At dinner last night before we went to see Casablanca, My Darling B said she worked with someone who had never seen it. Think of that. There are people among us – they look normal! Just like us! – who have never seen Casablanca! How is that physically possible? There are some things that can never be explained. Don’t even try.
Maybe there could be a constitutional amendment requiring all Americans to see Casablanca as a condition of citizenship. I don’t see how anybody could argue with that.
What’s your favorite line from Casablanca? My favorite is one of Captain Renault’s lines, after Rick sends Yvonne home in a taxi: “How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Someday they may be scarce.” My Darling B’s favorite: All of them. She thought the best way to show the film would be with the sound off so the audience could shout out all the lines. I think that could work.
*The movie poster for Casablanca has got to be the worst illustration of Ingrid Bergman I’ve ever seen in my life. It boggles my mind that anybody could look upon the stunning beauty of Ingrid Bergman and come up with something like that. If there’s any justice at all, the artist responsible is sitting on a barstool in The Eternal Bar of Regret next to an Imperial stormtrooper who never stops asking him, “Those couldn’t have been the droids we were looking for, could they?”