TCM celebrates 70th anniversary of the classic film with 500 theater showings on March 21
BY DAVID HINCKLEY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
AP
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the classic “Casablanca”
When you commute for enough years on a train or bus, you inevitably have an occasional random thought about some totally uncharacteristic thing you’d like to see happen, just once.
Call it a commuter bucket list.
Mine involves the film “Casablanca,” which comes to mind because on March 21, “Casablanca” is returning for a one-night stand in several hundred movie theaters.
More on that in a second. Meanwhile, back to me.
I am not objective on the subject of “Casablanca.” I’m obnoxious. You can ask my wife, who refuses to watch it with me anymore because I involuntarily say all the lines a second before the actors.
I’m the guy at the party who randomly says things like, “That is my least vulnerable spot” or “She’s coming back. I know she’s coming back.”
That may explain why I don’t get invited to many parties.
Anyhow, my iPod includes a six-minute excerpt from “Casablanca.”
It starts with Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) approaching Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in Rick’s Cafe and asking, “Monsieur Blaine, may I have a minute?” It ends with Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) telling Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), “Mademoiselle, you may have observed that in Casablanca, human life is cheap.”
In between, Victor has heard Major Strasser and his German officers singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” (“Watch on the Rhine”) and ordered Rick’s house orchestra to drown them out by playing “La Marseillaise.”
Even though Rick knows this incendiary act will infuriate Major Strasser, he nods approval. Against the backdrop of a world where the Germans have conquered France and occupied Paris, this defiant anthem becomes so stirring the whole cafe joins in.
Call it a cheap setup if you like. Me, tears well up in my eyes every time I see or hear it, including when I hear it on my iPod on the 6:24.
That’s where the commuter fantasy kicks in.
As I’m riding along I imagine “La Marseillaise” blasting through the whole car, echoing off expensive shoulder bags and forcing every head to look up from their smartphones and Kindles.
I envision one person, then two, then everyone starting to sing “La Marseillaise,” swelling to a finale that rattles the steel wheels and dissolves into shouts of “Vive La France!”
Okay, I know that’s less likely on the 6:24 in 2012 than it was in Casablanca in 1942.
So what, I say. You deal with commuting in your way and I deal with it in mine.
This much, however, should not be in dispute: No one has ever made a more justifiably beloved movie than “Casablanca.”
I don’t mean it’s a perfect movie. The story has holes, Victor’s stiff, Ilsa could stand to be a little stronger.
But as a heartbreaking tale of tragic romance in a crazy mixed-up world that somehow still finds hope, it could not get better.
Rick, a cynical American expatriate, has opened his cafe in Casablanca to escape the pain of being abandoned in Paris two years earlier by Ilsa — who it turns out was married all along to Victor, a leader of the anti-Nazi Resistance. She took up with Rick innocently, believing Victor had been killed. Then she discovered Victor was alive and fled, correctly sensing things had suddenly become awkward.
By chance they all meet again in Casablanca, with Victor now trying to hold off the Nazis long enough to escape to America.
As the tension builds, deliciously melodramatic subplots tumble together with wonderful characters. The script, which won an Oscar for Howard Koch and twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, is a symphony of words.
Among other things, it may be the best proof ever that it’s possible to handle adult themes, like sex, without a single explicit word or phrase.
Rick and Ilsa once had a sexual relationship. At a critical point in the film they have one again. This is never acknowledged and it doesn’t matter. It’s a more powerful moment because no one has to say it. We know it, we understand it.
All this makes it very good news that Turner Classic Movies, which owns the rights to “Casablanca,” has arranged with Fathom Events to mark its 70th anniversary with a 7 p.m. showing in about 500 theaters on March 21.
Local participants will include the Kips Bay 15, 570 Second Ave., at 31st St.; Empire 25, 234 W. 42nd St.; Bay Plaza 13, 2240 Bartow Ave., Bronx; College Point Multiplex, 2855 Ulmer Ave., Flushing; and a couple of dozen theaters in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Some theaters also have 2 o’clock matinees that day. Advance tickets, most priced at $12.50, are available through fathomevents.com.
With all due respect to “John Carter,” this is the best twelve-fifty you could spend at the movies in a long time. Between authentic popcorn and big screens, this is the way the Lord intended “Casablanca” to be seen.
Purists might note, correctly, that March isn’t really the anniversary of “Casablanca.” It was first shown on Nov. 26, 1942, and not officially released until January 1943, which is why it won its Best Picture Oscar in 1944.
But the March 21 showing will more than compensate for this minor timeline shift by having TCM’s splendid host Robert Osborne introduce the film on screen.
He will doubtless explain that no, Ronald Reagan was never cast in the Bogart role, and yes, the film was rush-released to capitalize on publicity over the real-life Allied invasion of North Africa in late 1942. And so forth.
That’s a nice bonus. But the real payoff for your twelve-fifty is two hours of exactly what the movies were meant to be: total escape to a world you’ll be sorry to leave.
In Woody Allen’s 1972 “Play It Again, Sam,” he channels the whole plot so his character, Allan, can end the film by reciting Rick’s famous closing speech — “I’m no good at being noble” — to the Diane Keaton character.
When he finishes, she says, “That’s beautiful.”
“It’s from ‘Casablanca,’ ” he replies. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to say it.”
Him and me both.
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