"Here's Looking at You, Kid"- Casablanca

I think it is high time I talk about the namesake for this blog, Casablanca.  I recently watched Casablanca for the forth time to remind myself of why it is such a wonderful movie (it isn’t even in the same league as Clueless). The first time, I was seven years old and fell asleep after I realized it was in black and white. The second time was in a film studies class my senior year of high school; it was last period of the day, the lights were off and it was the day after a particularly brutal all-nighter. Again, I didn’t make it past the opening credits. The third time, I watched it for an art class I was taking and looked at it from a purely artistic vantage point (I guess the third time really is a charm).  Watching this from for art revealed something I hadn’t really noticed before; you could take a still from any point in the movie and it could stand alone as artistically strong photograph (a quality that has been lost in modern movies). And the forth time, well, with a movie as good as Casablanca there is no such thing as too many times.

Casablanca is a beautiful, timeless, but also tragic love story about escaping WWII. During the war, Rick Blaine (played by the dashing Humphrey Bogart) is an American club owner in Casablanca, Morocco who comes upon two stolen letters of transit (assurance for two people to escape occupied Europe by going through Casablanca, then Lisbon then ultimately the United States). Shortly after, the leader of the Czech underground resistance, Victor Laszlo, shows up in Casablanca trying to get to America with his wife-to-be, Isla. When the pair of them happen to walk into Rick’s club, the look between Isla and Rick speaks volumes of their history. In a very poetically filmed flashback, you find out that Ilsa broke Rick’s heart on a Parisian train platform at the beginning of the war. Ilsa and Laszlo both desperately try to get the letters of transit from Rick, and Ilsa and Rick end up falling in love again because in his words “We’ll always have Paris”. That is as far as I can go because it would be impossible to do the ending justice with just words. For those of you who haven’t seen it, watch it. If you don’t like classic movies, watch it anyway. It will build character. 

Now how can an old WWII movie connect to the world of Barlow, blogging and Turkle, you ask? Casablanca perfectly represents the public vs. private spheres. The police represent the “sphere of public authority” for obvious reasons. Laszlo and the underground resistance represent the “private sphere” and Rick’s club, where the spheres converge, represents the public sphere.    

"A Civilization Gone with the Wind"

“There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, of master and slave. Look for it in books for it is no more that a dream remembered, a civilization gone with the wind.”

I have to admit, love of the really old classic movies is an acquired taste. More often than not, the prestigious titles just aren’t entertaining. “Gone with the Wind” is the complete opposite.  It is majestic, beautiful, powerful, poetic, and arguably the best love story of all time (sorry Nicholas Sparks fans, but The Notebook doesn’t hold a candle to this). The best thing about it is you don’t have to have a deep appreciation for old classics to enjoy it. In a way, it’s like lots of modern movies in the sense that it has the whole “girl falls for boy, boy doesn’t love girl and marries another, girl tries to make boy jealous and marries someone else, girl pines for boy, girl gets swept off her feet by a different boy, etc.” and it goes on and on. When you throw the Civil War into the mix you end up with one of the most famous movies ever, eight Academy Awards and my personal favorite. According to Joseph Campbell's myth theory every story is the same, but I must say Gone With the Wind is like no other story.

For those of you that have unfortunately never seen “Gone with the Wind”, it is about an intense and turbulent love affair between the hard-headed, manipulative and beautiful Scarlett O’Hara and the conniving, but equally passionate Rhett Butler and how they survive the Civil War and the Reconstruction.  Scarlett professes her love for another man, Ashley Wilkes but is denied and he marries her cousin, Melanie. Through the war, Scarlett longs for Ashley while trying to keep her family and her beloved plantation, Tara, together with Rhett Butler falling deeper in love with her all the while.

The ending of “Gone with the Wind” is so perfect that I cannot bear to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. All I can say is that it the beauty of the cinematography and the poetry of the script is well worth watching, and if anyone says no movie is worth four hours of their time all I have to say to them (in the famous words of Rhett Butler) is “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”. 

The best scene:

"There’s one thing I do know and that is that I love you Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we’re alike. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone and I’ve waited for you longer than I’ve ever waited for anyone."

La Vita e Bella: Buongiorno Principessa!

What words come to mind when describing a Holocaust movie? Probably something along the lines of sad, haunting, morose, painful, etc. I doubt anyone would say beautiful, charming, whimsical, or enchanting, but that is how I would describe one of my favorite movies, “Life is Beautiful”. In most of my past movie-watching experience the movies that are showered with praise from prestigious film festivals and the Academy turn out to just be plain weird, however I will however take this judgment back after seeing “Life is Beautiful”.

For those of you that have not heard of this incredible movie, it is an Italian masterpiece directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, receiving seven Oscars and winning three along with an endless stream of praise. It is about an irresistibly charming Italian man named Guido with an charismatic sense of humor and how he sweeps the woman of his dreams of her feet (by his simple but classic line Buongiorno Principessa). They have a son and it looks like happily-ever-after until the reality of the Holocaust starts to catch up with them. When Guido and his family are taken to a Nazi concentration camp, he does an incredible job of turning the horrifying reality of their situation into a simple game to save his son through his unwavering optimism. The ending will restore all of your faith in humanity.    


Guido's actions and ideals hold true with the whole Putnam's "social capital" and "pay it forward" ideals. Throughout his life, he always did the right thing and was always kind and even though he himself did not reap the benefits, his wife and young son did.

This film is truly a modern classic; in forty years I have complete faith that “Life is Beautiful” will hold the same weight that “Casablanca” holds today. Many people think that the only films that will go down in history are from Hollywood’s “Golden Age” of the 1940’s, and decent movies hit their peak in the 1960’s and 70’s and it has been downhill since then. I wholeheartedly disagree.  Even though most films made in the past twenty-or-so years have been mindless fluff, there have been many truly remarkable movies with stunning originality and artistry (that are still very entertaining). “Life is Beautiful” is one of them. Don’t let the subtitles deter you, “Life is Beautiful” is definitely worth watching. More than once.        

"She Doesn't Even Go Here"

If you were to ask a high school or college class how many people have seen “Gone With the Wind”, “An American in Paris”, or “Singing in the Rain” how many people would answer yes? One or two? Maybe three? Of course that is to be expected when you are asking people that grew up in the nineties about old and decrepit movies from as early as 1939. If you were to ask the same class how many people have seen “Mean Girls”, almost everyone will answer yes and then go on to quote the best scenes: “Made out with a hot dog! That was one time!”,  “I’m sorry people are so jealous of me, but I can’t help that I’m popular” and my personal favorite, “She doesn’t even go here!”

If you are a social martian and for some reason are part of the .00001% of the American teenage population that have not seen “Mean Girls”, here are the basics. Cady Heron moves from Africa (where she was home-schooled) to the cutthroat world of a typical American high school.  She befriends the Queen Bee and her minions under false pretenses and secretly tries to overthrow the leader of the “Plastics” Regina George all the while learning that high school is wilder than Africa ever was.

Don’t let the title fool you, this is not your typical air-headed high school comedy. The proof of that is simple- seven and a half years after the release of “Mean Girls” people still quote it, everyone knows it, and its popularity has grown exponentially whereas most films just dwindle into oblivion.  Most “classics” are defined as such because of their artful black-and-white cinematography, dramatic plots, larger-than-life acting and being nothing short of a work of art.  What “Mean Girls” lacks in art, it makes up for by being relatable to almost every high school student and in being funny as hell.  “Mean Girls” is the true modern classic (and I mean, that's just like, the rules of feminism!). 

Although, Mean Girls is hilarious, it isn't very deep. So how, you may ask, does it relate to deep intellectual theorists like Barlow, Habermas, Putnam, and the like? Well, to be perfectly honest it doesn't. Putnam's idea of social capital and paying it forward do not apply to Mean Girls mainly because the social scene in Mean Girls is completely skewed. This is probably because everything Cady and Regina did was conniving and cruel and had nothing but malicious intent behind it, and on the off chance they did do something kind, it was not for the greater good; it was so they could use it as leverage. Girl cattiness in its purest form.