This Warner Bros. classic from 1942 is a film to visit and re-visit. It has a starry cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and [notably] Dooley Wilson. This is an example of ‘classical cinema’ as set out by David Bordwell and Kristin Thomson. That is mainly due to the equally starry production team marshalled by producer Hal Wallis and director Michael Curtiz. The leading lights were writers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein with Howard Koch, cinematographer Arthur Edeson, art designer Carl Jules Weyl, editor Owen Marks and composer Max Steiner.
The film offers amongst its many pleasures ‘As Time Goes By’ played one more time and a rousing rendition of the Marseillaise. There may be a doomed romance but there is also the start of a beautiful friendship. And there is that memorable motif, an ellipsis followed by a cigarette. Less typical of Hollywood, the wartime propaganda manages to reference the Spanish Civil War in its antifascist mode.
For the pleasures of seeing it in its original format visit the Cottage Road Cinema in Leeds this coming Wednesday at 8.15 p.m.
The Case for Global Film 