Play it Again Sam
I am writing this blog from Key Largo while attending the Humphrey Bogart Film Festival. I try to attend at least two film festivals a year and this is my third
time in Key Largo. The place is still recovering from the Hurricane there is
rubble and remains at places along Ocean Highway but most seems to be
back to normal. On my way down here, I have been listening to the audio book Writer,Sailor, Soldier, Spy which brings to light for the first time this riveting secret
side of Hemingway's life - when he worked closely with both the American OSS, a
precursor to the CIA, and the Soviet NKVD, the USSR's forerunner to the KGB, to
defeat Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The book starts with the story of Hemingway looking for the survivors of the great Hurricane of 1935 it had 200-mile-an-hour winds and had conspired with politics, the Depression, and petty bureaucracy to turn disaster into tragedy. As part of the New Deal there were three veteran work camps on the keys. The result of not evacuating them was that 259 veterans were victims of the Hurricane.
Arriving at the Playa Largo where the festival is headquarter to i felt transformed to the 1950s as I bumped into a Humphrey Bogart look alike who had just flown in from Paddington, England.
Arriving at the Playa Largo where the festival is headquarter to i felt transformed to the 1950s as I bumped into a Humphrey Bogart look alike who had just flown in from Paddington, England.
Casablanca
This year is the 75th anniversary of this famous
film. It is one of the great films that has survived the sands of time. It is
an extraordinary film not just because of the story that is told on screen but
also the back story to who is in the film and why.
The backstory
The film came out in November 1942 in the middle of the Second
World War. Rushed out to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied
invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier. The original play was called Everyone Comes to Ricks. What most people do not realize is that the
film has only three of its main actors who were born in the US. These are Humphrey Bogart
playing Rick Blaine, Dooley Wilson as Sam the pianist, and Joy Page the young
Bulgarian refugee Annina Brandel.
Most of the rest of the cast were refugee actors from Europe
who had fled the Nazi occupation and persecution. This included Paul Henreid
who had equal billing with Bogart and Bergman. He was a banned Austrian actor
who was also banned in Germany. He was strongly anti-Nazi, so much so that he
was designated an "official enemy of the Third Reich". In the film he
plays Bergman’s husband Victor Laszlo, a renowned fugitive Czech Resistance
leader. The wonderful Peter Lorre (born László Löwenstein;) born in Hungary – Jewish
– so when the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Lorre took refuge first
in Paris and then London and then the US. I could go on. The film was in many
ways an opportunity to give refugee actors from Europe work and support. Many
were also being put up in the homes of fellow actors while they worked to
establish themselves in the US.
The film
The film centers around American expatriate Rick Blaine who
owns an upscale nightclub and gambling club in Casablanca. "Rick's Café
Américain" is the center of a varied clientele. This includes Vichy French
and German officials and refugees desperate to reach the still-neutral United
States. Casablanca being a staging post to get to Portugal and then the United
States. Rick is a complex figure having fought for the Loyalist side in the
Spanish Civil War but is now bitter because he had to leave Paris without his
love former lover Ilsa Lund (Bergman) enters and she sees Rick's friend and
house pianist, Sam, and asks him to play "As Time Goes By." The song of course is the one that expresses the love between her and Rick. Rick storms over, furious that Sam disobeyed
his order never to perform that song, and is stunned to see Ilsa. Unfortunately
she is accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo, who is a renowned fugitive
Czech Resistance leader. They are in Casablanca
in need of the letters to escape
to America to continue his work. For the
rest of the story you will have to watch the film. It is going to be out in selected film theaters the 12th and 15th of November. I can only strongly recommend it.I found this interesting interpretation from the Wikipedia pages on Casablanca which I would like to share with you:
"Koch also considered the film a political allegory. Rick is compared to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gambled "on the odds of going to war until circumstance and his own submerged nobility force him to close his casino (partisan politics) and commit himself—first by financing the Side of Right and then by fighting for it". The connection is reinforced by the film's title, which means "white house." Perhaps President Trump might benefit from a White House showing of the film and an explanation of its meaning.
l will be watching it on Saturday on a large screen outside in Key Largo. Some people have all the fun. Ill be drinking Bogart Gin (a real thing) and hoping to say "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."
Love this poster !
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