“No one ever loved me that much.” Humphrey Bogart says this line in Casablanca at the height of his character’s cynicism -after his lost love has shown up again with another man, after a painful truth of their liaison has been revealed to him, and as the world itself appears to be closing in. He says it to a young Bulgarian woman desperate for his help in escaping the Nazi-occupied territory with her new husband, ashamed that it might mean sexual favours yet steadfast in her love and devotion even through that potentiality. Lorenz Hart sees himself in Bogart when he quotes this line twice in Blue Moon , aware that a comment of seemingly insensitive despair is paired with an act of pure selflessness -Bogart does rig the husband’s roulette game in his favour. But Hart doesn’t have so readily available a noble victory at hand. He’s only got his liquor. That Hart’s is an obscure name today in spite of a twenty-five year modestly successful partnership with composer Richard Rodgers, prior t...
Nouvelle Vague. The French New Wave -arguably the most important artistic movement in film history. In the span of just a handful of years more than a hundred young French filmmakers made their debuts, often coming from the worlds of academia, philosophy, and criticism - Cahiers du Cinema most notably- and making movies markedly different from those of the previous generation. It was a fresh and exciting period dominated by inspired eccentric personalities driven by intense creativity and a desire to experiment with the potential of their art. And yet the French New Wave does not have that reputation today -at least among most. Movies belonging to its pantheon are often hard to introduce to average moviegoers, unable to see or understand the appeal of what was being done then and what it meant. Stuffy and pretentious are the words that most commonly occur in such discussions of the Nouvelle Vague (especially if you insist on calling it “the Nouvelle Vague”). And probably none has contr...