Here’s looking at you, Kid…

I *love* Casablanca. I love it, I love it, I love it. I worship at the altar of Rick’s Cafe Americain. I think it’s a decidedly perfect movie in every respect. Romance, adventure, friendship, it’s got it all. If I could write a novel like Casablanca, I’d be the happiest camper on earth.

It was on TCM last ngiht (lucky, lucky me). So I took a break from hard core revision to get swept up in teh trials and travails of Ilsa, Rick, Victor, Cpt. Renault et al…. Sailor Boy looked on begrudgingly as I sighed and swooned through each scene of movie magic,a nd I tortured him with Casablanca factoids.

Did you know that Ingrid Bergman didn’t want to do the picture? She thought it was a silly little wartime flick.

Did you know that the audience watching would have recognized the dates in the film (a few days before Pearl Harbor) as being a pretty direct reference to American Isoloationism and that Rick’s character shift was seen as a symbol of American’s getting involved?

Did you know that the man who played Gen. Strasser was the highest paid actor in the film?

Did you know that Warner chose the German march (same tune as my alma mater, sadly) rather than the real Nazi fighting song because they didn’t want to have to pay the Nazis royalties for it’s use? Did you know that the tears in the actors’ eyes when they counter with the French song are real, since most of them were German Jewish refugees?

Did you know that Ingrid Bergman did not know how the film was going to end, and when she asked the director who Ilsa was in love with, he said to play it in between?

I love love love Casablanca. Oddly enough, though I love the main characters and their triangle, my favorite part of the story, the part that truly gives it color, is the amazing job done with secondary characters. Every single one of them has an incredible story, from Ferrari to the Hungarian maitre’d Carl to Renault to that darling Bulgarian couple…. I cry at *their* story every single time. ‘Oh, it’s very bad there, Misseur. The Germans have the people by the throat.” Slays me.

I have an idea for a sort of “wide sargasso sea” type of story — though without all the postcolonial literary nonsense. Maybe more like “Wicked?” Anyway, one secondary speaks to me so strongly, I feel it’s a story that must be told one day.

Sigh. Casablanca, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways….

(I wonder if Notorious is on tonight?)