Thursday, July 20, 2017

Best Picture of 1943: Casablanca

"Play it again Sam" literally one of the most misquoted lines in film history! Although, if you have every seen the film you will want to play it again, and again, and again. Winner of the Best Picture of 1942 Casablanca is one of the best films to ever be produced. With memorable lines, fantastic scenes, and a story of love like it's never been told this film has been named one of the greatest films of all time again and again on every list there is.

Rick Blaine, a nightclub owner in the heart of Casablanca, is a man that is only out for himself. He is a real mystery to the natives or Casablanca. No one know his real story, and no one knows why he came to Casablanca in the first place. Most people who come to Casablanca normally try and pass though not make a home out of it. He makes a living by doing business legally, and letting others do their illegal business, at his bar. He is perfectly happy living out his days minding his own business that is until the only woman he has ever loved goes "through all the gin joints in all the town in all the world..." goes walking through his door, Lisa Lund. Finding out that she is married to the famous Victor Laszlo. Now, Rick has to choose to help get Victor arrested, and keep the love of his life, or to help both of them escape imprisonment.

 When the film first came to light many people thought it was not going to amount to anything. At this time studios were making over a hundred films a year. This was just one of many that was going to make a decent amount at the theater but was never going to be an epic. However, this film took the world by storm. Casablanca beat out: Paramount's For Whom the Bell Tolls; 20th Century Fox's Heaven Can wait, The Ox-Bow Incident, and The Song of Bernadette; MGM's The Human Comedy and Madame Curie; Two Cities Films' In Which We Serve; Columbia's The More the Merrier, and Warner Brothers' Watch on the Rhine. The film has gone on the receive a number of different honors over the years. In 1989 is was among the first 25 selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, 2005 it was named one of the hundred greatest pictures in the last 80 years, and in 2006 it was listed number one by the Writers Guild of America as best film of all time on it's list of101 Screenplays.

I personally love this film! It's on my list of one of the best films of all time. However, the first time I saw it that was a very different story. I thought it was the most boring movies I ever saw. Until I was made to watch it again in college. Then I got way the film was so great. It's a crazy story that about love in the middle of war. It's about truth, and faith in human beings. It's the classic story of you can't judge a book by it's cover, you can never judge people by what other people say. This is just one of those films that I love but have yet to really find the real purpose of the movie yet. I know it's great but I watch it and every time I do I find a different reason behind the film and I think that I why it's one of the best films ever to grace the screen.

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