Ask Mick LaSalle: “Casablanca” — what happened next?
Dear Mick LaSalle: “Casablanca” — what happened next? I know your opinion on sequels, but these are such beloved characters, it would be a compelling tale.
Marty Duvall, Benecia Dear Marty Duvall: In all our lives, there are brief periods that are just like a movie and longer periods that just aren’t. And I think at the end of “Casablanca,” Rick and Ilsa are entering that long, long period that just isn’t. Hi Mick LaSalle: The death of Jerry Lewis got me thinking about how movie comedy teams have faded during my lifetime. I think his partnership with Dean Martin was the last of a long line of comedy duos such as Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello.
Ken Kirste, Sunnyvale Hi Ken Kirste: Yes, but don’t forget Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, who were hugely successful in the 1960s and early 1970s (albeit on TV). I suppose the comedy team is a vaudeville form, so maybe its decline was inevitable. Still, there may be economic reasons. Trying to break into comedy is difficult enough, but to do it as a duo means having to split the money for every gig, making it even harder. The last great comedy duo that I’m familiar with is Lank and Earl, from the late 1980s. They were brilliant — you can see a few of their routines on YouTube — but they never really caught on, and part of the reason may have had to do with the economics of it. It’s hard to keep plugging along making half of a bad wage. Dear Mick: I believe the reason that critics often rate a film much lower than the audience is that the critic watches a film as a job and has a checklist: cinematography, plot, screenplay, acting, music, etc.; whereas, the average moviegoer sees it as a synergism, where the whole is larger or better than the sum of its parts.
Robert Freud Bastin, Petaluma Dear Robert: Well, you’ve said a lot here. The first thing I have to tell you is that only a bad critic would watch a movie in the way that you imagine. In fact, “bad” doesn’t even cover it. Only a contemptible moron of a critic would watch a movie with a checklist. The only way to watch a movie is to watch a movie. The thinking comes after, and even then doesn’t involve anything like a checklist, but a kind of intellectual investigation into an emotional response; in this case, one’s own. However, you bring up an interesting point about seeing a movie as part of one’s job. It’s true, for example, that reading a book for school is not the same thing as reading it for pleasure, but I think it’s precisely here that it becomes important that critics actually like or even love the form they’re writing about — that is, love it generically. For example, I love some operas. But do I love opera generically? Not really. I love some theater.
In London, I just saw Andrew Scott in “Hamlet” — it was one of the best shows I ever saw in my life, and I keep thinking about it. But love theater generically ? No. So I think this means I shouldn’t be an opera critic or a theater critic. But with film, it’s different. As I write this (but not as you’re reading this), I’m just getting back from a vacation in Europe and haven’t seen a movie in four weeks. And while, like anybody else, I’d much rather lie around, eat like a slob and enjoy myself than work, I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing movies again. I do miss it. So having an odd turn of mind of actually liking the form can, I believe, counteract the inescapable fact of seeing something for business, not pleasure. As for the real reason audiences like certain movies better than critics, it’s simple: self-selection. People go to movies they expect to like, based on their liking of certain genres or certain actors. Usually, they get what they pay for.