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Casablanca 70th Anniversary Limited Edition Box Set (1 Viewer)

Matt Hough

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My Favorite Bogart Films:



The Big Sleep
The Maltese Falcon
Dark Passage
The Desperate Hours
High Sierra
Key Largo
In a Lonely Place
The African Queen
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Caine Mutiny
 

Richard--W

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I expect to buy the forthcoming edition of Casablanca since I didn't get the first one. However, I don't collect souvenirs so I'm not paying extra for coasters and posters. I wouldn't mind having the entire run of the short-lived 1955 TV program Casablanca with Charles McGraw. I think the pilot episode was a supplement on the DVD? Let's see the rest of it. Only 10 episodes. That will prompt consumers to double-dip. The program may not measure up to the film but it is interesting both for what it imitates and what it does differently. Money burns a hole in my pocket for Blu-rays of Deadline U.S.A. (1952) and The Harder They Fall (1956). The former never even made it to DVD. But of course those are Columbia, not Warner Brothers. Columbia has some very interesting Bogart titles. It would be nice if Warner Brothers would hustle on the iconic titles The Petrified Forest (1936) High Sierra (1941) Across the Pacific (1943) To Have and Have Not (1944) The Big Sleep (1944-46) Dark Passage (1947) Key Largo (1948) That most recent box-set -- "Bogart The Essential Collection" I think it was called -- should have been all Blu.
 

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Douglas Monce said:
The story goes that Huston simply transferred the text of The Maltese Falcon into script format.
In most cases, if you watch Bogart films for the story, you're looking at the wrong thing. Big Sleep has an incomprehensable story, and Maltese Falcon is just a teeter totter of back and forth. The real magic in Maltese Falcon is in the drop dead brilliant acting and the specific characterizations. Once you see that movie, you could never imagine any other actor in those parts. Characterization is something totally lacking in modern movies. It's sad, but I think a lot of people don't even remember how to look for it any more. Characters are the internal guts of any great classic movie.
 

Richard--W

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I don't agree with this:
bigshot said:
In most cases, if you watch Bogart films for the story, you're looking at the wrong thing. Big Sleep has an incomprehensable story, and Maltese Falcon is just a teeter totter of back and forth. .
Both are legitimate stories told by the finest writers of their generation. Both films are brilliantly written. They keep us interested and entertained from start to finish. Contrary to popular misconception, The Big Sleep does make sense, actually, although the sense it makes is not the point. I agree with this:
bigshot said:
The real magic in Maltese Falcon is in the drop dead brilliant acting and the specific characterizations. Once you see that movie, you could never imagine any other actor in those parts. .
and with this:
bigshot said:
Characterization is something totally lacking in modern movies. It's sad, but I think a lot of people don't even remember how to look for it any more. Characters are the internal guts of any great classic movie.
Blame it on USC. Too many USC film school graduates putting the same curriculum into screenplays. USC-written screenplays are like a tidal wave, spreading political correctness and conformity throughout the industry while wiping out originality and inventiveness the higher up they go. Their heads are full of flaky and murky theories. They emulate classic films they studied instead of venturing something hitherto unseen from life experience. They have no life experience outside the classroom and the screening room. The impact of USC film school on the industry has reached epidemic levels. Epidemic like a virus that has no antibiotic. A contagion. Besides, they act guilty, they look traumatized, they are drunk and stoned all the time, and their faces and genitals rattle with metal piercings. USC film school graduates should be barred from the industry.
 

bigshot

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Richard--W said:
Both are legitimate stories told by the finest writers of their generation. Both films are brilliantly written. They keep us interested and entertained from start to finish.
Writing and story are two different things. When I use the word story, I mean plot and continuity. Writing involves much more than that... characterization and contrasts in mood and setting are much more important to screenwriting than the story. It's the difference between telling and showing.
 

Douglas Monce

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bigshot said:
In most cases, if you watch Bogart films for the story, you're looking at the wrong thing. Big Sleep has an incomprehensable story, and Maltese Falcon is just a teeter totter of back and forth. The real magic in Maltese Falcon is in the drop dead brilliant acting and the specific characterizations. Once you see that movie, you could never imagine any other actor in those parts. Characterization is something totally lacking in modern movies. It's sad, but I think a lot of people don't even remember how to look for it any more. Characters are the internal guts of any great classic movie.
The Big Sleep is mostly incomprehensible, because they couldn't overtly tell the story of the book. There is no way the Hayes code would allow them to say that Geiger was a pornographer to who's side racket was getting rich young women high on some kind of opium derivative, and then taking pictures of them in the nude (or worse) and blackmailing them. They also couldn't say that Geiger was a homosexual and his driver was his lover. They didn't really want to change the story, so they did it by implying most of what is stated in the novel. I suspect that audiences of the day, who were used to films having to imply things that couldn't be stated under the code, had a much easier time following the movie, than modern audiences, who are used to being spoon fed a movie where every plot point is spelled out for them. The Maltese Falcon is a movie about a world where no one tells the truth about anything, including the hero. Doug
 

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Robert Crawford said:
The real question is who do you prefer Bogie as, Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe? :P
For my taste Marlow. Nothing to do with Bogart. His performances in both films are great. Just that I prefer the character of Marlow. Doug
 

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Douglas Monce said:
For my taste Marlow. Nothing to do with Bogart. His performances in both films are great. Just that I prefer the character of Marlow. Doug
I agree. Marlowe is a more interesting character than Spade. But then I also prefer Chandler's books to Hammett's. The more interesting question is which portrayal of Marlowe does one prefer: Bogart's in 'he Big Sleep or Powell's in Murder, My Sweet or Mitchum's in Farewell, My Lovely or Gould's in The Long Goodbye?
 

Robert Crawford

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Originally Posted by Hal F


I agree. Marlowe is a more interesting character than Spade. But then I also prefer Chandler's books to Hammett's.
The more interesting question is which portrayal of Marlowe does one prefer: Bogart's in 'he Big Sleep or Powell's in Murder, My Sweet or Mitchum's in Farewell, My Lovely or Gould's in The Long Goodbye?


Without regard to the source material, I love Bogie's Marlowe. Mitchum would've been interesting if he played that role 20 years earlier than Farewell, My Lovely.
 

Matt Hough

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Originally Posted by Hal F


I agree. Marlowe is a more interesting character than Spade. But then I also prefer Chandler's books to Hammett's.
The more interesting question is which portrayal of Marlowe does one prefer: Bogart's in 'he Big Sleep or Powell's in Murder, My Sweet or Mitchum's in Farewell, My Lovely or Gould's in The Long Goodbye?


or Robert Montgomery's in The Lady in the Lake.


I like Bogart's the best but Powell and Mitchum aren't behind by much.
 

Richard--W

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You gotta love Raymond Chandler. He had an observant wit. His correspondence is loaded with some of the funniest wit I ever read. In a backhanded reference to murder-mystery writer Agatha Christie, he wrote "Dashiell Hammett took crime out of the English drawing room and gave it back to the people who commit it for reasons." The Raymond Chandler Papers http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802139469/sr=1-3/qid=1326244264/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1326244264&sr=1-3&seller= Selected Letters http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Letters-Raymond-Chandler-MacShane/dp/0231050801/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326244264&sr=1-4
 

Robert Crawford

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Originally Posted by MattH.



or Robert Montgomery's in The Lady in the Lake.


I like Bogart's the best but Powell and Mitchum aren't behind by much.



Montgomery is very good too as I try to watch The Lady in the Lake once every two Christmas seasons.
 

Richard--W

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I find Montgomery's first-person singular approach in directing LADY IN THE LAKE utterly fascinating to watch, dramatically and technically (holding eyelines dead-on instead of matching opposites, raising the chin unnaturally high, the actors' intensified concentration), but his interpretation of Marlowe strikes me as off the beam. His delivery is BIG. He needed a coach to help him tone it down a notch or two.
 

Richard--W

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Hal F said:
I agree. Marlowe is a more interesting character than Spade. But then I also prefer Chandler's books to Hammett's. The more interesting question is which portrayal of Marlowe does one prefer: Bogart's in 'he Big Sleep or Powell's in Murder, My Sweet or Mitchum's in Farewell, My Lovely or Gould's in The Long Goodbye?
Don't underestimate the complexity of Sam Spade. He is constructed out of a different set of emotional dynamics than Marlowe, colder and more calculating, deceptively so, and Bogart is very busy working them up. He gets the character -- Sam Spade -- intuitively. There is a lot more to Sam Spade than movie adaptations hint at. The short stories have never been filmed. The arc of the character has never been explored outside of The Maltese Falcon and Huston's version is so close to the book that the literary debates over Spade's motives and intentions apply to film as well. It is the only one of the three attempts that is noteworthy as an exploration of the character. We know Spade by what he does, and his decisions of what to do or not to do are always interesting. But that's also the book. Rick Blaine in Casablanca draws a lot of water from the well of Sam Spade, especially in the third act and d'enouement.
 

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Not to take anything away from Hammett, but I find Chandler's writing to be more interesting. As to the best actor playing Marlowe, Powell is probably the most faithful to the books, and does a really solid job. He is also the one who most resembles the description Marlowe gives of himself. Bogart by far has the best screen presence and charisma. I agree with Robert, that Robert Mitchum, if he had been given the role in his 30's would likely have been the best Marlowe. You can see little hints of Marlowe in Out of the Past. I have a soft spot for The Lady in the Lake, because it was the first Chandler book I read. I find Montgomery's interpretation both interesting and off putting. The technical challenge of visualizing Chandler's first person narration is really amazing. I watch that film thinking, "they did this with those HUGE Mitchel cameras! But I'm not sure why it was necessary to make so many changes to the story line, for no good reason. Why does Marlow need to be trying to sell a story, rather than just being called to do a job, for example. Doug
 

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Robert Harris said:
Chandler didn't get Hitchcock and Hitchcock didn't get Chandler. Also neither was quite the legend yet that they both are today. Chandler didn't understand that a Hitchcock film was a HITCHCOCK film, and Hitchcock didn't understand that Chandler wasn't the kind of writer who would could just bend to fit any shape. A Chandler script was going to be in the Chandler style. Doug
 

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Robert Crawford said:
Without regard to the source material, I love Bogie's Marlowe.  Mitchum would've been interesting if he played that role 20 years earlier than Farewell, My Lovely.
I tend to give Mitchum the nod for being best but that is because I think his Farewell, My Lovely was overall the best film adapation of Chandl'er's novel. Of course, he was also in tha awful production of The Big Sleep which was set in England rather than LA. But I also agree with Douglas that Powell's acting is closest to Chandler's conception of Marlowe. I was very pleasntly surprised when I first watched that film after having seen Powell in some of the Busby Berkeley musicals.
 

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The two Mrs. Grayles: Murder My Sweet is a contemporary film made shortly after the book was published. Farewell My Lovely is a period film recreating the time and place 35 years after the book was published. The differences between them are huge. The original uses more of the story Chandler wrote, scene by scene, page by page, and plays it for real. It's heavily plotted. The later version truncates the book and plays it for sentimentality. Huge chunks of exposition are missing. Mrs Grayle in particular has a fifth of the screen time she had in the original. But it does have the gambling boat offshore. Farewell My Lovely needed a different script and would be more engaging, dramatically, if it recreated a utilitarian past instead of a nostalgic one, the way Chinatown did. Robert Mitchum would be a fine Marlowe in any decade. I wish Dick Powell had played the part again. He knocked off a half-hearted live teleplay of The Long Goodbye in 1954, but it wasn't much. Creatively, there is room for another adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novels and short stories. I don't think the definitive versions have been made. I know the British actor Clive Owen has a passion for the character and was trying to organize a film or film series, but after several years of negotiation with Warner Brothers, who own the books, the obstacles seem insurmountable.
 

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