Is nothing sacred? Remaking Casablanca.

[MisterCairo]

It doesn't have to be bad.

But it will be.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Casablanca was very much a product of it's time, with a world at war, Hollywood turning its dream factory into a propaganda factory, actors and directors and screen writers, et al, working within the studio system, and a production and distribution system designed to make money. The goal of the movie was to entertain the public in exchange for their money, and at the same time to promote the war cause, in this case the idea of sacrifice for a larger cause. As has been pointed out by others in the thread, it wasn't a cult movie until years and years later.
That said, Casablanca is tied with Citizen Kane as my all-time favorite movie, and the notion that the studios would remake it makes me grumpy. It has reached a status among film lovers and society that it deserves because of the inherent quality of all the performers and creative talents involved. Leave it alone.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Rick - Matt Damon
Ilsa - Jennifer Lawrence
Victor - Robert Downey, Jr.
Renault - Ben Affleck
Ugarte - Gilbert Gottfried
Sam - Jamie Foxx

Kidding, folks, kidding. Well, maybe not the Jamie Foxx thing...

Coen brothers reboot?
Josh Brolin - Rick
Holly Hunter - Ilsa
Ice Cube - Sam
Steve Buscemi - Victor
John Goodman - Ferrari
Billy Bob Thornton/ John Turturro - Ugarte
Javier Bardem - Strasse
Stephen Root - Renault
(the possibilities are endless...)

 

[Frunobulax]

But it will be.

Um, you realize their not making my version, right?


Sent directly from my mind to yours

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Rick's great-grandson moves back to Casablanca and re-opens the bar?

And then has to close it due to terrorist threats.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Casablanca was very much a product of it's time, with a world at war,

It may have escaped your notice but the world is still at war & the bombs are dropping just a missile's throw from Rick's bar...as time goes by, nothing changes.

 

[SurfGent]

Hate to be a pessimist but it will probably suck.

 

[SurfGent]

Just like the new great Gatsby. Had all the potential but it sucked. Rap music and social justice politics ruined it.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Clooney would have been the obvious choice to play Rick. But he is getting a bit old for that role now.

I do agree that the world is ripe for Casablanca spin-offs. There is probably a good movie to be made featuring a Rick-like character and his saloon with the back-drop of the war in Syria, people making $$ off of refugees, cynical diplomats and spies, etc. May I suggest a good location for the bar might be on a Greek Island?

But I hope they don't try to do a literal remake of the original. That, I'm inclined to agree, would be a disaster.

 

[Frunobulax]

Rick - Randy Quaid
Ilsa - Carol Kane
Victor - Bill Murray
Renault - Roseanne Barr
Sam - Whoopie Goldberg
Fararri - Danny Devito
Ugarte - Albert Brooks
Strasser - The Rock

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it should be remade as a silent, in 1922.

Rick -- Lon Chaney
Ilsa -- Marie Prevost
Victor -- Wallace Reid
Renault -- Adolphe Menjou
Sam -- Noble Johnson
Farrari -- Noah Beery
Ugarte -- Snitz Edwards
Strasser -- Erich von Stroheim

Stroheim will also direct, and will import 10,000 tons of actual Moroccan sand for realism.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or even better, as a Busby Berkeley musical in 1933 --

Rick -- Dick Powell
Ilsa -- Ruby Keeler
Victor -- George Brent
Renault -- Warren William
Sam -- Allen Jenkins
Fararri - Guy Kibbee
Ugarte -- Frank McHugh
Strasser -- Ned Sparks

 

[Edward]

Meh, remakes are remakes. Either it'll be intersting enough in and of itself - like Peter Jackson's run at King Kong (the second remake, but the first of all three versions to be made as a period piece rather than contemporary) - or it'll be utterly forgettable and disappear. It's not like they're wiping out the original and preventing us from ever seeing it again, instead proferring only an inferior, screwed up version: it's not a George Lucas picture.

Just like the new great Gatsby. Had all the potential but it sucked. Rap music and social justice politics ruined it.

I liked it a lot. I was disapponited they insulted the audience by inserting a modern musical form in the assumption we wouldn't understand the contemporary impact of jazz in it, but it was inobtrusive enough that I didn't really notcie it much. Any politics in the film, such as they were, were a fair reflection of those in the source material. Head and shoulders above the diabolical version with Redford as Gatsby, though, granted, he's not a performer I've enjoyed in anything, ever. Baz Luhrman made a great film largely by accident.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Rick - Donald Trump ........" Of all the elections, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."
Ilsa - Hillary Clinton......" You're saying this only to make me go."
Renault - Françoise Hollande...." We musn't underestimate " American blundering "
Sam - Barack Obama..." No sir, I'm staying right here."

' la Casa blanca' (The white house)......coming soon on a TV near you !

 

[Feraud]

Another thing important to realize is that "Casablanca" didn't really become CASABLANCA The Ineffable Greatest Classic Movie of All Time until the rise of the Bogie Cult in the late 1960s and early 1970s -- and that cult, likewise, was tied closely to the culture of *its* time -- Bogart as up-yours antihero standing up for his beliefs was very much in harmony with the rebellious-college-kid zeitgeist of the Vietnam Era.

It was a successful film in 1943, people liked it, it won an Oscar, and it cemented Bogart's screen character, but it didn't have anywhere near the cult it has today. There was no hue and outcry whatsoever when the Lux Radio Theatre adapted it for the air with Alan Ladd and Hedy Lamaar, nor was there when Warners produced a flop TV adaptation with a Cold War motif for ABC in 1955 starring the forgotten Charles McGraw as Rick, and no Ilsa at all -- the roles didn't "belong" to Bogart and Bergman in the way we perceive them today, and they didn't until the Bogie Cult came along in the sixties to declare that they did.

Very good points. It puts the outrage in perspective to see how/when/why a particular movie or actor became untouchable. I dislike many remakes because they're generally awful cash grabs based on consumer nostalgia. I'll watch a good remake any day. The Thing ('82), Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78), or The Fly ('86) come to mind.

The discussion reminds me of a comment from a reviewer of the recent Ben-Hur. He said the film wasn't as good as the original with Charlton Heston...

 

[SurfGent]

Rick - Donald Trump ........" Of all the elections, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."
Ilsa - Hillary Clinton......" You're saying this only to make me go."
Renault - Françoise Holland...." We musn't underestimate " American blundering "
Sam - Barack Obama..." No sir, I'm staying right here."

' la Casa blanca' (The white house)......coming soon on a TV near you !

Well if you enjoyed it in relation to my comments your showing your card's

 

[Fading Fast]

Very good points. It puts the outrage in perspective to see how/when/why a particular movie or actor became untouchable. I dislike many remakes because they're generally awful cash grabs based on consumer nostalgia. I'll watch a good remake any day. The Thing ('82), Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78), or The Fly ('86) come to mind.

The discussion reminds me of a comment from a reviewer of the recent Ben-Hur. He said the film wasn't as good as the original with Charlton Heston...

I am not against remakes in general either - there should just be an intelligent reason for remaking it: The original movie version didn't do the story justice, the actors were badly cast, the times didn't allow for a for exploration of the issues, the budget was too small, etc.

One of my favorite remakes is the remake of an already very good movie, 1936's "These Three," which is an outstanding story of how a child's rumor destroys a struggling private girls school owing, in part, to the social prejudices of the times. The play it is based on has an assumed lesbian affair at the heart of the scandal, but being 1936, they changed it to a heterosexual extra-marital affair. In the equally outstanding 1961 version, the lesbian affair is brought back. While both are excellent movies, the remake had a purpose - to make the movie consistent with the original play and address an issue that 1936's movie standards wouldn't allow to be addressed.

What I don't see is what someone thinks they can do to improve upon or bring a new / fresh / better perspective to "Casablanca." If someone can, than they should go for it, but aligning everything - the times, the style, the period, the actors, the writers, etc. - that made "Casablanca" the classic that it is, is a darn big hurdle that I'm very suspicious anyone would get over.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

As long as the new Rick wears a trenchcoat & fedora, everything's gonna be just fine.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some remakes genuinely *are* better than the "originals." "The Maltese Falcon" was filmed three times by Warner Bros. over ten years -- the same property, three times in ten years. They could get away with that then because once a feature faded into the oblivion of the small-town third-run houses, it was gone. There was no television, there was no home video, and non-theatrical 16mm screenings were rigidly controlled. So remaking the same story three times in ten years wasn't as ridiculous as it sounds today -- the audience that saw the first version in 1931, or the second version in 1936, had quite likely forgotten all about them by 1941.

The 1931 Maltese Falcon isn't a bad picture. Ricardo Cortez looks more like Hammett's description of Sam Spade than anyone else whoever played the part, and being pre-code it gets away with more than it would later on. The 1936 version, retitled "Satan Met A Lady," is played for laughs, is very different from the original, and Warren William and Bette Davis aren't half bad. But the 1941 Bogart version is THE MALTESE FALCON, as though these earlier versions never existed. And while there might have conceivably have been Ricardo Cortez or Warren William fans complaining about Bogart muscling in on their favorites' territory, I doubt it.

As far as re-casting exercises go, this thread has gotten me thinking that you could recast *any* picture, or *any* historical event using only actors from the 1930s Warner Bros. stock company.

World War II

Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Warner Baxter
Adolf Hitler -- Warren William
Josef Stalin -- Eugene Pallette
Winston Churchill -- Guy Kibbee
Eleanor Roosevelt -- Aline MacMahon
Neville Chamberlain -- Franklin Pangborn

Watergate

Richard M. Nixon -- Warren William
H. R. Haldeman -- Frank McHugh
John Ehrlichman -- Allen Jenkins
John Dean -- Hugh Herbert
Rosemary Woods -- Joan Blondell
Margaret Mitchell -- Aline MacMahon
G. Gordon Liddy -- Ned Sparks
Bob Woodward -- Lee Tracy
Carl Bernstein -- Charles Lane
Sen. Sam Ervin -- Guy Kibbee


The Current Election

Donald Trump -- James Cagney
Hillary Clinton -- Claire Dodd
Bernie Sanders -- Guy Kibbee
Megyn Fox -- Joan Blondell
Ted Cruz -- Ned Sparks
Mario Rubio -- Frank McHugh
John Kasich -- Clarence Nordstrom
Jeb Bush -- Hugh Herbert

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Cagney would nail Trump so well. Just watched him in "Yankee Doodle Dandy," which is not my type of movie at all, but he is so freakin' talented that I enjoyed it despite all the musical, stylized half-realism that just doesn't work for me.