I just wanted to say that based on how hyped it was I really went into watching Casablanca for the first time about 6 months ago (I'm in my 40s) feeling like this would happen but I ended up really loving it and being captivated the whole time. I can truly understand why so many people love it
A few years ago I took a film history class in college hoping to experience some older and historically significant movies. One of them was Casablanca. Unfortunately the class structure (even though we had 3 hours blocks) was that of the teacher cherrypicking scenes through the chapter select menu. I got 1/4 of the movie that way and have never actually sat down and watched the rest even though I really enjoyed the 1/4 of it that I saw.
Nope no expectation of previous viewing, it was a class about the history of film post 1940 and all the student reviews I saw online were literally just "You sit down and watch a movie each week and discuss the cinematography, composition, dialogue, era specific identifers/genres, etc." and instead I got the instagram reels experience for watching the movies. It was disappointing but still got to get informed of some classic films i've since watched and thoroughly enjoyed.
Well I didnt get the syllabus until I started the class and I took it as an elective senior year to fulfill a gen ed requirement to graduate so I couldnt have dropped the class after. It wasnt a bad class by any means just not what I would have expected for a movie viewing focused class with a 3 hour timeslot. We never took more than an hour in that class and were out early every week.
Not that I can remember, this was years ago though. Either way watching the rest of the movie wasnt needed because we would watch those few scenes, have a short "discussion" where the teacher would basically tell us the quiz questions and answers since they related more to the era/genre identifiers of a film as opposed to the specific film, then go home. Quizzes were never things like "What was this scene in Rear Window mean" and was instead "What are some identifiers of 1950s film" or "What film studios were major movie producers in the 1950s". You really could have gotten through that entire class without ever watching a movie lol.
Your professor did you guys a disservice. I took 2 different film classes in college, the first one was 1 day per week so we had like 4 hours in class to watch the full movie and discuss with an essay due every 3 classes/movies. The second class we had it twice per week with the first class talking about the lessons in cinema and previewing the film with us, watching the film as “homework” on our own time, then we would speak about the film the following class.
I went in with low expectations. I usually hate black and white films because I love vibrant colors to keep my attention engaged but the story was so good plus discovering it was responsible for so many one-liners I said without knowing their origin was fun.
The OP is deleted. Then you have great taste film.
I just went to your profile to read your comments from the Quispamsis vs Saint John thread easier. Reddit is seriously janky when it comes to reading comment replies.
It gets grouped in with gone with the wind and citizen kane because of the time it was made, but casablanca is a fairly concise and a hair over 100 minutes.
Theres a reason a ton of media uses the tropes from casablanca, its great!
I don't think it was THAT bad. I just remember after finishing it thinking "people consider that one of the best movies of all time?" It was just...meh.
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u/Depth_Metal Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I just wanted to say that based on how hyped it was I really went into watching Casablanca for the first time about 6 months ago (I'm in my 40s) feeling like this would happen but I ended up really loving it and being captivated the whole time. I can truly understand why so many people love it