"Here's looking at you, kid"

I don't think I'm alone with this, but Casablanca ruined me for life.

How can any pudgy, preadolescent boy ever expect for love ever be as grand and romantic and absolutely full out hairy chested macho as the kind of unrequited, damn near mystical, sacrificial lamb quality love that Humphrey Bogart had to endure in that film?

I have no idea how old I was when I first watched it. I am sure that my mom must have notified me, told me that it was some sort of war film to drag me in from the heat and the sun and the relentless silt of the holes I always seemed to dig up in the backyard. She never had a movie date with my pop, it seemed, so the boys in the household had to stand-in for that phillistine. Back in those days watching movies with mom might have meant a pan of Jiffy pop and can of Alpha-Beta's tropical punch on the side. I doubt if the first time around I caught it late. KHJ and KTLA, even KCOP at the end of the dial all had regular daytime movie programs. It was a point of pride, I think, to show off one's catalog. Some evenings it was a real primetime showdown with local television stations jockeying for position against the likes of KABC's Movie of the Week, or KNBC's Saturday Night at the Movies.

In the end I am sure that it was some sort of afternoon screening the first time around. I doubt that it even registered with me at the time. I am sure that it took some time for that film and all it's iconic pageantry to kick in. A sort of long dormant virus of a flick, a self released time capsule of hard core imagery, mythology, lust. It must of been come high school where that film really kicked in and came on strong. It had to be around the time I started writing poetry, aping Rod McKuen's simple minded stanzas. It may have been activated because of that girl Lisa I was so crazy for. It could have been anything, but it was something, that's for sure. Dust, pollen, smog. No matterm once I truly "saw" it, there was no going back. Viewing Casablanca whenever it screened became some sort of religious conviction. It felt as if I had taken some sort of vows or something. It was that powerful of a desire. Leave it a hard up Catholic boy to take a movie to those kinds of heights, but there it is.

I know I'm not the only one but I still think it has to be one of the grandest romance films ever made. Currently number three on the American Film Institutes 100 Best Films. I am sure I would have stormed that institute back in my younger, more impressionable days. I would have picketed the lobby, begged and pleaded for that sacred vessel of love and grainy black and white celluloid to be hoisted to the top of the heap. Citizen Kane? Really, how many times can you sit around and watch that one with your favorite girl?

Yeah, you would have thought that Bogie personally said to me, upon watching the film, "this the beginning of a beautiful friendship". Lifelong and absolutely wonderful, yesm even if it's been ruinous to the core. Ruinous in a beautiful way, mind you, beautiful in the way that only a broken heart and a long lost love can ever be.

Action!


Vincent's Casablanca Homepage:
http://www.vincasa.com/


Casablanca screenplay:
http://www.vincasa.com/indexscreenplay.html