Casablanca

I recently watched the movie "Casablanca," and I have to say I could see where it became a classic movie.  This movie has been around not only for its historical meaning but also because its just an American love story as well.  This movie was appealing to me because I enjoy learning about history and in particular World War II.  I thought for the time that this film was shot they did a great job of using the technology that they had.

One thing that made this film unique to me was that this is the first film that I have seen from the World War II era, and this was actually one of the first black and white films I have seen.  I enjoyed watching this movie because I liked seeing how they portrayed another country at this time in history.  I was told that this movie was good but not great, so that being said, I had little to no expectations for this movie, but needless to say, this movie exceeded my expectations.  I enjoyed the way that the plot was turned from Isla and Rick being being in love and Isla leaving him and ditching at the last moment in Paris, to Rick discovering she was married to Laszlo this whole entire time, and then back in Casablanca Isla and Rick plan to leave again together with the transport papers and then in the end Rick is the one that deserts the plan.

Another thing that I noticed was the way that this movie followed along sort of like the movie "Out Cold."  Now obviously because of the time frame "Out Cold" was the one that copied Casablanca, and I just thought the way that they played the piano and the way Isla entered the Nightclub, was almost exactly like how the girl entered with the song on the juke box.

That being said, I enjoyed watching this movie because it was an American classic and I would recommend this film to anyone.

On the Waterfront

     After watching on the waterfront, several thoughts and ideas came to mind.  The first thing that came to mind is how much movies and directors have evolved.  I think that one of the reasons why it was hard to watch was because it was boring, and that might be because I am so used to watching such high technology and high budget movies that it was difficult to watch.  For example, the character "Terry", did not even change clothes once.  Since I also thought that the movie boring, it immediately became somewhat difficult to follow because there were basically no sound effects, and the cut scenes going from scene to scene i thought were terrible, simply because the movie is from the 1950's.  Some of the questions that I have on this film, was; what did the fact that he was a boxer have to do with anything in the movie? I understand that the reason that he was there was because of the fixing of his last boxing match, but it still seems irrelevant.  As you might have guessed from reading my thoughts, I did not care for this movie much at all.  I think that it could have been much more interesting if the movie had a more twisting plot, maybe that his brother was the mob boss and he was to turn on him instead of somebody else.  One of the other reasons that I think that it was difficult to watch was simply because it was in black and white.  It may sound pathetic but it was hard to see which character was which, they all sort of look the same.  I however had a bias going into watching the film. I had talked with several people before watching this and they said it was a very difficult movie to watch and said it was a tough movie to follow.