{"id":32052,"date":"2012-11-26T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T18:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32052"},"modified":"2012-11-26T11:58:32","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T17:58:32","slug":"a-beautiful-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32052","title":{"rendered":"A Beautiful Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was seventy years ago today that\u00a0Casablanca\u00a0<\/em>made its New York debut.<\/p>\n

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The movie – which started as a script for a never-produced play, “Everybody Goes To Rick’s” – was by no means a sure thing. \u00a0Its production, under director Michael Curtiz, was almost legendary for its difficulties; the script was being revised constantly during shooting, both for plot reasons and to satisfy objections from the “Production Code Administration”, the industry’s standards and practices board that enforced the “Hays Code” that governed the morals shown in American movies up through the sixties; the references to Major Renault trading sex for visas, and Rick and Ilse’s fling in Paris, were originally treated much less elliptically than in the final cut.<\/p>\n

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Indeed, much of the movie’s flow wasn’t nailed down until the final edit. \u00a0The immortal closing scene was very nearly augmented by a “real” ending that showed Rick and Major Renault on a ship full of troops – US and Free French – bound for Africa. \u00a0This was cut – thankfully – due to Claude Rains’ unavailability – not the only case where a schedule difficulty helped preserve the movie we finally got…<\/p>\n

…which was, in its purest form, a parable for what America really stood for on the world stage. \u00a0We, like Rick, preferred isolation – but could be swayed by an overwhelming moral argument.<\/p>\n

And what an argument it was. \u00a0The moment when you started to have the faintest hint that Humphrey Bogart’s cynical, hard-bitten, paleo-noir “Rick Blaine” might have a soft spot (carefully hidden under layers of callouses and scars) for the underdog maybe one of the most gloriously, over-the-top manipulative scenes in cinema:<\/p>\n