You Must Remember This... Casablanca Is a Movie Icon

Unlike The African Queen which I saw for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I've seen Casablanca a number of times through the years. It's a movie that is infinitely watchable - scene by scene, line by line. It all adds up to a classic film experience in the truest and finest sense of the word. Casablanca is an icon, with a cast of who's who of Hollywood legends - Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Heinreid.... it goes on and on. Bogart won his Academy Award for The African Queen. Was he better in that movie than Casablanca? Nope, not even close. Bogart's Rick is one of the great characters ever written or portrayed on film. 

Is there a more lovely looking woman ever shown in the glow of black and white film than Ingrid Bergman? Again, no. Her soft flawless skin bathed in light and shadow highlights the best of what non-colorized films can offer to a viewer. Casablanca is the ultimate story of love and sacrifice, a movie that was considered a classic of its time and has only become more firmly entrenched now almost 75 years after it was released. If someone wants to call it the best movie ever, be my guest. It's somewhere in the top 5.

The Fascinating Story Of A Real Life Mutiny

Tiring of old episodes of The Big Bang Theory, the King of Queens, and Seinfeld, I try to find things on TV that hopefully keep my father-in-law entertained. He doesn't have much of a memory anymore but he does remember old movies for some reason. I stumbled up Mutiny on the Bounty a few days ago on Turner Classic Movies and flipped it on for him (and turns out for me too). We're no talking Mel Gibson's Bounty from the 80's or Marlon Brando's Bounty from the early 60's - we're going all the way back to 1935 and the original Charles Laughton Clark - Gable version of Mutiny on the Bounty.

I've never scene the movie before and my memories of the classic scenes all come from a Bugs Bunny / Yosemite Sam cartoon spoof of the movie (which was pretty much spot on). But the movie, now almost 80 years old, was absolutely fantastic and because the story is true and utterly fascinating, I went scurrying to Wikipedia after my viewing to find out more about this story right up to the fact the 46 descendants of the original mutineers and their Tahitian "wives" still live on the remote island in the South Pacific where the Bounty mutineers ended up following their capture of the ship.

If you get a chance, watch the original Mutiny on the Bounty. It is one of the great movies ever. Then head to the internet and find out what really happened in this true live story. While the movie is entertaining, the true story may even be more interesting as the movie's accurate depiction of historical events is somewhat questionable.

The Real Jungle Cruise: The African Queen

Maybe one of the side benefits of having Mrs. DisneylandTraveler's father come live with us is my opportunity to catch up on some old classic movies - like The African Queen which we watched together a few days ago. The old guy likes his movies but most of his movie interest seems to focus on 40 or 50 years ago. I think over the years I may have seen bits and pieces of The African Queen but I can't ever recall sitting down to see the whole think beginning to end. And seeing the film, some 60 years after it was first made, was really quite enjoyable.

At first I was put off by Humphrey Bogart's curious attempts to smile. "This guy won an Academy Award for this?" "This guy is someone many claim to be the finest actor of all time?" Eventually the movie won me over if you put it into the context it was made. I always thought of the movie as a serious adventure dripping with danger. That wasn't case at all as those involved with the movie saw it more of an adventure comedy. Bogart was having fun playing a character that went against some of his serious tough guy roles. He had reason to smile. He was making a movie with people he truly liked with Katherine Hepburn and John Huston. Much of the film was shot in either Africa or England so he was on location, and at least for the African portion of the shoot, he was excusably getting plowed regularly which was a lifestyle he embraced. He was an actor's actor who was at the very top of his game and knew exactly what he was doing and what the character was all about. 

With all the attempts Hollywood has made trying to remake movies, The African Queen has been left to its own existence through the years. You can't mess with perfection.

Jaws Is Simply The Best Movie Ever (Today)

The question is simple enough. "What is the best movie you have ever seen?" My answer has changed over the years. I can understand the infatuation with Orson Well's great Citizen Kane (though Well's The Third Man may even be better). For years, my answer was Mike Nichol's The Graduate, an homage to a generation who began to see things differently (my generation). I was partial to Woody Allen's Annie Hall for a long, long time.

But for the last 10 years or so, my answer has been to the best movie I ever saw is Jaws - the 1975 Steven Spielberg thriller that captivated a nation and kept countless people out of the water. Jaws is the perfect movie with every scene, every still image, every line of the movie forever frozen in my brain. Who can forget John Williams intense musical score where it is virtuously impossible to get two notes into the title theme without instantly recognizing the menacing theme from and equally menacing movie? Who didn't jump out of their seats the first time they saw that corpse head pop out of the bottom of the fishing boat that was just used as the shark's chew toy? And who can't forget that absolutely great performances of Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfus?

Jaws is a movie that has no flaws and I'm a person who absolutely does not like horror movies or thrillers. That's just it. There is nothing in there anymore that scares me after seeing it probably a dozen times or more. What I see now when watching the movie is Steven Spielberg's craftsmanship at every turn. Spielberg has gone on to direct many great, great movies but Jaws stands above the rest in my book. 

I remember Ed Bradley interviewing Bob Dylan on 60 Minutes years ago. Bradley began to read the lyrics to one of Dylan's more intricate songs that he wrote years ago and compare it what he was currently writing. A somewhat befuddled Dylan plainly said that he could never write songs of younger years because age changes everything. And that's how I look at Spielberg's work. His last movie, Lincoln, was outstanding but it wasn't what Jaws was or could ever be.

We gotta get a bigger boat.