“Casablanca” - Michael Curtiz (1942)

When one has the chance to take another look at Casablanca (1942), it brings to mind a sense of anticipation beyond the usual one of reviewing a film classic. It is that of looking straight into the face of an American myth. It is perhaps the contemporary nature of this particular myth that makes the film – a “Hollywood” melodrama – one of the real enigmas of American pop culture.

Even today there is considerable lack of unanimity from critics as to the film’s ultimate importance. It’s overall popularity with its audiences is undeniable, however. Made in 1942 and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains, Casablanca has been one of the most popular and widely seen films ever made – achieving almost cult-like proportions with college students. Besides making Ingrid Bergman an American star and winning three US Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the film provided the ultimate vehicle for the Bogart legend. Indeed, one measure of the film’s success is that some of its lines, like “Here’s looking at you, kid” and “Play it, Sam” are still part of the American scene.

The behaviour of the critics then is interesting. Although most of them admit liking the film, they seldom pin-point the reason, (e.g. Richard Shickel, of Time, called it “delicious”). For one thing, Casablanca stubbornly resists analysis on the basis of film aesthetics’ meager categories, in particular, the auteur theory. The auteur theory asserts, to put it loosely, that a work of cinematic art is achieved as a result of a personal statement by the film’s creator – the director. Casablanca’s director, Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz, was more famous for his mauling of the English language than for his acts of creativity (e.g. “This scene will make your blood curl”). Curtiz, once a circus strong man, directed three films in 1942, and usually turned out gross blockbusters rather than personal statements. Curtiz did, however, have an excellent sense of camera rhythm and lighting, both essential ingredients to the film’s success.

However, the nature of the film’s greatness is more closely identified with the portrayal of Humphrey Bogart, as Rick, the classic movie example of the alienated antihero redeemed by love. Romanticism in the American film frequently takes its form in the cynical tough guy’s independence. Sentimentality lies traditionally in the finish, when the antihero turns hero. Casablanca is no exception. Rather, it is a near perfect representation of this genre.

Since sentimentality exists more in the imagination than in the real world, an expressionistic, subjective environment is crucial to the theme. Hence Casablanca itself, a city of intrigue and mystery, where chaos rules and only the toughest survive, plays a role. The atmospheric settings and the super-real performances of Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, and Sidney Greenstreet are thus crucial to the effect; more “realistic” acting would fail to achieve the emotional power. Furthermore, Bogart’s acting style is perfectly geared to the role. His restraint and cool always suggest an inner turmoil that internalizes the action for the audience.

The viewer always understands that Rick knows the score and that his mind is always churning, despite the forcedly calm exterior. (Imagine the film with Rick played by Ronald Reagan, the man Bogart beat out for the role!)

All of these expressionistic effects (some of which may have been partly indigenous to films of the forties) combine for an emotional impact which is still as powerful today as it was seven decades ago and which, except for scattered exceptions such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) or occasional works by the Coen brothers, were not the usual fare of modern American cinema. The outrageously melodramatic plot, lack of special effects, and standard studio shooting notwithstanding, Casablanca is still a brilliant example of how stirring good movies can be.
★★★★

“Inception” - Christopher Nolan (2010)

Inception (2010) currently has a user rating of 8.9 on the IMDB Web site, making it one of the highest-rated films in their comprehensive world database. By that reckoning one could argue that Inception is one of the best (or at least most popular) films of all time. Writer-director Christopher Nolan was already known for his reality-warping screen thrillers Memento (2000), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008), but Inception was hailed by his fans as his greatest achievement.

The sci-fi story of the film involves a high-tech “intellectual property” burglar, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is skilled at stealing highly profitable ideas from people by invading their minds while they sleep. Early on we are shown situations where he can invade the dreams of other people and manipulate the dream so that he can grab what he wants; he can also go into a dream within a dream. This dream-within-a-dream scenario becomes the fundamental metaphor of the film.

After a failed intellectual heist, though, Cobb is offered a job by his most recent intended corporate victim to do something different: not to steal an idea, but to implant an idea into a rival’s brain which will lead to big financial returns for the sponsor of that intellectual “inception”. This idea-insertion operation is thought to be impossible, according to the conventional wisdom of dream burglars, but Cobb thinks he can do it and agrees to the contract. He then goes about assembling a high-tech team to carry out the intended implantation maneuver. In order to accomplish the desired operation, he claims, they will need to go down three levels – to a dream within a dream within a dream.

This may seem to be mentally mind-boggling, but actually the task of following the various dream penetrations in the rest of the film is relatively straightforward. The machinations of the dreamworks, however, are not straightforward, at all, although Nolan’s script blithely (and mindlessly) employs basically magical explanations whenever the script demands it. The vehicle for delivering these explanations to the viewer is for Cobb to recruit a young, innocent college girl, Ariadne, to serve as the dream “architect” for the team and for Cobb to explain things to her. She is told that since people can invade each other’s dreams, it means that dreams are essentially shared vehicles with multiple drivers. Whenever Ariadne sees something totally weird going on with the world, she is told, oh, that must be so-and-so’s dream “projection”. Each level of dreaming that one “descends” to (i.e. further descent into the dream-within-a-dream scenario) involves relative time distention by at least an order of magnitude – that is, what seems to take hours in the lower level only occupies minutes in the dream level immediately above it. Then we are told that the entire high-tech idea-implantation team assembled by Cobb and wandering around in the lower depths of dreamdom can magically ascend back to reality by synchronizing on some music that is collectively heard. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Things get more complicated, though, because of Cobb’s own hangups – he is haunted by his own nightmares of his deceased wife, Mal, who occasionally enters into the shared dreamscape and wreaks havoc. This is apparently due to Cobb’s personal feelings of guilt concerning her death and not due to any inherent malevolence on Mal’s part, since Mal is generally presented as a sympathetic character. Anyway, because of various unforseen events, Cobb and some members of his team must descend further into even lower dream levels than originally planned (ultimately to the fifth level), and, of course, that means that they are plunging into unknown and even more dangerous territory. At the end of the film, in fact, there is a suggestion that the entire film, including the final shots, may still have been taking place at some unspecified dream level. That is, perhaps Cobb’s world of professional idea thievery is just another dream, and there are actually (at least) six dream levels covered in the film.

While I recognize that suspension of disbelief is crucial to science fiction films (a number of which I do enjoy), the ad hoc and superficial, essentially magical, explanations in Inception don’t hold up. Claims that this film appeals to the imaginative intellect need to be buttressed by more than repeated references to ‘catharsis’ and having a character named “Ariadne”. I have remarked elsewhere about the folly of believing in "intellectual property" – that ideas are objective, material objects that can be stolen [1,2]. But I would be willing to set that objection aside for a fantasy film like this if there were something else in the story that tantalized the imagination.

One potential topic that could have been taken up with some payoff is the issue of Mal’s (Cobb’s wife’s) autonomy. Is she an autonomous spiritual being who has returned from some external spiritual domain to enter into Cobb’s own dreams? Or is she just a figment of Cobb’s guilt-ridden imagination? It would have been interesting to highlight the contrast between (a) a materialistic interpretation of Mal’s presence (which could be held by Cobb, the professional and mechanical idea thief) as a figment of Cobb’s imagination and (b) the alternate idea that Mal’s presence actually does represent an encounter with the still-living spirit of the deceased Mal. But this potentially interesting issue, one that does come into play in Solaris (1972, 2002), was not pursued or examined here. Inception has many of the external earmarks of an Expressionist film, but I wouldn't classify it as such, because it doesn't convey the expressionistic aesthetic impression.

There are other problems with Inception as well.

• Throughout the film there are repeated violent encounters involving chase scenes with armed gunmen. These are all going on concurrently at several dream levels, with many people getting shot and killed, but there is little motivation for these scenes. Nolan is unable to build up any narrative motivation for these events, so they just seem to be pointless violence. It’s not even like playing an endless first-person shooter game (FPSG); instead, it’s like watching somebody else play an endless FPSG – the viewer feels little involvement in the action. The relentlessly pounding and one-dimensional background music by Hans Zimmer only makes things worse.
• The presentation and acting is confused by a mixture of dramatic genres. It is as if the actors and actresses are not on the same page as to what kind of movie they are in. The relationship between Mal and Cobb is presented as a serious and emotional dramatic encounter. But this theme, as I suggested above, is only left hanging. On the other hand, Cobb’s “mission impossible” team of dream-manipulation technicians plays it very tongue-in-cheek. – it all seems like a joke. And then Ariadne, Cobb’s dream landscape architect, is very much the innocent young college girl.

So we have a confused dramatic mishmash of shootem-up violence, a dramatic love relationship, a cheeky heist movie, and a teenage coming-of-age story – and all going on at the same time. No wonder the actors seem confused (although DiCaprio, as Cobb, and Marion Cotillard, as Mal, do pretty well under the circumstances).

Admittedly there are some dazzling graphical effects, such as a downtown city environment rolling up over itself like a carpet, entire cities gradually crumbling to pieces, locomotives roaring down the middle of city streets, and fistfights in zero-gravity (or sometimes gravity is present, but the gravitational axis is shifting). But these effects need an effective story to make them interesting. As it is, the effects (apart from the gravity-shifting environment) seem to be “out there” – just part of some weird landscape and not part of the immediate, interactive environment. The viewer’s attention is distracted (and by means of that distraction perhaps somewhat engaged) throughout the film by the task of having to keep track of exactly which dream level the film is operating on at the moment; and so one keeps on watching intently for the almost three hours of action. But that distraction is not enough to make it all worthwhile (even if video game addicts seem to find that kind of distraction sufficient for their needs). Although Inception is promoted as a mind-bending intellectual feast for the college crowd, it seems to be only sophomoric.
★★

Notes:

1. See: "'RiP: A Remix Manifesto' - Bret Gaylor (2009)", The Film Sufi, http://www.filmsufi.com/2009/08/rip-remix-manifesto-brett-gaylor-2009.html. 
2. See: "'SiCKO' - Michael Moore (2007)", The Film Sufi, http://www.filmsufi.com/2010/02/sicko-michael-moore-2007.html.

Roberto Rossellini

About Roberto Rossellini:

• Aesthetics of Two Neorealist Films: Open City and Paisan

Films of Roberto Rossellini:

• The Flowers of Saint Francis (Francesco Guillare di Dio) - Roberto Rossellini (1950)

Bogart and Brando (“The Maltese Falcon” & “The Wild Ones”)

The Maltese Falcon (directed by John Huston in 1941) and The Wild Ones (directed by Laslo Benedek in 1954) offer an interesting cinematic and social comparison. Although made only thirteen years apart, the two films seem to be indicative of distinctive generations. The comparison comes down ultimately to the contrast between Humphrey Bogart, the charismatic star of the forties, and Marlon Brando, the corresponding figure of the fifties. Each one displays the characteristically brutal personality that won them such large followings.

The Maltese Falcon was a break for Humphrey Bogart. The role of Sam Spade, the detective, was first offered to George Raft, who declined it because he wouldn’t take a chance on rookie director John Huston. Huston, in his first feature, went on to fashion the Dashiell Hammett thriller into a film so good, it gave a new dimension to the film noir genre.

Hammett knew the score with detectives (he was once one, himself) – they were basically antisocial cops, but smarter, more mercenary and sinister. Huston did nothing to soften Sam Spade’s character, and the supporting cast (Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Mary Astor) was near perfection. The only alteration from the original story was the omission of Hammett’s final scene, when Effie realizes what a bastard Spade is. Whether Huston is responsible for this cut or not, it actually improves the story by omitting petty moralizing as well as leaving Spade to the viewer’s ultimate judgement. Bogart’s portrayal is one of his best. His voice and demeanor are perfectly suited for the delivery of such lines as, “Sorry, angel, I have a pressing date with a fat man.”

The Wild One’s, starring Brando and Lee Marvin, was Laslo Benedek’s only decent film. Like many films of its day, it tried to understand the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency in terms of cheesy psychology. Hollywood’s explanation of the alienated antihero of the 30's is poverty. In turn, the antihero of the 40's was supposed to be that way as a result of corruption and war. The preposterous explanation of the 50's was that boys went bade because they weren’t loved enough. These concluding explanations, however, didn’t snow the youth of the time, who perfectly understood the characters of Brando and James Dean and then jeered at the cop-out answer to the problem. Brando’s performances were so good during this time that they carried the entire movies along with them.

I’m sure Benedek didn’t even understand what Brando was doing, but young people all over the country were almost fanatical in their appreciation and empathy. Brando’s inarticulate frustration was a rejection of the entire society – but an individual, not a socially oriented rejection. The war was over, and the plastic American dream was here. Brando’s nihilism was emblematic of the “no” that came from the guts, ignorant of the relatively well-developed and sophisticated youth culture that made antiestablishmentarianism so fashionable later on.

The Bogart and Brando characters are not essentially tied to their decades, however. Brando is raw – the total drop out. Bogart, on the other hand, has not gone so far – or maybe he’s come back part way. He’s out to use everyone and everything for his own cynical purposes. Richard Shickel, commenting on the Bogart character, said of him,

"His special knowledge was of the jungle of the city at night – which clubs the syndicate ran, which one-arm restaurants served good coffee, which hotels a whore could use, which streets were safe to walk upon after midnight.

It was this detailed knowledge that set Bogart apart from the ordinary lonely male; it was the rightness of the setting, mood, and dialogue that established empathy with him.”

Richard Brooks, the gifted writer-director, had particularly revealing comments to make –

“Somehow you identify with this fellow. I think that’s what kids today see in him. He’s a man and not a raw kid, and willing to put his life on the line. He’s not, interestingly enough, like James Dean and other characters they identify with. He is not a lost soul in any of his films.

He knew what he stood for and is masculine and, of course, he could say so much in so few words. . . . For one thing, he was not a sentimentalist. That is important to people today. It’s not a sentimental world we’re living in as far as the youth is concerned today.”

★★★★

Federico Fellini

Films of Federico Fellini:

• I Vitelloni - Federico Fellini (1953)
• La Strada - Federico Fellini (1954)
• Nights of Cabiria - Federico Fellini (1957)
• La Dolce Vita - Federico Fellini (1960)