my favorite movies of 1942:

(1) Casablanca

(2) Cat People

favorite of 1942:

Casablanca

(Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, Dooley Wilson, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet. Directed by Michael Curtiz.)

I know how you feel about me, but I’m asking you to put your feelings aside for something more important.

Do I have to hear again what a great man your husband is, what an important cause he’s fighting for?

It was your cause too. In your own way, you were fighting for the same thing.

I’m not fighting for anything anymore except myself. I’m the only cause I’m interested in.

Pauline Kael gave us permission to enjoy Casablanca without putting it on a pedestal: “It’s far from a great film, but it has a special appealingly schlocky romanticism, and you’re never really pressed to take its melodramatic twists and turns seriously.” (Quoted in this Atlantic article.)

But if you do want to take Casablanca seriously, this video explains what it’s all about and why it works so well. I especially like how the video shows how characters are lit differently for meaningful reasons:

That video gives away the whole plot. I know it might seem ridiculous to give a spoiler alert for such a famous movie, but some people in 2021 still haven’t seen it — like “Awkward Ashleigh,” who just watched it for the first time this month (June) and posted this video of her reactions:

Ingrid Bergman’s description of what it was like acting in Casablanca shows that great things can come from working spontaneously and throwing out the rules:

We were shooting off the cuff. Every day they were handing out dialogue and we were trying to make some sense of it. Every morning we would say, “Well, who are we? What are we doing here?” And [the director] Michael Curtiz would say, “We’re not quite sure, but let’s get through this scene today and we’ll let you know tomorrow.”

(That’s from her autobiography, quoted in the same Atlantic article that quotes Kael’s review.) Bergman talked more about that in this interview (starting 50 seconds in):

Ebert remarked on the gap between expectations and results:

No one making “Casablanca” thought they were making a great movie. It was simply another Warner Bros. release. It was an “A list” picture, to be sure (Bogart, Bergman and Paul Henreid were stars …). But it was made on a tight budget and released with small expectations. Everyone involved in the film had been, and would be, in dozens of other films made under similar circumstances. …

The plot, a trifle to hang the emotions on, involves letters of passage that will allow two people to leave Casablanca for Portugal and freedom. …

Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it. The black-and-white cinematography has not aged as color would. The dialogue is so spare and cynical it has not grown old-fashioned.

Play it, for old time’s sake.

(Stream Casablanca on HBO Max.)

 

2nd favorite of 1942:

Cat People

(Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph. Directed by Jacques Tourneur.)

The obvious pitfall for early, low-budget horror movies is to become dated due to special effects that look laughably tacky by our standards. Cat People avoids that problem: instead of trying to show us horrifying images, it chills us by how little it shows. Through its fascinating strangeness, it transcends its “B movie” label.

Ebert described one scene:

Irena and Oliver announce their engagement at a party in a restaurant, where an inexplicable and disturbing thing happens: She is approached by a strange woman … who affects a cat-like appearance and addresses her in Serbian, calling her “sister.” We never see this woman again, but her spectre haunts the movie. Are there lesbian notes in her approach to Irena? Perhaps in the sense that she is a powerful animal who challenges Oliver’s right to claim a mate?

All this trouble has made me think: I don’t know what love really is. I don’t know even whether I’m in love with Irena.

I know what love is. It’s understanding. It’s you and me, and let the rest of the world go by. Just the two of us living our lives together, happily, proudly. No self-torture, no doubt. …

Well, that isn’t the way I feel about Irena. It’s a different feeling. I’m drawn to her. There’s a warmth from her that pulls at me. I have to watch her when she’s in the room. I have to touch her when she’s near. But I don’t really know her. In many ways we’re strangers.

Stream Cat People on these sites. You can also buy it on Criterion blu-ray or DVD. All Criterion blu-rays and DVDs are expected to be 50% off at Barnes & Noble for the whole months of July and November each year (in stores and online), and Amazon might lower prices at the same times.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.