‘AS TIME GOES BY’, SADNESS FROM CASABLANCA TO MÍSIA

Autumn is a time of sadness and longing. The arrival of the first snowfalls in the Pyrenees lowers the temperatures in Barcelona and The Grandma, who is a shy and reflective person, chooses to listen to introspective music.

Since she left us, too soon, a long year ago, it has become very difficult to listen to Mísia, but her voice and her fados are the best cure for saudade and longing.

Today, years after the premiere of Casablanca, one of the masterpieces of cinema, The Grandma has recovered an excellent version of As Time Goes By that the Catalan-Portuguese fado singer interpreted as only she knew how to do: with excellent vocal qualities and infinite tenderness.

We miss you, Mísia, our admired friend. We remember you in every place of your and our beloved Barcelona and Lisboa, and we wish you could have listened to Memória of Rosalía and Carminho, because it is your story and you would love it.

More information: Memória by Rosalía & Carminho

As Time Goes By is a jazz song written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became famous when it was featured in the 1942 film Casablanca, sung by Dooley Wilson as Sam. The song was voted No. 2 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs special, commemorating the best songs in film, surpassed only by Over the Rainbow sung by Judy Garland.

The song was covered among others by Rudy Vallee, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Durante, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Cole, Harry Nilsson, Carly Simon, Vera Lynn, Bob Dylan and Bryan Ferry. It was also the title and theme song of the 1990s British romantic comedy series As Time Goes By. National Public Radio (NPR) included it in its NPR 100, a 1999 list of the most important American musical works of the 20th century as compiled by NPR's music editors.

The song is a popular reflection of nostalgia and often used in films and series reflecting this feeling. Since 1999, an instrumental version of the song's closing bars has accompanied the studio logo of many Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Bros. Television productions, in reference to the studio's production of Casablanca.

Herman Hupfeld wrote As Time Goes By for the Broadway musical Everybody's Welcome, which opened on October 31, 1931. In the original show, the song was sung by Frances Williams. It was first recorded by Rudy Vallée on July 25, 1931, for Victor Records, then also by Jacques Renard and his Orchestra on Brunswick Records and Fred Rich. In 1932, Binnie Hale recorded the song. Elisabeth Welch included it in her cabaret act soon after it was released. In terms of popularity at the time, the song was a modest hit.

The song was reintroduced in the 1942 film Casablanca, where it was sung by Sam, portrayed by Dooley Wilson. Sam's piano accompaniment was played by a studio pianist, Jean Vincent Plummer; Wilson was a drummer. The melody is heard throughout the film as a leitmotif. Wilson was unable to make a commercial recording of the song at the time due to the 1942-44 musicians' strike. Unable to record new versions of the song, RCA Victor reissued the 1931 recording by Rudy Vallée, which became a number one hit eleven years after it was originally released. Brunswick also reissued the 1931 Jacques Renard recording.

Hupfeld lived his whole life in Montclair, New Jersey, and was a regular customer at the Robin Hood Inn (now the Valley Regency), a tavern built in 1922 on Valley Road, then part of Upper Montclair. He spent many hours at the piano and wrote several of his songs in this tavern. A plaque on the second floor of the Valley Regency Catering Facility in Clifton, New Jersey, commemorates the song. He wrote more than 100 songs, including Let's Put Out the Lights (and Go to Sleep), and the popular Great Depression song Are You Making Any Money?

The song was originally published in the key of E-flat major. In the film, as sung and played by Sam, it was recorded in D-flat major. It has since been played in several keys, commonly C major, but also B-flat major, as in Frank Sinatra's recording, and other keys including A major and E-flat major.

Like many later singers, Wilson in Casablanca starts with You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss..., singing only the verses and refrain (As time goes by). He entirely omits the intro that put those fundamental things into context: This day and age we’re living in gives cause for apprehension, With speed and new invention and things like third dimension. Yet, we get a trifle weary with Mister Einstein’s theory, So we must get down to earth, at times relax, relieve the tension. No matter what the progress or what may yet be proved, The simple facts of life are such they cannot be removed. At least one version moves the intro into the middle of the song.

More information: Medium

 Quem eu fui e sou em fim 
Oh meu doce coração 
Diz-me se sabes ou não 
Ainda te lembras de mim?

Who I was and who I am in the end
Oh my sweet heart
Tell me if you know or not
Do you still remember me?

Rosalía

CASABLANCA PREMIERES IN NYC: 'AS TIME GOES BY'

Casablanca

Yesterday, The Grandma was still suffering the flu. She continued resting at home and doing nothing except reading, checking the social networks and watching TV.

She has been following with a lot of attention the situation in France with the Gilets Jaunes a popular movement that has her admiration.

Thinking about France and in its recent history, The Grandma remembered how on a day like today in 1942, a magnificent film was premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City. It was Casablanca.

The Grandma was watching this film and enjoying again with the great performances of Humprey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman two excellent actors who are part of the most amazing age of the cinema.

After watching Casablanca, The Grandma studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 24).

 More information: Future Time Words

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'etendard sanglant est levé!

La Marseillaise

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's unproduced stage play Everybody Comes to Rick's. The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid; it also features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson.

Set during contemporary World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate who must choose between his love for a woman and helping her and her husband, a Czech Resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis.

Principal photography began on May 25, 1942, ending on August 3; the film was shot entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California with the exception of one sequence at Van Nuys Airport in Van Nuys, Los Angeles.

Although Casablanca was an A-list film with established stars and first-rate writers, no one involved with its production expected it to be anything other than one of the hundreds of ordinary pictures produced by Hollywood that year.
  

Casablanca

Casablanca was rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier. It had its world premiere on November 26, 1942, in New York City and was released nationally in the United States on January 23, 1943. The film was a solid if unspectacular success in its initial run.

Exceeding expectations, Casablanca went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Curtiz was selected as Best Director and the Epsteins and Koch were honored for writing the Best Adapted Screenplay, and gradually its reputation grew. Its lead characters, memorable lines, and pervasive theme song have all become iconic, and the film consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films in history.

In December 1941, American expatriate Rick Blaine owns an upscale nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca. Rick's Café Américain attracts a varied clientele, including Vichy French and German officials, refugees desperate to reach the still-neutral United States, and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, he ran guns to Ethiopia during its war with Italy and fought on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War.

More information: Britannica

Petty crook Ugarte boasts to Rick of letters of transit obtained by murdering two German couriers. The papers allow the bearers to travel freely around German-occupied Europe and to neutral Portugal, and are priceless to the refugees stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to sell them at the club, and asks Rick to hold them. Before he can meet his contact, Ugarte is arrested by the local police under the command of Captain Louis Renault, the unabashedly corrupt Vichy prefect of police. Ugarte dies in custody without revealing that he entrusted the letters to Rick.

Then the reason for Rick's bitterness, former lover Ilsa Lund, enters his establishment. Spotting Rick's friend and house pianist, Sam, Ilsa asks him to play As Time Goes By. Rick storms over, furious that Sam disobeyed his order never to perform that song, and is stunned to see Ilsa. She is accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo, a renowned fugitive Czech Resistance leader. They need the letters to escape to America to continue his work. German Major Strasser has come to Casablanca to see that Laszlo fails.

Casablanca

When Laszlo makes inquiries, Ferrari, a major underworld figure and Rick's friendly business rival, divulges his suspicion that Rick has the letters. Privately, Rick refuses to sell at any price, telling Laszlo to ask his wife the reason.

They are interrupted when Strasser leads a group of officers in singing Die Wacht am Rhein, The Watch on the Rhine. Laszlo orders the house band to play La Marseillaise. When the band looks to Rick, he nods his head. Laszlo starts singing, alone at first, then patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in, drowning out the Germans. Strasser demands Renault close the club, which he does on the pretext of suddenly discovering there is gambling on the premises.

More information: Film Forever

Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted café. When he refuses to give her the letters, she threatens him with a gun, but then confesses that she still loves him. She explains that when they met and fell in love in Paris in 1940, she believed her husband had been killed attempting to escape from a concentration camp. 

While preparing to flee with Rick from the imminent fall of the city to the German army, she learned Laszlo was alive and in hiding. She left Rick without explanation to nurse her sick husband. Rick's bitterness dissolves. He agrees to help, letting her believe she will stay with him when Laszlo leaves.

When Laszlo unexpectedly shows up, having narrowly escaped a police raid on a Resistance meeting, Rick has waiter Carl spirit Ilsa away. Laszlo, aware of Rick's love for Ilsa, tries to persuade him to use the letters to take her to safety.

When the police arrest Laszlo on a minor, trumped-up charge, Rick persuades Renault to release him by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters. To allay Renault's suspicions, Rick explains that he and Ilsa will be leaving for America.

Casablanca

When Renault tries to arrest Laszlo as arranged, Rick forces him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with Laszlo, telling her that she would regret it if she stayed, Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

Strasser, tipped off by Renault, drives up alone. Rick shoots him when he tries to intervene. When policemen arrive, Renault pauses, then orders them to round up the usual suspects. He suggests to Rick that they join the Free French in Brazzaville. As they walk away into the fog, Rick says, Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The entire picture was shot in the studio, except for the sequence showing Major Strasser's arrival, which was filmed at Van Nuys Airport, and a few short clips of stock footage views of Paris. The street used for the exterior shots had recently been built for another film, The Desert Song, and redressed for the Paris flashbacks.

More information: The Guardian

The background of the final scene, which shows a Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior airplane with personnel walking around it, was staged using little person extras and a proportionate cardboard plane. Fog was used to mask the model's unconvincing appearance. Nevertheless, the Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida purchased a Lockheed 12A for its Great Movie Ride attraction, and initially claimed that it was the actual plane used in the film.

Although an initial release date was anticipated for early 1943, the film premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City on November 26, 1942, to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca. 

It went into general release on January 23, 1943, to take advantage of the Casablanca Conference, a high-level meeting in the city between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Office of War Information prevented screening of the film to troops in North Africa, believing it would cause resentment among Vichy supporters in the region.

More information: CBC

It's still the same old story. A fight for love and glory.
A case of do or die. The world will always welcome lovers.
As time goes by.

Dooley Wilson

LAURA & MÍSIA: PORTUGUESE HOMESICKNESS

Mísia

Laura is our filmmaker. Because of her job, she traveled around the world constantly and knew lots of people. She still remembers her first audition playing the role of Ilsa Lund, the main Casablanca’s character in Porto’s Rivoli Theatre in her hometown. It was a great success and catapulted her to Hollywood. 

Laura loves fados and carries her land deeply in her heart. She travels accompanied by Mísia’s full discography for hedging in her own thinking.

One night, while she was listening to a fado, she thought about her life and loneliness and had an emotional crisis. Then, she decided to leave her career aside for an undetermined time and return next to her lovely family. Nowadays, she is living in Sant Boi.

More information: Mísia Home Page

And no matter what the progress
Or what may yet be proved
The simple facts of life are such
They cannot be removed.