Okay, a rant about Casablanca involving two pet peeves. [View all]

First:

I was watching a reaction video to Casablanca last night which had the closed captions turned on. All well and good: I have no problems hearing dialogue myself--indeed I have pretty much memorized the entire script--but I have Deaf friends and I like to see what they might be missing, since closed captions are often notoriously bad, especially when computer generated.

This, however, isn't a computer glitch. It's been happening now for decades.

When Peter Lorre first shows Bogart the "Letters of Transit" he says, "...signed by General Weygand..."

Notice I said "Weygand." But every caption I've seen, and even some supposed screenplays posted on line, says "General De Gaulle."

Now, you'd have to be historically illiterate to believe that that's what Lorre is saying. Remember this takes place in a territory under the administration of Vichy France. De Gaulle at that time was listed by that government as a traitor, under penalty of death. Far from being documents that "cannot be questioned" by Vichy authorities, anything signed by De Gaulle at that time and place would have brought you straight to the gallows or a firing squad.

By contrast, General Weygand was the head of the Vichy government in French Northwest Africa. So, "letters of transit" signed by Weygand would indeed have had enormous cache for Vichy bureaucrats.

Aside from the captioning being off, I've actually had arguments with film buffs insisting that Lorre indeed says "de Gaulle." Even Roger Ebert claims it was "de Gaulle" for reasons unknown and unfathomable to me.

The only reason for this absurd development is that sometime decades ago someone misheard it, and not knowing the name of any other French general through all French history, decided "de Gaulle" was what Lorre was saying. This had to be an American. No French person, perhaps even no European of the time would be so ill-informed as to make this assumption.

Second rant: am I the only one who bristles when Ingrid Bergman refers to Dooley Wilson as that "boy" at the piano? And how Wilson is addressed by one and all as "Sam" while he has to preface every name with "Mr." or "Miss?" "Leave him alone, Miss Ilsa, you're bad luck to him."

I'm glad to see that contemporary viewers see the Claude Rains character as the sleaze he is. This evidently wasn't always the case, as it seems until fairly recently his exploitation of women fleeing the Nazis was often seen as somehow endearing, as in-"What a rascal!" But the racism inherent in how Sam is treated by others, and how others expect him to behave toward them, seems still often to go unremarked.

Just to be clear: I think "Casablanca" is a treasure and otherwise well-nigh perfect in every sense. Every time I see it I pick up on how incredibly detailed and nuanced it is. Just as an example, when "Karl" is sharing brandy with two German refugees about to leave for America, they have an exchange about the time. "What watch?" "Ten watch." "Such watch?" You have to know some German to know this would be an absolutely probable mistake for new English speakers to make. A common way for Germans to ask the time is, "Wieviel Urh ist es?" which could be literally translated as "How much clock is it?" or even "How much watch?" It's details like that that having me coming back again and again to view this masterpiece.

Someday I want to write an essay detailing all the subtle historical references that viewers these days often miss. But in the meantime, here's my rant.