Tag: World War 2 Movies

Reel 91: Humphrey Bogart Joins the Resistance

Sean and I have wanted to cover CASABLANCA for a long time, but the tough part was finding a good film to pair it with. Finally Sean hit on the idea of pairing Humphrey Bogart with…himself!

In today’s episode we look at two films in which Bogart plays the very reluctant hero despite the fact that the bad guys are literally Nazis. Whoo! Good thing we learned our lesson from that bit of history, right? RIGHT??

Anyway, we do in fact open up with CASABLANCA, from 1942 and directed by Michael Curtiz. It’s worth noting that Hal Wallis acquired the rights to the stage play Everybody Comes to Rick’s only a few weeks after Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry to World War Two, giving the entire thing an extra bit of poignancy.

From there we move to 1944, and Howard Hawks’ TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. In this one, Bogart plays a charter fisherman in Martinique who is asked to use his boat to assist the French Resistance there. This is the one in which Bogie first meets Bacall, and fireworks ensue, both on-and off-screen. Also starring Walter Brennan and Hoagy Carmichael doing his Hoagy Carmichael thing.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Next time, we make our first foray into the silent era as we review the film INTOLERANCE (1916), directed by D.W. Griffith. Then we jump ahead to 1999 for Barry Levinson’s LIBERTY HEIGHTS. Both films were made specifically to respond to criticism of an earlier film of theirs. Join us, won’t you?

Reel 50: Inspired TV

Yow! We’ve made it to the 50-episode mark! Thanks so much for your support; we couldn’t have done it without you.

Today we’re looking at a pair of films that bear a very strong resemblance to a pair of television shows, but (on paper, at least) there’s no official connection between the two productions.

We start with 1953’s Stalag 17, directed and co-written by Billy Wilder. This film stars William Holden in an Oscar-winning performance. The film also stars Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Neville Brand, Richard Erdman, Michael Moore, Sig Ruman, and Otto Preminger. It’s worth noting that Strauss and Lembeck appeared in the original Broadway production.

Stalag 17 almost certainly inspired the 1965-71 CBS comedy Hogan’s Heroes, which was also set in a German POW camp and had several other elements in common. (Claude says during the episode that Hogan’s Heroes also took place in Stalag 17, but his memory failed him; Hogan’s Heroes was set in Stalag 13.)

From there  we jump forward, to 1992. Cameron Crowe’s Singles,  starring Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, and Matt Dillon, among others.

Despite the film being about a half-dozen young adults making their way in the world, and most of them living in the same apartment building, this is not connected to the NBC  television series Friends, which is about a half-dozen young adults making their way in the world, most of whom live in the same apartment building. And Friends debuted nearly two years after Singles. However, it was green-lighted only a short time after Crowe turned down Warner Brothers’ offer to adapt Singles into a series. But you can be the judge of that one.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

Over the next several episodes we’ll be taking you around the world. And we start South of the Border, down Mexico way. We’ll be reviewing Y tu mamá también, a wild little coming of age road film from 2001. Then we’ll be looking at Roma, a story about the life of a housekeeper in Mexico City. Both of these films were directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who chose to release Roma only to Netflix to ensure the largest possible audience.