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March 9, 1997
Today's major event: Casablanca in glorious black and white at the glorious Brattle Theater. The main thing I noticed this time around was the shadows, the interplay of light and dark everywhere in the film. Shadows of the plants at Rick's. Shadows of the parrot at The Blue Parrot. Shadows of Viktor Lazlo and Ilsa...
The last time I saw Casablanca at the Brattle the audience sang along with the Marseillaise in the famous out singing the Germans scene. Today nobody sang along. Nobody applauded at the end either. People acted like they were in church. That's it! I may not fit in with the Baptists, but I can worship at the Church of Bogart anytime.
And Bergman! Was there ever such a gorgeous face on the silver screen?
The Bogart/Bergman chemistry is of course way different from the Bogart/Bacall chemistry. Bogart/Bergman is Romance with a capital R. Legend has it that many marriages have been proposed in the Brattle's balcony during Casablanca, which for years was traditionally shown during Harvard's exam week.
Before the movie, we had lunch at The Algiers, a middle eastern restaurant in the same building as the Brattle. Both are Harvard Square institutions. With the renovation of the building the Algiers moved upstairs from its dark basement and it took awhile for me to warm up to its bright airy spaces after a youth misspent drinking arabic coffee in the basement. But I did. The Algiers is still my favorite place to eat and drink coffee the Square.
The thing of it is... the Square is not the same anymore. Instead of quirky, funky shops it's chains like Structure, The Gap and HMV. The whole time they were building the complex where Structure and HMV are next to the Brattle (I called it "the hole in Harvard Square" and reported its status weekly to the Massachusetts diaspora among my friends and relatives) I worried the Brattle wouldn't find the money to renovate, that the Algiers wouldn't reopen, that the Casablanca (a restaurant also in the basement of that building) would never reopen. They all did. I contributed to the Brattle's renovation fund (not tax deductible but a case of putting my money where my mouth is) and was rewarded with a special screening of a new print of Top Hat when it reopened. So some of the key institutions are still there but the feel of the square is more like a theme park - a Harvard theme park. I know all things change. Impermanence and all that. But still.
At least we here in the wretched east (the past) get to see the great movies in a real theater instead of on video once in awhile. Not every place has that. (yeah, yeah, I know it's better at Stanford, the Pacific Film Archive, etc. but at least we have the Brattle in all its renovated glory.)
I came to Boston for the waters. I just didn't realize they'd be in my basement :-) I was misinformed. Actually, I don't even have that excuse. I was born and raised here within walking distance of the MTA Green Line (now called the T Green Line). I can't help it.