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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 8, 2011 18:43:11 GMT
Impromptu movies are often batter than highly planned affairs. I'll admit to being very fond of Casablanca... which was one of those - 'we've got a North African town set, some Arab, Nazi and French military costumes, and all these contracted actors with nothing to do - go make a script!' Are you sure about that? I've never heard that before, and I am a pretty big fan myself. I know that it was based on an existing play ( Everybody Comes To Rick's), which the studio paid a record amount for the rights to, and (by the standards of the time) it had a huge budget. I vaguely recall that the dialogue was impromptu and improvised to an extent - if I'm right, which might not be the case that would probably have been fairly innovative. (Or was it the Maltese Falcon?)
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 8, 2011 20:28:20 GMT
Are you sure about that? I've never heard that before, and I am a pretty big fan myself. I know that it was based on an existing play ( Everybody Comes To Rick's), which the studio paid a record amount for the rights to, and (by the standards of the time) it had a huge budget. I vaguely recall that the dialogue was impromptu and improvised to an extent - if I'm right, which might not be the case that would probably have been fairly innovative. (Or was it the Maltese Falcon?) In his Adventures In The Screen Trade William Goldman gives Casablanca as an example of a film that works perfectly despite having a terrible screenplay that apparently was pretty much made up as they went along, so there may be some truth in that!
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Post by doomovertheworld on Jun 8, 2011 20:30:19 GMT
i've always loved horror express. i will freely admit that i suspect that it is partly a nostalgia kick. it was one of the first horror movies that i taped off the tv aged 11/12 once i managed to work out how to make the video advance record. the combination of christopher lee & peter cushing is well nigh unbeatable. plus i always loved this particular poster for the movie:
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Post by lemming13 on Jun 9, 2011 12:24:51 GMT
On Casablanca, though it was based on a play (unproduced at the time of the filming), according to several members of the cast and crew the script-writers were actually completing scenes and handing the pages to the actors the day they were due to be filmed. A lot of characters don't appear in the play at all, and the chronology was changed. But it doesn't appear to be true that the ending was changed - in the play, Ilsa goes off with Victor with Rick's blessing. Though Ingrid Bergman did say in more than one interview that she did not know which man she was going to end up with till the final scene was filmed. But Rick is arrested by the Nazi Captain (not Major) and there is no possibility of that beautiful friendship with Renault. And none of the actors appear to have known how that final scene with Strasser, Louis and Rick would turn out till the last day, which kept their performances fresh. The studio chose the play because they wanted to make a film about Nazis and freedom fighters in North Africa to cash in on the successful liberation of North Africa, and they had spent a lot on the sets for The Desert Song.
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