Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

Thank you.  

Is there a way at the IMB (or anywhere else) to find out what movie it
*was* in?  

I doubt that a left turn would have taken more than two seconds
of film, meaning that if you're looking for lost time you'd
really need a DVD player with frame counting, what with the half
second or so precision of using even the player's timer.

I personally doubt the turn ever existed. It would have cost a
little more SFX money and really would have done nothing for the
film.

imdb.com says, under Trivia,

"Because the film was made during WWII they were not allowed to
film at an airport after dark for security reasons. Instead they
used a sound stage with a small cardboard cutout airplane and
forced perspective. To give the illusion that the plane was
full-sized, they used little people to portray the crew preparing
the plane for take-off. Years later the same technique was used
in the film Alien (1979), with director Ridley Scott's son and
some of his friends in scaled down spacesuits."

The Trivia is a fun read for Casablanca afficianados.

The real irony was that a number of the actors were actually
refugees from Europe, including manuy of the German soldiers. PBS
recently had a documentary relating much of this. Fortunately I
recorded it.

Triva also says:

"In the famous scene where the "Marseillaise" is sung over the
German song "Watch on the Rhine", many of the extras had real
tears in their eyes; a large number of them were actual refugees
from Nazi persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and were
overcome by the emotions the scene brought out."

I believe the girl with the guitar singing the "Marseillaise" was
also a refugee.

Ah. Further down it says:

"Madeleine Lebeau, who plays Yvonne, and Marcel Dalio, who plays
croupier Emil, were husband and wife at the time of filming. They
had not long before escaped the Nazis by fleeing their native
France."