Midtown Matinees: Join us for an afternoon at the picture palace! A tribute to Hollywood's Golden Age and our cinema's historic legacy as the Midtown from 1941-1966, this series highlights iconic movies and movie stars the way they were meant to be seen: on our glorious big screen.
Many of the greatest films of all time have some triumph-over-adversity story to buffer their mythology: a chaotic production, weak box office, critics that didn’t get it at the time, a loss to some forgettable film during awards season. Their greatness has to be elusive and mysterious, in other words, something that couldn’t be comprehended until later, when they finally got the full appreciation they always deserved. The path to canonization tends to have its own, often formulaic narrative.
That's not what happened with Casablanca, which now celebrates 80 years of being widely beloved. Perhaps it wasn’t loved at the level that it is now—it was merely warmly received and successful, but not a sensation—but it won best picture, along with awards for its peerless screenplay and elegant direction, and is the rare film whose “classic” status is practically axiomatic. Who doesn’t love Casablanca? Or, put another way, where can you find any weaknesses in this production?
The jewel of Hollywood's Golden Age, Casablanca is perhaps the best example of "the system works" in film history. It’s not the result of any one driving artistic force—though producer Hal B Wallis deserves the lion’s share of the credit – but an amalgamation of talent from every corner: a screenplay, by the twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, and Howard Koch, that’s a model of sophistication and wit; a superior studio craftsman in Michael Curtiz, who’d made The Adventures of Robin Hood with Wallis; a score, by Max Steiner, that seamlessly patched together existing elements, including the French national anthem; and, of course, the casting of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as exes whose love doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in a world too crazy to accommodate it. – Scott Tobias, The Guardian
In English, French, German and Italian with English subtitles.
TICKETS (+HST)
General: $15
Members: $10, $8, FREE