Brilliant scene in a terrible film

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

The end of Casablanca, when the line is said:

"Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship", because that is when you know the torture is over, because it is torture to have to watch that shite performance by Bogart and Bergman, the one most over-hyped film in movie history.

And no, I am not trying my best to be controvercial here. Watch the extra on the DVD yourself and you'll see how it was all bloody half-arsed all the way in effort.

Bogart, by the way, was not much of an actor with a wide register. I'd say he was the Al Pacino of that era. Way cool and always watchable, but no Sean Penn, James Stewart or Johnny Depp!

[diggedy derek]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

You don't know what you're talking about.

[Wyatt Earp]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Sean Penn? Lord save us.

[jason voorhees]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

I know Casablanca was no Patch Adams, but we may have tried a little harder to come up with a slightly more appropriate example of a 'terrible film.'

My example would be the horrific remake of Dukes of Hazzard, in which Bo and Luke's mentally deficient cousin trying to tell the crowd at the stock car race that they all had to run to the courthouse to stop Boss Hogg from stealing half of the county in a backroom land deal, only regrettably deciding to wear his snapping turtle shell helmet. This led to the crowd booing him and throwing garbage at him; including a fried chicken leg of which he ducked and ran away from...only to realize his good fortune - thus leading him to run back to pick it off of the ground and eat it.

[Guest]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Casablanca is somewhat overrated I think. Although maybe I'm too influenced by Umberto Eco.

[Reed John]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Casablanca is one of the most accurately rated films of all times. It's brilliant. Everyone in it is brilliant.

[Guest]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Bogart, by the way, was not much of an actor with a wide register

Cobblers. Have you seen Treasure of the Sierra Madre or In a Lonely Place or The Enforcer or The African Queen or, of course, The Maltese Falcon (a turn so perfect that Jack Nicholson completely lifted it for Chinatown)??

These are all very different, very nuanced performances. And properly charismatic. You can't take your eyes off Bogie when he's on screen.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

The best scene in a bad (well, indifferent film) is the final scene of The Man With The X-Ray Eyes.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

And in the same vein, the final scene of The Fly (the Vincent Price one).

[Wyatt Earp]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

The opening scene in the otherwise execrable Saving Private Ryan wins this, surely.

[evilC]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Why on Earth... wrote:

The opening scene in the otherwise execrable Saving Private Ryan wins this, surely.

Oh my god! I've actually only ever seen the opening scene* but I never want to see it again. Horrific.

(* - I think the rest of the film might have clashed with 'You've Been Framed' or something.)

[Reed John]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

I don't think Saving Private Ryan was excreble, although I'd be interested to know why anyone would think that. It was, however, a bit conventional and didn't add anything to the pop culture cannon on WWII.

[Wyatt Earp]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

evilC wrote:

Why on Earth... wrote:

The opening scene in the otherwise execrable Saving Private Ryan wins this, surely.

Oh my god! I've actually only ever seen the opening scene* but I never want to see it again. Horrific.

(* - I think the rest of the film might have clashed with 'You've Been Framed' or something.)

The Harry Hill version? If so, you made the right decision.

[Wyatt Earp]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

I don't think Saving Private Ryan was excreble, although I'd be interested to know why anyone would think that. It was, however, a bit conventional and didn't add anything to the pop culture cannon on WWII.

Cannon: very good, very good. (It's not canon fodder, you might say.)

Some dude wrote a long online article that someone on here linked to once about why the film is crap. As I remember, his views were more or less the same as mine. Can anyone recall where to find it?

[Guest]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

I think that was me, doing the linking I mean. Hang on.

[Guest]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

It was possibly this.

And it is an awful awful film.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Why on Earth... wrote:

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

I don't think Saving Private Ryan was excreble, although I'd be interested to know why anyone would think that. It was, however, a bit conventional and didn't add anything to the pop culture cannon on WWII.

Cannon: very good, very good. (It's not canon fodder, you might say.)

Some dude wrote a long online article that someone on here linked to once about why the film is crap. As I remember, his views were more or less the same as mine. Can anyone recall where to find it?

Not our very own Mr Agreeable?

http://www.mr-agreeable.net/story.lasso?section=Reaper&id=69

[Wyatt Earp]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Lyra wrote:

It was possibly this.

And it is an awful awful film.

That was it! Thanks, Lyra.

I'd forgotten wingco's thing.

[Guest]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Wingco is right too. What's 'good' about the opening half hour, really, even if we don't judge it by the repulsive crap that follows? So someone designed something that looked like what they think the computer-gaming generation might think the battle looked like. Oh, yeah and sounded like. Ooh yeah. Bound to have been some sensory overload going on. Let's create an effect like there's been an explosion and you probably go a bit deaf. The very fact that the most overused and meaningless word ever applied to film ever - 'visceral' -is always used is a demonstration of how meaningless and fraudulent and pernicious is this attempt to sell us the idea that a film can show us what being in battle feels like. Fuck off, Spielberg! How the fuck dare you. And I'm objecting to the emotional dishonesty without even going into the points others have made about the social and political dishonesty. and the distortion of a nationalism that was unpalatable to start with.

[Reed John]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

I don't accept the criticism that it showed the Germans as merely "far away baddies." Well I accept that it does that but not that that's a problem, necessarily. The point of the film - of most films - is to show something from a particular character's or small group of characters' perspective. So showing the Germans as far away baddies and the marines as the good guys is a factually accurate way to portray D-Day from the US Marine's perspective.

Of course, that means it doesn't add anything to our understanding of the war, its causes, its effects, anything. It just shows us what we should have already known - that grampa did something really extraordinary when he was a young man and he's still haunted by it. The trouble is that I don't think a lot of Americans really understood that until that film because most WWII films really sanitize the war bit and make it look like paintball fun. I agree that nothing short of actually being there can really tell us what war is like, and visceral is kind of a bullshit word for a film. But at least we can get a bit of a sketch from something like the opening of SPR and then extrapolate from that.

The main thing I got from that scene was that survival was total unmitigated blind luck. It had nothing to do with skill or bravery or badassery. You just moved forward and hoped somehow one of the main raining bullets didn't hit you. I've thought about that and had nightmares about that after seeing that scene. That's visceral, but only because I'm the sort of person that dwells on bad things and dreams about it.

Also, I'm pretty sure the Marines weren't integrated at that point, so it wouldn't be wrong to exclude any minority members from the platoon. I think. Other films have shown the exploits of black units.

These two Cracked pieces below are germane especially the bit about how America supposedly saved the world from Hitler. I think the US was main, although not the only, protagonist in the Pacific theater, but in Europe, D-Day was really a side-show. It was all about Russia. The sheer magnitude of the losses on the two sides of that war aren't remotely close.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18389_the-5-most-widely-believed-wwii-facts-that-are-bullshit.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_18409_the-5-most-statistically-full-shit-national-stereotypes.html

[Wyatt Earp]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

I think the US was main, although not the only, protagonist in the Pacific theater...

Japan was also involved, I understand.

[Reed John]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Yes, but they lost so they're not among the "protagonists" in the story.

[Crusoe]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Nitpicks: there were no US Marines in Europe (in Saving Private Ryan they're just regular Army), and the Australians were fairly heavily involved in the Pacific (although not nearly to the same extend as the US).

Sorry.

[Wyatt Earp]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

If we count the Burma Campaign as part of the Pacific Theatre, then that makes the British and British India major players as well. Though that campaign can't be regarded as decisive, except perhaps in terms of Allied morale.

[Central Rain]

Brilliant scene in a terrible film

Why on Earth... wrote:

If we count the Burma Campaign as part of the Pacific Theatre, then that makes the British and British India major players as well. Though that campaign can't be regarded as decisive, except perhaps in terms of Allied morale.

Also very important as a phase in the history of South/South-East Asia. Bayly and Harper's book "Forgotten Armies" is very good at bringing together all the different strands to the story i.e. nationalists, resistance movements, collaborators etc and not just the regular armies involved.

First time I saw Saving Private Ryan I was very impressed, but I have since become irritated at its "what are we fighting for" moralising, and for that matter at the whole "Greatest Generation" myth, part of which always seems to be implying that other generations have been a colossal disappointment.

Anyway, never seen Casablanca but will probably give it a look soon. PPV's pronounced hatred of it is seems to be the exception rather than the rule so I am reasonably hopeful that it will be worth watching.