Tag: Ingrid Bergman

Casablanca (1942)

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Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca (1942). 102 minutes. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Starring Humphrey Bogart (as Rick Blaine), Ingrid Bergman (as Ilsa Lund), Paul Henreid (as Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (as Captain Louis Renault), Conrad Veidt (as Major Heinrich Strasser), Sydney Greenstreet (as Signor Ferrari), Peter Lorre (as Signor Ugarte), S. Z. Sakall (as Carl), and Dooley Wilson (as Sam).

I am constantly amused by how warmly and universally well-received by general audiences Casablanca is—not because I think it deserves otherwise, but rather because it is difficult for any film to endure for so long in the mind of the public at large as an unequivocal classic, and not just as a classic among many, but to many people the definitive classic film. And yet the same people go to such great lengths to diminish it while they praise it, asserting that it was merely a B movie (it was not), or that it was only one of hundreds of films produced that year … Read the rest

Notorious (1946)

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Notorious (1946)

Notorious (1946). 102 minutes.  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Starring Ingrid Bergman (as Alicia Huberman), Cary Grant (as T. R. Devlin), Claude Rains (as Alex Sebastian), and Leopoldine Konstantin (as Madame Anna Sebastian).

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is commonly described as an espionage thriller, but it is also a profound psychological drama and an ethical one, too—a movie that is not merely about notorious people but also about how we treat them.  It ranks with Vertigo and Rear Window as one of Hitchcock’s finest films.

At first we think we know who is notorious in this movie.  The film begins at the American trial of a famous Nazi spy.  We watch as his sentence is read, then see his daughter, Alicia Huberman (played by Ingrid Bergman) exit the courtroom. Surely the Nazi is the notorious one? But it turns out that the notorious person at the center of this story is not a Nazi: it is lovely Alicia Huberman.  We may come … Read the rest