, been long prepared? (repeated)
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What furious action it must arouse!
It is for us they dare plan
A return to the old slavery!
What! Foreign cohorts!
Would make the law in our homes!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
…(later)
Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare those sorry victims,
For regretfully arming against us (repeated)"
Okay so Frenchmen are magnaminous, valorous warriors. The enemy are the slaves of tyrants. And we're meant to believe the impure blood in a song written by a French revolutionary era freemason refers to the third estate? Seems unlikely to me.
I'm not sure what's the original interpretation was supposed to be, but as a French, bsaul interpretation is the one I choose to believe, and I think that matters more :)
Are there any reputable sources for that interpretation? At face value, it seems like a flimsy attempt at sweeping the unfortunate implications of the words "impure blood" under the rug.
But since nationalism was widespread and encouraged in that zeitgeist, and considering the context of a foreign invasion in which the lyrics were written, I am way more inclined to assume that the "impure blood" is that of the "ferocious soldiers" coming for the French.
First, Remember it was written in 1792 for the army of the French revolution. I'm French, I've heard a lot of of explanations about these words since I'm a child. Here's one of them: https://fr.quora.com/La-Marseillaise-contient-Quun-sang-impu.... Sorry for the French text.
> They're not singing "God save the king", but rather "we will water our fields with the blood of our enemies."
Well, when the Marseillaise was written, they were about to kill the king, forgo any reference to God and were watering fields with the blood of their enemies (and French soldiers), so it was appropriate, no?
It was complicated. It was a constitutional monarchy at the time, and killing the king was at least one sub-revolution away. Seriously, there were many, many ways he could have avoided being executed. The Revolutions podcast has a decent summary of all of it, including Louis XVI’s many mis-calculations and stupid PR mistakes. If you can call “a summary” 20 hours worth of podcast.
They were at war with half of Europe though, and directly threatened by the Austrian army, amongst others.
You’re right, it’s like something that did not happen in their lifetimes will not happen ever.
To be fair to old Louis though, he did learn from the English civil war: he read Hume’s History of England and was well aware of how Charles I got killed. He tried very hard not to be as inflexible. So instead he got killed for going with the wind and saying yes too often, to the wrong people. And trying to flee, which was really un-patriotic, completely sank the legitimacy of the constitutional monarchy, and opened the door for the radicals.
There's a scene that's a jusxtaposition to Casablanca's (and bow I realise it may have been intended as such): Tomorrow Belongs To Me from Cabaret. It's intense, chilling, and ultimately frightening.
Ironically Casablanca was produced as a b-movie and marks the hight of the studio system. It didn't have a huge budget and it was rushed out to coincide with the allied invasion of North Africa.
It invented a lot of common cliches and tropes that are frequently used in other movies so in many ways it's a victim of its own success. For example in Star Wars the planet of Tatooine is Casablanca and the Cantina is Rick's Cafe.
Yep. I've joked a fair amount that watching Casablanca now is very likely to make you think "this is full of clichés" until you realize, "wait, this is where all these clichés actually started, isn't it?"
Similar to attending a play from The Repertory and hearing all the quotes that originate from it. Especially Shakespeare. But also the rest of the usual suspects. I'm shocked (Shocked!) to learn that movies borrow from Casablanca or Shakespeare.
As it happens La Marseillaise was originally the war song of the French Rhine Army, which was led by a German-born (Bavarian) field Marshal at the time, and was written after France declared war to Austria.
This was long before German unification and the head-on rivalry it created.
Many of the extras (including Madeleine Lebeau, whose face is arguably the symbol of that scene) had recently fled Nazi occupation in Europe, so their emotions were genuine.
At the same time it was a military song sung by soldiers to motivate them during long marches... I like the Marseillaise but all the martial songs are martial.
Watch Chaplin's The Great Dictator and it's really amazing when you realize it came out in 1940 and was created in the late 30's, right when Hitler was seizing power and starting WW2. Chaplin was a genius and realized the most powerful way to hurt Hitler was to make him look like a fool and mock him. Its monologue is an equally unforgettable scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20
* Isak's vision of his family picnicking at the end of Wild Strawberries (1957), where a man finds peace in his journey through the memories of his life
* Hidetora walking out his burning castle in Ran (1985) amid a battle amid his two eldest sons for supremacy, his plan to divide his kingdom among his three children having come to a disastrous end - a man realizing his children (and humanity in general) are more horrible than his naive dreams of unity could sustain.
* Two scenes in The Cranes Are Flying (1957): a montage of Veronika's beloved dying in battle (he falls as his soul seems to ascend bc the camera angle) while she goes about her life; Veronika finding out Boris is dead for sure at the train station, giving the flowers intended for Boris to the returning men and their families, and then she sees the cranes above Moscow - hope and renewal.
* In I am Cuba (1964): a martyred revolutionary, a student, is carried through Havana as the whole city stops what they're doing to honor him, solemnly, cigar-factory workers and all.
* In Andrei Rublev (1966), there's an extended sequence where a bellmaker's young son agrees to pour a bell for a local lord. You see the entire process of making the mould and pouring the metal. It has a town-fair atmosphere. But at the end, there's tremendous pressure on the young bellmaker to have the bell ring properly and have no cracks. And it does. The protagonist, the lapsed monk Andrei Rublev, regains his faith, seeing the result of the young bellmaker's hope. (I've shared this a few times on this website.)
* At the end of L'Ecclise (1962), the two lovers decide to meet the next day but they don't. Instead, we see thirty shots of the empty city - a devastating way to get to the heart of loneliness and lack of connection in modern life.
The ending of "L'Eclisse," directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, is one of the most mysterious endings in cinema. It's one of those scenes that doesn't impose a vision on you, but pulls something out of your subconscious, invites you to reflect on events that could have happened, should have happened, but didn't happen.
The two lovers never meet again after promising not only to see each other that day, but also every day thereafter.
For almost ten minutes, while we are waiting for Alain Delon and Monica Vitti to meet up, the camera points at small insignificant structures in the Roman suburbs, then at a balcony, water running on the ground, ants climbing a tree, leaves moved by the wind. A bus stops and one expects to see one of the two lovers appear, but it is only someone who looks like them.
It is a magical ending because it is not an ending, it is a fragment.
It reminded me of the ending of one of my favorite interviews.
Donald Keene, the American-born Japanese scholar, was interviewed by David Pilling in the "Lunch with the FT" series. The interview closes off with a reflection by Pilling:
"Keene’s eyes are moist. He is staring past me or through me. The restaurant is still quite empty but Keene has flooded it with the memories of people, mostly long dead. He stands to leave and is helped up the narrow stairs to the city above. Down in the basement, I am left at the empty table. There is nothing, not even the wind in the pines."
As Antonioni, a director I recommend especially to Americans, who are culturally oriented toward appreciating stereotypical linear stories with unambiguous endings, said in an interview:
"What people ordinarily call the "dramatic line" doesn't interest me [...] Today stories are what they are, with neither a beginning nor an end necessarily, without key scenes, without a dramatic arc, without catharsis. They can be made up of tatters, of fragments, as unbalanced as the lives we lead."
I also cannot but recommend Antonioni's "La Notte" and its less ambiguous but still poignant ending. Do yourself a favor and watch it.
Thank you for your detailed analysis. When I saw it I think I zoned out, but that's part of it I think - the lack of anything of note that happens, the nothingness.
Of the three films in the trilogy, my favorite part is the letter-reading scene at the end of La Notte. A married woman reads a letter to her husband, who had been conspicuously philandering all night, and he asks who wrote it. She says "you". So sad, the fading of love as memory.
It is a terrific scene with equally terrific acting by Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni.
She tells Mastroianni of having had in her life a man, whom we saw at the beginning of the film to be at the end of his existence in a hospital bed, who loved her, wanted her, but she preferred a man, the novelist played by Mastroianni, who never paid much attention to her. It is the usual story--I loved you but you loved and preferred somebody who did not--but the stillness of the two in the grass field, the broken voice of Jeanne Moreau, and the "lost and guilty look" of Mastroianni, made it so incredibly moving.
Another brilliant scene in "La Notte" is when Mastroianni is leaving the hospital--his wife has already left because she cannot bear to see the man who was in love with her die--and he is caught by another patient, a woman who seems to have some mental problem, and the two kiss.
As someone who has sometimes found himself inexplicably lost in the tourbillon of events--why am I doing this? This makes no sense!-- the scene was able to describe what I felt and saw in those bizarre moments.
- The opening long shot in Touch of Evil with the ticking clock building suspense.
- The final scene in La Haine is devastating.
- The final scene of Sweet Smell of Success for pure cynicism.
- Pretty much all of The Wages of Fear for suspense, but if I have to hold up some scenes: 1) the confrontation in the restaurant; 2) the platform scene; 3) the boulder scene; 4) the Blue Danube scene.
- The raw emotional impact of the final confrontation in Secrets & Lies.
The NYT has a series of "Anatomy of a Scene" videos. These are mostly not very notable scenes, but it's still interesting to see what goes into them:
- The Anakin and Padme picnic scene in Attack of the Clones
No other scene in the history of movies has made me contemplate my life choices and the choices of others to that degree. I believe that is what Lucas was aiming for in the next film, but it really hit right there like a mallet to a rubber chicken launcher.
I do wonder if my response to La Haine has been tempered by me seeing the movies that came after it and were even more blunt and raw. It's a fantastic watch none-the-less.
Thank you, I'll have to watch the other films you mentioned. :)
Miller's Army of Shadows (1969) was the the first time I saw on film how it might be to know you are about to die. I can only find an unsubtitled version: the German officer tells the French resistance protagonist that he has a chance if he runs and gets to the back wall before being shot by the machine guns- he'll live to be executed another day. At first he refuses but survival kicks in and he runs believing he will be shot in the back at any moment. I urge you to watch the film in entirety to experience the intensity of the scene, alone doesn't do it justice. The first time I saw this it was like it was in slow motion, after so much had already happened in the film.
It's a technical marvel, but also perhaps a rare case where a long shot matches both the physical environment (the camera floats along a street, long as the long street) and the emotion (slowness, somberness).
This is a very good collection. Especially The Cranes Are Flying.
I like the very last scene in Seven Samurai where they're looking at the funeral mounds of the 4 dead samurai. Shichiroji says to Kambei - once again, we both survive! Its quite amazing how the four talented young samurai are killed in battle and finally the two geezers who survived the previous battle by keeping their wits about, manage to survive yet again.
I ran the Google Cinema Club for 10 years, and I held up the flag for films like this. I'd rather show a good movie with lousy attendance than a shit movie that everyone likes.
I'm embarrassed to admit we only showed Wild Strawberries out of all those (many other Kurosawa flicks, though). Ran was just too long for a movie that started at 7:00 pm, while people had a last shuttle to catch.
A few of these (I am Cuba, The Cranes are Flying) have only recently been restored and publicized so maybe they weren't available as well back when you ran the club. :)
I work in the Google NYC office, and there's even a fairly large new screening area (floor 6). But I think office-based clubs and such are practically dead because of remote work. Maybe they'll come back.
It's okay. :) They were known only in niche film circles because there was hardly a good print, restoration, or subtitled-version available for decades.
Ran is absolute feast for the eyes. I've never been so absorbed by a film as the first time I watched it. Just the whole openings sequence with boar hunt is instantly mesmerizing. And the fall of the castle at the end was just was electrifying.
> * In I am Cuba (1964): a martyred revolutionary, a student, is carried through Havana as the whole city stops what they're doing to honor him, solemnly, cigar-factory workers and all.
This is a great write up of why Casablanca is an immaculate screenplay: economy of vision. Great architecture doesn't need a thousand beams but just a few, perfectly placed arches. Picasso could draw a single line and capture more than the thousand lines of a poorer artist.
In Casablanca, there are no unnecessary scenes: every single scene has one or more uses in terms of plot. As they say here, Yvonne's a background character found in three small scenes and when we see her in her third and final scene, joining in 'La Marseillaise' it's like a gut punch so hard that it takes my breath away -- every time I see it.
This is what you can do with storytelling. These are the heights we can reach.
Okay, I think I now have a new appreciation for Canal+. They seem to have a similar approach as the curated content before a feature at Alamo Drafthouse.
After watching your link, it auto-played into the next one for me which was just as entertaining:
My only previous experience with Canal+ was engineering digital US content workflows for their platform. I never got to see any of their local stuff like this.
Let me offer you some not Canal+ French films I've enjoyed: Breathless; Hiroshima Mon Amour; Diva; My Life as a Zucchini; Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles; The Rules of the Game; Last Year at Marienbad; La Collectionneuse; The Green Ray; One Sings, the Other Doesn’t; The Kid with a Bike; The 400 Blows; My Night at Maud's; The Wages of Fear.
Not OT. Casablanca is considered by most film critics to be one of the greatest films created and that's one of it's most powerful scenes. But I'm glad it made you think of that commercial; it was really funny.
Everyone knows that Fistful of Dollars was a retelling of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, but there's also a direct line from Casablance to Yojimbo. A lot of the elements of the sangfroid hero playing both sides, risking his life for another couple's chance at happiness are right there. It's amazing to think that so many of the elements that are still tropes of modern heroic action adventures were all there in 1942.
I dislike this scene for personal (?) / historical (?) reasons.
The French are singing this nice liberation / freedom song against the germans. This is nice and all, but they are in freaking occupied Morocco, not France! They continued to occupy it even after the war.
The people that made the movie didn't care about this irony because they didn't consider moroccans to be equal to the french. I get that. What I'm surprised is that people nowadays don't find this scene ridiculous (or at least very ironic). Coming from a colonized country (and being one of those people that weren't considered worthy of having their own country back then), I can't like that scene.
While the occupation of France by Germany was a matter of ideology, the occupation of Morocco etc by France was a matter of a different stage of human evolution.
I would argue that the colonisation of Morocco by France was a net positive event and jump-started them out of the middle ages into an industrialised society.
I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this statement, I would like to express it nevertheless
This is a reason that has been given for centuries to justify invading and occupying countries.
But if you're in favor of colonization then you won't have an issue with this scene. It precisely what I said before: it's ok if Moroccans get invaded and occupied, but french shouldn't, because white/christian/civilized/european/developed/ {insert favorite keyword here}
If you watch old movie, you start to understand the modern CGI produced movies are having a problem of the movie makers cannot decide what they want to tell the audience, and they start to throwing as much staff on screen and hope they can appeal to most of the people.
In addition to the splash of pixels and colors, the dialogue is hard to follow in modern films, google "modern film voice is hard to hear" you'll see that's a common complaint.
The last batch of movies that do not suffer these are LOTR trilogy, and the matrix (not the sequels). Then from then, I cannot recall any film that has a clear idea and is keen to focus on the idea and develop the film accordingly.
I have noticed re: the speaking that they no longer allow space to happen between lines of dialog. For example Char A speaks and B replies in like... what 100 milliseconds? Then back to A then C then B in rapid succession. Enough time to hear, but not enough time to understand with my slow processor.
As a result, I've started watching everything with English subtitles on so I can fully understand what is happening. Not just Trainspotting any longer, but run-of-the-mill Hollywood schlock that should be in my wheelhouse. :-D
This is something that drives me crazy. A B and C are talking with no single hesitation, then D who come from nowhere and didn't follow the conversation already know what to reply to everyone.
I watched Twin Peaks for the first time only 2 years ago during covid lock down. It was refreshing to watch something at much lower pace.
Definitely up there with one of the greatest scenes for sure. As the article states the impact of the scene is only magnified by real world events at the time, but it's also timeless. I've always loved Casablanca and this is without doubt my favourite scene, it gives me goosebumps.
I think the street shootout in Heat (1995) is one of cinema's greatest scenes. It's the audio that makes it incredible - the guns echoing off the buildings. And Val Kilmer, Sizemore and De Niro trying to run carrying large bags of cash - greed vs survival.
When I saw that scene in the theater the first time, it left me shaking in my seat. It's still powerful today.
Watching Val Kilmer's facial expression change at that start. "At the drop of a hat, these guys will rock 'n roll."
I'm one in, I imagine, a very small group. But I find Mann's "Miami Vice" to be one of my favorite films of his. It's the most dangerous movie I've ever seen, it (almost) never lets up. Even the sex was dangerous. Heck, the ROSES were dangerous.
The minor nemesis Neptune is one of the scariest characters I've seen, and we only see a glimpse of him. And John Ortiz' Jose Yero. Sheesh. "I'm a disco guy."
The Heat gunfight scene is intense, the audio is amazing. A late friend of mine was in downtown LA during one of the shooting days, and relayed what it was like.
But MV is intense throughout the whole movie. Just never lets up.
Miami Vice has acquired a pretty substantial cult following in recent years, and among the people i know who are "into" Mann, it pretty commonly ranks as their favorite as well.
For me it's still Thief (or Heat) but MV is very close
It's dreadful. Well made, nice locations, acting is as good as it could be, but the story and the attitudes of the various characters are just 'off-the-shelf' clichéd garbage.
Nonstop action though. Also not sure MV’s story and characters really clear the hurdle you’re setting for gray man, it’s only saving grace perhaps being that it’s cousin to a TV show that filled out many cliches in full prime time glory 35 years ago or so.
Your talk of audio reminds me of how the climax of The Last of the Mohicans (1992) is so powerful because of its restrained sound. The silence of Chingachgook's inaudible wail makes me want to weep. The slicing of knives and reports from rifles are second to the score:
While the shootout scene is indeed great, the 2 scenes in Heat that I consistently find myself rewatching on YouTube are the diner scene with De Niro and Pacino, and the final scene in the fields beyond the runways at LAX. The sound and light from the incoming planes mixed with the score is incredible, and I never tire of it.
I was impressed with the the look on King Arthur's face when he walked in on Guinevere and Lancelot in the movie First Knight. I'm not talking about the dialog; I can't even remember it.
What a marvelous analysis of such a classic and important film. I've seen Casablanca 10 or 12 times but I don't think I've ever paid that much attention to the background characters. Obviously, they've affected me as the scene brings tears to my eyes every time but never really stopped to wonder why. I guess it isn't too surprising since the focus is always on its main characters. I mean, who can really look into the background when you've got Bogie, Rains, Henried, and Bergman to pay attention to. This just makes me love this movie even more.
I must say that La Marseille, as composition, plays a great role. Very few national anthems have such emotional composition (the Russian also, maybe?).
It wouldn't be the same scene if they started to play the Spanish or Italian anthems...
Except the actual words to La Marseillaise are quite terrible, at least by modern standards, "Qu’un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons!" "That their impure blood Should water our fields!" Ugh...
A huge part of the Anglophone Web, including much of the left, is currently casually referring to Russians as "orcs" and gleefully speculating about how many sunflowers will sprout from their corpses.
"Modern standards", ha! Hasn't changed a bit.
(and—sigh—no, I'm not pro-Russian when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine, or much else for that matter)
I find the "orcs" thing appalling. Especially since in my country, Argentina, the same word is casually used to describe poor people, implying they are a thieving, untrustworthy, dumb mob.
They are the reflection of their times. Their are outdated now, and not taken literally, but they are a relic from the foundation of the Republic. As a pacifist I don’t think we should get rid of them. History is important.
Among cinema's greatest scenes, there is certainly the ending of "The Battle of Algiers", directed by the extraordinary Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo (Kapo, Operacion Ogro, Queimada).
Another amazing scene, not tremendously well know, is the one with the final words of Sacco and Vanzetti during their trial in the movie of the same name directed by Giuliano Montaldo. Gian Maria Volonté interpretation of Vanzetti was monumental.
I just googled "Casablanca" intending to check my recollection that Casablanca is a city on the Moroccan coast.
Of course all the results (but one) are about the film or the surprising number of local businesses named Casablanca. Apparently the film is being shown in a local artsy theater tonight. Maybe I should go, I haven't seen the whole thing yet.
Yeah it’s a good story, good characters and chemistry, good writing, and the source of numerous quotes you still hear people say today. Worth watching at least once.
Final scene of Paths of Glory (1957) [0]. The transition from the whistling and humiliation of a girl to shared humanity is my favourite Kubrick scene.
So there's it's #2. I've seen it on another list at #1. I think top 5 or even top 10 is all the same, within that range the particular ranking just subjective.
> Casablanca is widely remembered as one of the greatest films of all time, coming in at #2 on the AFI’s top 100 list and similarly regarded by many other critics. You can quibble with its exact rank, but it’s at least undeniable how iconic Casablanca remains. Even now, more than 70 years after its 1942 release, few movies have ever produced as many enduring quotes.
The link to the AFI top 100 appears to have moved here:
Yet perhaps the greatest thing in this scene is that most of the people in it weren’t actors at all; rather, director Michael Curtiz filled the scene with actual French refugees.
Keep in mind, this movie came out in 1942 and was filmed at the height of World War II, at a time when Germany looked nearly unbeatable and Nazi occupation of France was indefinite. And here was a group of refugees from that occupation, given the chance to sing their anthem with defiant pride.
For one brief moment, this wasn’t a movie. It was real life, and it was tragic, and it was brave. Reports have said that extras were crying on set during filming, and the passion is evident any time you look past the main actors to the background singers.
As I mention below: I ran the Google Cinema Club for 10 years. There were great movies that hardly anyone came to, and there were not-so-great ones that drew a big crowd. But the most satisfying thing, for me, was to put on a great film and have everyone come (for some value of "everyone")!
For Chinatown (a big crowd!) I asked for a show of hands with "How many have seen this before?" About half.
We never showed Casablanca because we figured everyone had seen it, but now I'm realizing maybe that's not true.
The WWII generation is all but gone, though a friend has a 95yo grandmother still alive from the era. Was also shown a lot on TV in the 80s for GenX and older, but no longer.
- The slow motion pass of the Mustang in Empire Of The Sun, that is for planes nuts like me ...
and
- the ending scene of Le Train (1973) with Romy Schneider.
But so many movies scenes I like... That's just the ones that come to mind at the moment.
As for Casablanca, shame on me, I've never seen it. Just some small parts, and each times it looked so cliché that I had always delayed when I would watch it.
Only in Hollywood could one have the idea of a French Prefet de Police (Louis Renault character, well named) always wearing a uniform, wearing a ridiculous kepi (Prefets have caps, not kepis) tilted on the side, with a small moustache and a eyebrow higher than the other. I mean, the scene mentioned may be beautiful (again I've never seen it) but that character is sooo much the anglo-saxon cliché of the "untrusthy Frenchman" ... almost a cartoon character.
Anyways, have to take time to watch Casablanca, and die less dumb.
As a Frenchman I felt the same... then I watched it because my wife's family wanted to watch it. Now I understand what a masterpiece it is, even today, 80 years later, it's still a great story!
Honestly, this scene was never my favorite, and in fact may be one of the the few points where I find the gears grinding in the film. I can understand the author's reasoning and desire to wallow in it frame by frame, but reading the article makes me roll my eyes almost as much as the scene does.
The "resurrection scene" from "Das Boot" does that for me: In the scene, a German submarine, against better knowledge, follows orders to pass from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and gets - to absolutely no-one's surprise - plastered with British water bombs. After pushing the machine far beyond its construction limits, they lay 'dead' on the bottom of the sea until their attackers call the search off, then manage to survive. The suspension, the fear of imminent death, and the resurrection-style resurfacing is intense.
As people pour in, it appears I am the only one left with contrarian view. I had watched this movie and didn't realize the scene was really all that special. I couldn't even recall it, let alone remember it forever. I have seen perhaps hundreds other far more moving scenes in other WWII movies (everything from Schindler's List to Saving Private Ryan to Downfall) that I far more vividly remember. It feels like one of those fallacies where someone will come up with why certain wine is best in the world and then crowd joins in to agree while everyone else wonders what was so special about it.
> I have seen perhaps hundreds other far more moving scenes in other WWII movies (everything from Schindler's List to Saving Private Ryan to Downfall) that I far more vividly remember.
It’s completely different. Schindler’s list is great, but reads like a documentary. Downfall is flashy, but lacks the spontaneity of Casablanca, which was filmed in the thick of it. Completely different atmospheres.
Also, if you are into this kind of films, the Pianist is an absolute must-see. I would put it at the same level than Schindler’s List, way above both Saving Private Ryan (which is way, way too much of a Hollywood action movie) and Downfall (which is fine, but really not in the same league).
Saving Private Ryan has top-notch action and production values (yes, I know about the inaccuracies, that the Tiger tank isn't a Tiger, etc. Still top notch).
The problem with Saving Private Ryan is that it looks and plays as American propaganda. American flags waving bookend the movie, there are famous quotes by American politicians, Tom Hank's larger than life "earn this" quote, rah rah rah. That's what makes it "too Hollywood", not that the action is bad. The action is good!
In other words, you didn't understand it yet. That's ok. Always found it enjoyable myself but I didn't fully comprehend it either until reading and watching again recently after a bout of WWII history. If you've read the linked piece in full, you will on the next viewing.
Or course it can't compare to modern production, and even was considered a "filler" film at the time. As it sometimes shows, filmed on the lot in Burbank. Ingrid's daughter is on the disc saying her mother barely remembered making it and was surprised when people asked about it.
A lot of folks get tripped up on that and its "economy" of story as others mentioned here. But the important things, power of the screenplay, emotional impact, philosophical questions, performances, and "fit" with history are all top notch. Doesn't really get better than that.
You remind of me Seinfeld episode where Ellen's boss is trying to see what Ellen is seeing in some random art. There is an entire world of elite snobs out there who take pride in being special to see X in Y and scoff at people who don't. Congratualations but no thanks.
CB is not anything like abstract art that you need to put on a show to appreciate. It is as straight-forward as movies get, and easy enough to understand for a kid. The explanation in this piece enough to appreciate on a deeper level.
Some people just like being contrarian. These "elite snobs" are the tiny fraction who reject a good movie simply because being good makes it popular. The club is not selective enough. No soup for you!
Completely agree, unremarkable film that has stood the test of time due, I’d argue, not through substance but sizable celebrity. Certainly important in terms of the history of film
For a contrarian view, Edward Said in Orientalism points out that this is all taking place in Morocco, i.e. on what had been occupied territory long before the Germans got there.
Or when Michael tells Fredo he knows it was him. Or when Michael dispatches his enemies while Ava Maria plays at his child’s christening. Or probably scores of more examples
This is indeed the best individual scene of any movie of cinematic history, to the best of my knowledge and taste, and I applaud the OP's brilliant analysis.
The whole movie is a gem, and a rich source of unforgotten quotes ("Major Strasser appears to have been shot - arrest the usual suspects", "This is the begin of a wonderful friendship"), and the "anthem-against-anthem scene" evokes that rare combination of tears and goosbumps that is only present where human sacrifice is needed and volunteered, but without guaranteeing a happy outcome.
Other posters have suggested a range of other scenes; I shall just propose one
more movie - a lesser known one - that is sacrifice-themed:
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4263229465/
I love Captain Louis' expression as he looks up to see what Rick will do. I don't see it as "disapproval"; he seems to be thinking "oh, my: this is going to be interesting."
While Casablanca is a better movie, the scene that introduces Omar Sharif's character in Lawrence of Arabia is better, as is the scene that introduces John Wayne's character in Stagecoach.
That scene from Lawrence of Arabia was absolutely magic. Done in a single, unbroken take, David Lean had personally paced off the distance when Sharif began his approach so that he would start out invisible only to slowly approach. I've rerun that scene multiple times and I can't decide just where he actually becomes visible.
The other great scene, which is probably more editing than filming, is near its beginning where Lawrence blows out the match where the film immediately cuts to the sun rising out of the desert sand dune landscape. Just awesome.
Personally, I thought the ending scene was the best. The apathetic american and the corrupt policeman decided to continue to be friends. Rick's act of resistance against the Nazis was overlooked, a possible indication of the start of a resistance in Casablanca.
yes, this scene always makes me cry. The number of people on the cast/crew who were refugees is also notable, I think it brought a certain focus to what they were trying to do.
Give me a brass band and I too can drown out a bunch of drunken Nazis.
Better would be for Victor to start singing himself and have the the crowd join him. Then, once the Nazis are already drowned out, have Rick tell the band to join -- best if because Sam gives him a you-know-what-to-do look.
Good scene but the trumpets vs voices thing has always struck me as a flaw.
It's mentioned in one of the comments at the bottom of the article, but it seems many of the Nazis cast in the movie were in fact Jews escaped from Germany. So in this scene, many of the actors tears are real.
Top comment on youtube (makes sense, how lively this scene came out):
"Interesting thing to note: in the Casablanca script for this scene, NONE of those actors were given the cue to cry. Due to the fact that this was being filmed whilst France was occupied by Germany in the war, and coupled with the fact that a lot of these extras were French or from French territories, a lot of them swelled up with emotion during the song and started crying spontaneously. Those tears that you see on their faces, my friends, are truly genuine! That's why this has always been my favourite scene!"
What is it with people trying to quantify and categorize art? Yes this scene is significant for both the history of cinema and artistically and I personally love it as well, but the quest of defining "the greatest scene" or "the best film of all time" just screams pure naïveté to me and I honestly don't understand why people would ask such questions?!
I tend to just manually translate "best", "greatest", etc. into "A great" in my head, and then it's just a love letter to an awesome scene. Which this is!
Another excellent hack is to mentally prefix “I think “ in front of almost everything people say. “[I think] Democrats/republicans are idiots!”, “[I think] Micro-services/monolith is the best!”, “[I think] This PR is good/bad”
"I think" can usually be inferred from context and isn't needed, but bad or adversarial (hard to tell the difference) reading & online forums have encouraged everyone to write worse, in order to defend against flames from poor readers and assholes. You have to try to cover every stupid way your words could be read if you don't want other posters to pounce on you, like by throwing "I think" in front of things that are obviously opinion or otherwise not being advanced as absolute, indisputable truth.
[EDIT] Point is, yes, making that assumption is a normal part of ordinary communication outside the "well akshually" Web.
It's fun? This sort of comparison is very common in sports too and makes for some of the best discussions around the subject's legacy and the history of the sport.
Sure, unknowables are unknowables. But many Lebron v Jordan v Wilt discussions are full of gems and help relive their legacies.
To be fair, I don't understand it in sports either.
Would Brazil 1970 beat Spain 2008 or Man Utd 1999? Since we can't accurately predict the results of real games, it seems irrelevant to predict the results of hypothetical ones.
You didn't want to hear this answer :) but most 2008 football teams would beat their typical modern-day opponents - ie. their 1970 versions.
Players are being noticed much earlier now (pro training starts much much earlier, and from a wider pool of talent), and also modern players are (mostly) saints in terms of maintaining their fitness ("healthy food" based in individual medical testing, no alcohol/smoking/drugs - and tested regularly for this) - while as for the 70's players - it's full of stories of late-night partying.
> it seems irrelevant to predict the results of hypothetical ones.
It's probably not difficult to understand, by analogy to things that you might be passionate about. I have zero interest in professional sports, but it's clear to me that hypotheticals like this are a way to motivate deeper structural thinking about your perception of the quality and strategy of given teams. You already have an intimate understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your team in the context of their modern competitors. The thought experiment of pitting them against the challenge of historical teams can easily deepen your understanding of them.
Hell, you don't even need the idea of "fun" to explain this. The concept of a thought experiment is widely, almost universally useful. I might have a blindspot due to working in research, but it's my impression that modeling hypotheticals that are impossible is a fundamental skill for creative work.
No. Spain 2008-2012 may be the best overall international team of all time. Too organized even for the front five of Brazil.
> Man Utd 1999
Yes. Good team, but a lot of things broke their way that season and they were defensively somewhat weak. Though Schmeichel was one of the first goalies to be very good with the ball at his feet, so that may give an advantage in the modern game.
I think the exercise is fun partially because it makes us ask questions about the game, how it's changed and where it's going. To answer this question you need to think about the modern tactical game, the backpass rule, how players have changed and all the other factors that make me interested in a game.
In the same way evaluating movies makes me think about the context of a movie and how it was made rather than just a pure evaluation of its "quality".
Well, there's your answer! Some people love gardening. I find it dull, hot, just generally uncomfortable work. It's a chore - no, it's a job to me if I'm being honest.
So I just let others enjoy it and I take in the visuals when their work is complete.
I think it falls naturally out of trying to recommend greats to people—at some point you need an, "OK but if you are only going to watch one of these, it should be this one...."
Not objective, sure, and not authoritative. On a ranked list of, say, 500 great films, what's the difference between 100 and 101? Probably not much and the ordering of them's basically arbitrary... but if you're only going to watch 100 of those 500, it likely is a better idea to watch 1-100 than 401-500. Some truth does fall out of the rankings, especially if you factor in more than one person's opinions. Keep seeing the same few movies near the tops of lists, then they're probably damn good.
I’ve been thinking about this recently because so many trending topics on twitter are about “the greatest band” or “best film of 198x” or whatever. I think if I were younger, I would be excited by such discussions, but now it seems silly. My conclusion was that it’s a sort of fun game (young) people play as it feels like you’re shaping culture by debating the greatness of works of art or artists.
Quantifying and categorizing is one of the great human pursuits, sometimes to disastrous end.
However, with the sheer volume of creative works that exist, curation can help us find an exceptional needle in a haystack. This is why this kind of clickbait resonates.
This is part of why we want things like the Academy Awards to be objective & authoritative, when they are neither.
The real value is in the argument for art, the argument for beauty. Someone says, “sure grape juice is fine, but try this wine,” and they are making an argument that the initially off-putting flavors and lack of sweetness aren’t a bad thing. The ultimate judge is you, however. You are the person who can decide if the scene in Apocalypto where they have to jump over the waterfall provides a better or more useful artistic experience to a scene in The Godfather. And then, you can change your mind, or not.
What I don't think I ever realized is that the film is from 1942. Pretty much every WWII film is from long after the war ended, but this was released early in the France occupation. That adds so much to its meaning and power.