Casablanca on the Big Screen

Last night - I'm still on Friday - Ruth and I went to see Casablanca over at a place called the Earl Smith Strand Theatre in Marietta, GA. The website is here, if you want to learn more about it. The Strand was an old-fashioned, one-screen only, non-Cinemascope type theatre built in 1935 which fell victim to the disappearing town movie theatre blues in 1976.

We went there to meet Eric and his wife Andrea, and his sister and brother-in-law. We couldn't meet them before the movie and we managed to get there about fifteen minutes before the movie started. By the time we got there, there was some sort of curator going on and on and on about the theatre with some corny wisecracks. (It looks like, just as today, you had to sit through a lot before the movie started.)

The curator played a "sing along" with the pipe organ as titles flashed on the screen. I would like to say that this was really something special, but there wasn't so much a singing as a sort of very quiet mumbling. They need to have some plants seated in the audience to sing loudly, and to shame everyone else into singing. Part of the problem with the sing-along is that they generally play the general melody of the song once - to give one an idea of the rhythm - and at some point, you jump in. (I think there's an artificial pause which serves as the cue.) But I kept missing the cue. It was pretty frustrating. The attendees actually need to be taught how to sing along.

Anyway, after this disaster it was time for the movie. The quality of the movie was extremely good, so good that I could only assume that this wasn't an actual film at all - it was a "computerized print" projected against the screen. Okay, so we don't get to watch the reel change cues in the upper right corner. Big deal. The movie was crystal clear and you could see so much detail that you'd never see if you just watched Casablanca on television. Humphrey Bogart is one of those actors that they said dominates the big screen...and for once, the screen was as big as Bogart was in Hollywood.

I have to tell you - if you get any chance in your life to watch a great black-and-white movie full screen, you must take it. It is an incredible experience, which puts even HDTV to shame. I wish I could write more about the Art Deco style of the theatre, but unfortunately I forgot my camera. I can only write that the theatre experience is authentic, at least in architecture. This is just what a small town, high-falutin, art deco single screen theatre would have looked like. But instead of rotting curtains and the upholstery falling out of the seats, everything is in tip-top shape.

Ruth and I want to go again, but the only question is "when"? We're thinking about seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on Halloween Weekend. The problem is that we're old farts now. When you're young, it's much more fun to stay out all night, and sleep is something you just have to put up with. As you get older, and sleep becomes lighter and lighter, you come to treasure a good sleep. I just don't know if I've got it in me to stay up until 2 am with a bunch of teenagers.

Maybe the problem with my life is that I belonged in Bogie's era, and not in Rocky's.

(I was toying with providing a review of Casablanca. The problem is that Casablanca is almost told in another language, despite the fact that it is an English-language film. If you weren't an American citizen in 1942, you wouldn't have understood it. And it wouldn't be understood today. "Everyone coming together, and making a real sacrifice for the country? For an ideal?" That wouldn't play on either side of the aisle.)