Noah Isenberg

Film critic Roger Ebert said he regarded “Citizen Kane” as the best movie ever made but that Casablanca was the movie he liked best. Yet if “Casablanca” is the favorite of so many people over so many generations since its release in 1942, perhaps an argument can be made that it is the best movie ever made. After all, how many people call “Citizen Kane” their favorite? Popularity and art are hardly the same thing, yet film is a popular medium, an entertainment medium. It's all about selling tickets and engaging viewers. This is something “Casablanca” does best and has done best for a long time.

Noah Isenberg's “We'll Always Have Casablanca” (2017) fully explores the “Casablanca” phenomenon, from its origins as an unsuccessful Broadway play, “Everybody Comes to Rick's,” to the making of the film and finally to its enduring afterlife.

The reasons for the film's success are many, and Isenberg considers them all. It was a movie than came out at just the right time, soon after America's entry into World War II, and the themes of standing up to oppression and making sacrifices for that cause rang true then, and still do.

The cast was perfection itself. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan or George Raft in the role that went to Humphrey Bogart or Ann Sheridan or Hedy Lamar, not Ingrid Berman, playing Ilsa? Isenberg notes that most of those in the cast were born outside the United States, and many cast members were in fact refugees — ideal for a movie about refugees trying to get to the United States.

The film's screenwriters had much to do with the movie's enduring popularity. Consider how even people who have never even seen “Casablanca” know many of its classic lines. Yet many people had a hand in working on the script, and for years afterward there were conflicts about who deserved credit for what.

“Casablanca” has been shown on Turner Classic Movies more than any other film, both a sign of its lasting popularity and a reason for it. Countless movies and television shows have made reference to it, including “The Simpsons” on numerous occasions and “Saturday Night Live.” There must be few people in the English-speaking world who have never laughed at another's or attempted their own witty remark based on such lines as "we'll always have Paris" or 'here's looking at you, kid" or 'this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship" or "play it again, Sam" (even if that exact line isn't even in the movie).

“Casablanca” lives on in everyone who has ever seen it and many of those who have not. Can that be said of “Citizen Kane”?… (mehr)

A readable general overview of the film: its creation and production and place in pop culture. I wish it were more technical and had more from the micro level about how the film was made. What kind of man was Michael Curtiz? Still, the section on the many attempts to create prequels and sequels is interesting, as is the chapter on the number of immigrants involved in the production. Why he chose to end a book about the greatest film of all time with long quotations from Elizabeth Warren's FaceBook page was a mystery. I mean, of all the viewers on all the FaceBook pages in all the world, he quotes her? I also could have done without the analysis / recaps of Simpsons episodes,
Play It Again, Sam or SNL skits, which make the ending seem padded.… (mehr)

This is the story of Casablanca — where the story came from, how the film was made, and its “afterlife” right up until a Facebook post by Elizabeth Warren on a recent New Year’s Eve, where she described watching the film at home. It’s comprehensive, full of detail, and yet a somehow unsatisfying account. For example, while much is made of the fact that virtually the entire cast of the film consisted of European refugees, many of them Jewish, the film skips over the issue of anti-semitism completely. This is mentioned by Noah Isenberg, but not discussed in any detail. And the author’s attempt to be fair-minded means that he sometimes gives equal weight to conflicting views which cannot both be right. For example, most of the second half of the book is about the incredible importance of Casablanca in modern culture, and how it has been passed down from generation to generation. And right in the middle of this discussion, he tosses in a few sentences by someone who says the exact opposite — that audiences today don’t get references to the film, and have never seen it. It left me wondering if the author had a view on this at all. But those are minor complaints. It’s a well-written book that tells a fascinating story, and had me digging through my old pile of DVDs so that like Senator Warren, I could spend a quiet evening at home once again watching the goings-on at Rick’s.… (mehr)