Word: casablanca
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...short, the two movies are pretty similar. But, fortunately, Faulkner has cut out most of "Casablanca's" soggy sentimentality leaving "To Have and Have Not" with the most consistently clever dialogue of any of the Bogies. Despite their common elements, this film has less actual plot than "Casablanca" (which means practically none) and is essentially what Agee termed a "leisurely series of mating duels" between Bogart and Lauren Bacall - "the toughest girl a piously regenerate Hollywood has dreamed of in a long, long while...
...Casablanca" (1942), of course, is the sentimental favorite of Bogart fans everywhere. Originally intended as just another propagandistic war-time melodrama, its appearance in theaters across the country coincided fortuitously with the allied invasion of North Africa, and with such unprecedented quantities of free publicity, the film soon acquired a large and devoted following. It's not hard...
Hero Rick Blaine (Bogart) is an aloof Casablanca cafe proprietor, an idealization of the self-willed outcast, who is sometimes pressed into exerting an ordering influence on his hopelessly muddled environment. A former freedom fighter in Spain and Ethiopia, for some reason unable to return to his native United States, Blaine has become wary of involvement--"I stick my neck out for nobody"--and is resigned to die in Casablanca - "It's a good place...
...learn through a misty-eyed flashback that Blaine had fallen in love in Paris with a beautiful Norwegian girl (Ingrid Bergman) just before the German occupation, and was jilted on the day they planned to escape together. She turns up in Casablanca with famed underground leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), who is looking for two letters of transit so they can escape to America and he can continue "his work." Blaine has gotten hold of the letters from underground agent Ugarte (Peter Lorre) but vindictively refuses to give them up. The situation is complicated by the intervention of a corrupt...
From a detached viewpoint it's clear that "Casablanca" often wallows in second-rate humor and cheap sentimentality of the "Our Song" variety ("Play it again, Sam"). But, happily, it's easy to get in the mood for that sort of thing, and both Ingrid Bergman's charm and beauty, and Bogart's biting cynicism raise the film above the level of the ordinary gooey melodrama...