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A Night In Casablanca (1946) - The Marx Brothers

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Offline NoahYoung

Our reviews and opinions of the films are just as valid as any of the authors who managed to get their books published. Before the internet, when a movie was released to the theaters, most people read exactly one review of it -- in whichever newspaper they happened to buy. Siskel and Ebert's variously-named TV shows were very helpful in that you often got opposing opinions from those guys.

Authors' often-wrong evaluations of films in their various books never stopped me from viewing the films when they came on TV. The only influence books had on me seeing films were those of Laurel and Hardy, since I would buy them on Super 8 film, perhaps one or 2 a year, and given the price, one had to be selective. That was the only way I was able to see many of the shorts of L&H. Years later I was pissed when I saw some L&Hs (when they were more easily avaiable on VHS) that I thought were great but had avoided for years buying since the various authors trashed them!


Burt Lancaster was too short!
- The Birdman of Alcatraz


Offline NoahYoung

My DVD review of "A Night in Casablanca."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220518121646/http://worldcinemaparadise.com/2014/05/28/dvd-review-a-night-in-casablanca-1946/

That's a spot-on review. The reason they made this may not have been because Chico needed the money, but nevertheless, Chico did need the money. His frightened looks and screams in the last scenes were probably similar to the ones he made while running from the mobsters to whom he owed gambling debts!  >:D

I had heard after the stock market crash in 1929, Chico was unphased, since he had long before found alternate ways to lose money. In 1929, he basically had no money to lose in the stock market!

In THE MARX BROTHERS SCRAPBOOK, Groucho claims he lost at least $50,000 in the Goldman-Sachs stock he had invested in. He blamed Eddie Cantor for giving him the tip to invest in it.

Has anyone seen the latest ClassicFlix "restoration" of this movie. How much better could they have made this look? Although in HD, I found that there was a previous blu-ray release before the ClassicFlix one.

Burt Lancaster was too short!
- The Birdman of Alcatraz


Offline Dr. Mabuse

Has anyone seen the latest ClassicFlix "restoration" of this movie? How much better could they have made this look?

I have the ClassicFlix Blu-ray and it looks fine, but the remaster is not a significant improvement over the DVD — there's only so much you can do when the 35mm print was in excellent condition to begin with. However, there are two new extras: four minutes of radio commercials promoting "A Night in Casablanca" and a 1945 audio excerpt of the Marxes trying out "Casablanca" material in front of a live audience.


Offline NoahYoung

I have the ClassicFlix Blu-ray and it looks fine, but the remaster is not a significant improvement over the DVD — there's only so much you can do when the 35mm print was in excellent condition to begin with. However, there are two new extras: four minutes of radio commercials promoting "A Night in Casablanca" and a 1945 audio excerpt of the Marxes trying out "Casablanca" material in front a live audience.

I guess it's not much better than the earlier blu-ray either.

Maybe it's just me, or the size of my TV, but when I watch a DVD vs. something streaming in 1080 (though not the same film), I don't notice much of a differerence.  IMHO, HD or better is a placebo unless you have a giant wall-to-wall TV.

Regarding extras -- I was so disappointed when I got the Paramount DVD boxset almost 20  years ago that had a 6th disc of extras -- which in total ran less than a half hour! How long do the excerpts of the live tour run?
Burt Lancaster was too short!
- The Birdman of Alcatraz



Offline NoahYoung

The audio excerpt runs six minutes.

Thanks. So 10 minutes of extras. Woohoo! [pie]
Burt Lancaster was too short!
- The Birdman of Alcatraz


Offline NoahYoung

OK, for me, I declare A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA better than ANIMAL CRACKERS! I will post my thoughts about the latter in the latter's thread.

 Feel free to [protest], but it's IMHO, and I'm sticking to it!
Burt Lancaster was too short!
- The Birdman of Alcatraz


Offline Dr. Mabuse

Which Marx Brother is the first to appear on-screen in this movie?

I had watched "A Night in Casablanca" several times since the late 1970s, but it wasn't until 2015 that I noticed Chico as an "extra" during the opening credits — a rather odd way to introduce the film's co-star. Since it's an uninterrupted tracking shot, Chico is present when the hotel manager dies.


Offline NoahYoung

I had watched "A Night in Casablanca" several times since the late 1970s, but it wasn't until 2015 that I noticed Chico as an "extra" during the opening credits — a rather odd way to introduce the film's co-star. Since it's an uninterrupted tracking shot, Chico is present when the hotel manager dies.

Then maybe Chico killed him!


Edit: I just watched it -- there is a dissolve a few seconds before we see the hotel manager poisoned.

Interesting tracking shot anyway -- but probably noticed by few people since you're probably reading the credits. I had never paid attention to the tracking shot (until it was just mentioned above) nor the fact that Chico can be seen (until I listened to a podcast a few weeks ago and they mentioned it.)



Burt Lancaster was too short!
- The Birdman of Alcatraz


Offline NoahYoung

The dissolve I mentioned is weird, since there's only a slight camera movement from the "before" to the "after", unlike normal dissolves where there is a complete scene change. So it's easy to mistake for a continuous shot. (Hitchcock made ROPE to look like the whole movie was a continous shot, with the reel changes masked by a cut showing the back of someone's jacket! Hitchcock never repeated this gimmick in another film. If you read about what they had to do to achieve the effect, you can tell that it just wasn't worth it. A movie that is supposed to occur in real-time, with one setting, could have been just as effective without the gimmick. I must admit, however, that when I was initially getting into Hitchcock movies about 40 years ago, reading about the gimmick made it one of the first tapes of Hitchcock I rented from the video store -- remember those?)

There are some bad edits in the movie anyway -- I think it was mentioned somewhere above. In the scene where Groucho makes the remark about living in Pittsburg, there's a cut right in the middle of the wisecrack. Though to be somewhat fair, it occurs between 2 sentences of the crack. Some of the dissolves happen with barely enough time to let the characters finish a sentence!.

Also, a weird edit right after Harpo vacuums Sig Ruman's toupee, as you see him exiting the room. It's cleaned up a bit in the HD version I've seen online.

BTW, although this film could use Margaret Dumont, at least it has Ruman! Probably the greatest male co-star the boys had.




Burt Lancaster was too short!
- The Birdman of Alcatraz