{"id":107115,"date":"2017-01-31T10:30:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T15:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=107115"},"modified":"2017-01-30T12:29:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T17:29:01","slug":"reluctant-enthusiast-orson-welles-casablanca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/31\/reluctant-enthusiast-orson-welles-casablanca\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reluctant Enthusiast: Orson Welles on Casablanca<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In anticipation of Casablanca<\/em>\u2019s seventy-fifth anniversary this year, I\u2019ve made a sustained attempt to reappraise the significance of the film and its illustrious afterlife\u2014in particular how the film, which involved so many European-refugee actors and studio professionals, resonates in the current political climate, with the increasing turn to the right, toward protectionism and isolationism, and a global refugee crisis of a similar scale. But in searching out some of the lesser-known, and least likely, voices on the subject, I\u2019ve been reminded of another critical reappraisal of the film, one that dates back several decades and that hasn\u2019t really received much attention.<\/p>\n

Tucked away in My Lunches with Orson<\/em><\/a>, those delicious recorded snatches of midday schmoozing between directors Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles (edited by Peter Biskind and published in 2013), is a late chapter titled \u201cGary Cooper turns me right into a girl!\u201d in which Welles admits, among other things, his hidden affection for Casablanca<\/em>. The recordings took place at Wolfgang Puck\u2019s Ma Maison, in West Hollywood, in the early 1980s, by which time the once-towering American auteur was approaching his final years; after a string of box-office disappointments and financial hardships, he was notoriously crotchety about all things Hollywood. At different points in his conversations with Jaglom, he skewers the producer Irving Thalberg, snubs Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, throws shade at everyone from Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier, and Joan Fontaine to Woody Allen and Marlon Brando, and expresses untrammeled contempt for Hitchcock\u2019s Rear Window<\/em>, Ford\u2019s The Searchers<\/em>, and Polanski\u2019s Chinatown<\/em>. All of which makes his fondness for Casablanca<\/em>, the seeming apogee of classical Hollywood and \u201cthe most decisive exception to the auteur theory,\u201d as Andrew Sarris once called it, that much more surprising. <\/p>\n

Of course, Welles doesn\u2019t give up his praise of the film without first getting in a few barbs and backhanded compliments, remaining ever so true to the general snark-laden tenor of the table talk. He starts off by calling Humphrey Bogart a \u201csecond-rate actor,\u201d a comment Bogie himself, widely known for his self-deprecating humor both on- and offscreen, might not have disputed. \u201cHe was a fascinating personality who captured the imagination of the world,\u201d Welles adds, \u201cbut he never gave a good performance in his life.\u201d While most of these chats tend to be Wellesian soliloquies reaffirmed by his yes-man, Jaglom counters on this point: \u201cTo me, he gives the perfect performance in Casablanca<\/em>.\u201d This elicits a few more quibbles from Welles, but when pressed on Bogie\u2019s early breakout role as Duke Mantee in Petrified Forest<\/em> (1936), he acquiesces: \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t hate him.\u201d The takeaway for Welles, who spent much of the late seventies doing Paul Masson wine commercials and making cameos on the talk-show circuit, is that one doesn\u2019t have to be a good actor to be an international star, a point he drives home with the example of Gary Cooper, whose screen presence somehow turns him into a little girl, or makes him \u201cqueer,\u201d as Jaglom teases his lunch partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither one of them were much good,\u201d Welles concludes in his comparison of Cooper to Bogart. \u201cBut we\u2019re in love with \u2019em.\u201d To his mind, that\u2019s what makes them stars, if not talented actors. As for the other leads in Casablanca<\/em>, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Welles holds Bergman in similarly low esteem. \u201cNo, she\u2019s not an actress,\u201d he fulminates. \u201cJust barely able to get through a scene.\u201d After questioning Bogart\u2019s intelligence, Welles moves on to Paul Henreid, who plays the overshadowed antifascist hero, Victor Laszlo: \u201cYou know, a lot of people who aren\u2019t interesting on screen were very bright. Paul Henreid is very bright.\u201d His sole unqualified praise is reserved for supporting player Sydney Greenstreet (\u201che was wonderful in every part he did\u201d), who brought the same verve to Signor Ferrari as he had the year before to the \u201cFat Man\u201d Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Then comes a surprising, and charming, shift as Welles finally loosens his grip. \u201cI admired Casablanca<\/em> very much,\u201d he admits. \u201cI thought it was a very well put-together piece of schwarmerei, with just the right measure of every ingredient and all that crap, and of course, tremendous luck, because they were making it up as they went along.\u201d The credit for this, in his eyes, lay not with the actors\u2014or even the writers, for that matter\u2014but with director Michael Curtiz, whom Welles admired for his visual sensibility and whose German apprenticeship with theater impresario Max Reinhardt, a childhood hero of Welles\u2019s, put him in an altogether different category.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war flattened everybody\u2019s taste in a very curious way,\u201d Welles remarks. \u201cThe best thing they could do in the movies was some delirious piece of fabrication like Casablanca<\/em>. That was the <\/em>great work of art, during the whole period of the war. Nothing else.\u201d For Welles\u2014the stylist and cinematic virtuoso whose 1941 debut feature, Citizen Kane<\/em>, proved a triumph he could never repeat\u2014a film like Casablanca <\/em>could not have been further from his own ambitions as a filmmaker. Critic Roger Ebert once summed up this divide in an audio commentary he prepared in 2002. \u201cWhen asked what is the greatest film of all time, I say Citizen Kane<\/em>,\u201d he asserted. \u201cWhen asked what is the movie you like the best, I say Casablanca.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Welles credits his belated appreciation for\u00a0the film to another German in Hollywood. \u201cThe person who loved it when it opened,\u201d he recounts, \u201cwho persuaded me to take it more seriously, was Marlene [Dietrich].\u201d Dietrich memorably served as the acid-tongued gypsy woman in Welles\u2019s Touch of Evil<\/em> (telling crooked cop Hank Quinlan, played by the portly Welles himself, \u201cYou\u2019re a mess, honey. You\u2019d better lay off those candy bars\u201d) and had made her own spectacular debut in The Blue Angel<\/em> (a film Welles calls \u201cschlock\u201d when dishing with Jaglom). In the early fifties, Dietrich also starred as Mademoiselle Madou, a Rick Blaine spin-off in a radio series called Caf\u00e9 Istanbul<\/em>, written by Murray Burnett, one of the original writers behind Casablanca<\/em>. \u201cThey\u2019ll be showing that thirty years from now,\u201d she predicted of the movie. \u201cYou listen to me.\u201d Hard as it may have been for Welles to stomach, he had to grant Dietrich final authority on this one. \u201cI guess you\u2019re right\u201d are the last words Biskind transcribed from that seating at Ma Maison.<\/p>\n

Noah Isenberg directs the Screen Studies program at the New School and is the author, most recently, of <\/em>We\u2019ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood\u2019s Most Beloved Movie<\/a>, due out in February. He last wrote for the <\/em>Daily on the centennial of the novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Budd Schulberg<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNeither one of them were much good,\u201d Welles concludes in his comparison of Cooper to Bogart. \u201cBut we\u2019re in love with \u2019em.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":780,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1186],"tags":[22639,7324,80,3451,1983,79,6351,11458,995,4009,26299,7802,26966,26152,26965,1470,26962,11459,10570,26964,26963],"class_list":["post-107115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-film","tag-auteurism","tag-casablanca","tag-cinema","tag-citizen-kane","tag-conversation","tag-film","tag-gary-cooper","tag-henry-jaglom","tag-hollywood","tag-humphrey-bogart","tag-ingrid-bergman","tag-marlene-dietrich","tag-max-reinhardt","tag-michael-curtiz","tag-murray-burnett","tag-orson-welles","tag-paul-henreid","tag-peter-biskind","tag-roger-ebert","tag-sidney-greenstreet","tag-wolfgang-puck"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Reluctant Enthusiast: Orson Welles on \u2018Casablanca\u2019<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" 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