quickie: '88 Volnays

I reallyt think '88s in general are showing well. I only have one Volnay from '88 I think, a Champans from a minor producer.

While Hubert de Montille is a character, sometimes I think I've never heard of someone declaring one of his wines "ready" :)

LOL!! Yes, that thought has crossed my mind, too. I must say that it does give some weight to Parker's recent dismissal of de Montille's wines, their personal past history notwithstanding.

Mark Lipton

Not even difficult for a NZer in his late 50s. (Won't spoil your fun, though)

Here's a piece of trivia for you though - In the famous scene where the "La Marseillaise" is sung over the German song "Wacht am Rhein", 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.

Given the fairly recent turn of events in France, I can imagine that debate being rekindled.

That's a Mel Brooks shtick, no?

Well, the DVD curently ranks #290 in amazon.com sales [for calibration purposes, "Waterworld" ranks #7,652], so I'd guess that a fair amount of those sales are going to the under-40 crowd.

Mark Lipton

"Mark Lipton" in news:4KPMf.801034$_o.290089@attbi_s71:

I respectfully disagree. The movie I refer to is not the one Mark and St. Helier allude to (which stole that scene shamelessly, after the earlier movie popularized it). The later movie is more of a US classic than an international one. The movie I refer to ranks #7287 currently in amazon.com DVD sales and is a classic both internationally and in the US. The Criterion Collection DVD issue, though expensive, is of outstanding quality owing to a rediscovery of the original negative and a painstaking restoration, documented at the end of the DVD. (What did I tell you about people naming the movie??) Of course, anyone who researches it is cheating. I was asking who could name it offhand.

Good points raised by both of you folks though! St. Helier's about the many refugee actors in the later movie is poignant and famous. In fact many of them had left Europe quite a bit earlier, for the cash, as Hollywood had been busy raiding the studios of Europe. -- Max

"Max Hauser" wrote .................

Hey, hold on Max! (says this kiwi, tongue in beak!!!) ;-)

You asked....

Then you say, in a later post .....

You can't have it both ways Max!!!

Just how much wine have you consumed???

And here's another Trivia question for you.

At the time of filming, only one cast member had actually visited Casablanca. Who was it and what part did she/he play?

"st.helier" wrote in news:lK2Nf.317$ snipped-for-privacy@news.xtra.co.nz:

That would be Dooley wilson who pretended to play the pinao as Sam.

"Grand Illusion," one of my all-time favorite films. I didn't research it; I'm well over 50.

"st.helier" in news:lK2Nf.317$ snipped-for-privacy@news.xtra.co.nz:

Thanks for replying, your worship. No inconsistently. Follow the sequence: The film I asked about was earlier, internationally popular, and received also a major US academy award. The slightly later film is better known in the US now, but was less of an international hit.

_I_ have not consumed anything!

See further details in separate posting.

"Ken Blake" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

Well the wartime part is muddy since Grand Illusion was made in 1937 and protrayed events of an earlier war while casablance was contemporary to its events (or very close N. Africa had been invaded by the time of the release.)But I cheated at imdb.com

"Ken Blake" in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

Exactly. Alas being over 50, Ken, you help support my point. No one under

50 (received at this site) identified the movie. Albeit, this is one of those "trifurcating" trivia questions (I know some others) where there are a number of responses, but mainly they fall in three groups, and many people will answer with the middle one, which is what happened.

In case anyone is interested, attached are relevant extracts from notes (which I wrote five or six years ago) on a couple of hundred classic movies. (Posted a few others on amazon.com in the past.) All this from Mark's Marseillaise ...

Cheers -- Max

-------- Grand Illusion (1937, French). The true English translation of La Grand Illusion, used in English-speaking countries other than the US, is Great Illusion, but the mistranslation is so well known here that it is deliberately retained, as the supplements explain in the new 1999 Criterion-Collection DVD edition, ISBN 0780020707. This film, which is international in flavor anyway, was a big international hit, but arrived at a time of upheavals in Europe and was cut and censored so heavily for cynical ideological reasons that, after the second world war, no intact copy was known to exist until an early print appeared in Germany in 1958. Then more recently the original camera negative, in excellent condition, surfaced in Russia, received restoration for minor defects, and was digitally transferred for release in this new outstanding edition. I believe that the film's enduring popularity reflects roughly three dimensions. It is a fact-based adventure of POWs determined to escape imprisonment in the early part of the first world war. Secondly it is a commentary on the old aristocratic world order, when superpowers were ruled by hereditary monarchs in plumed hats, that shook and changed so much in the course of the Great War. This aristocracy, in Grand Illusion, disdains self-made individuals of humble origin for presuming to rise above their natural station. . . . Finally the film contains timeless observations about humanity, of the kind that writers of operas strive for. It possesses elements copied successfully in later popular films. For example, it is the original example of POWs in a German military camp "#17" digging an escape tunnel (a theme of two major Western films after the second world war, though based, it is true, on other history). Also, German soldiers far from home singing the venerated army hymn Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine) and being answered by a French chorus with the Marseillaise, a scene imitated later in Casablanca. There are memorable details. Erich von Stroheim* as the old war-horse aristocratic officer, retired from the front lines because of his wounds and held together stiffly by prostheses (rather like Dr. Strangelove decades later). He feels more in common with his aristocratic French prisoner than with his German soldiers. (The German actor Stroheim, by the way, speaks his French in this French-made film with an American-English accent -- New York City, possibly -- suggesting that he learned English well before French.) The well-drilled German soldiers who leap to attention when their CO appears. The German war widow who points out her brothers from a family picture, killed at this battle and that -- "our greatest victories." . . .

Casablanca (1942). The most famous of several Warner-Brothers moderate-budget classics from the first half of the 1940s . . . It is appealing to think of this anti-fascist film being cast mainly with refugees from fascism; however, most of them left earlier, for the cash. There was a wholesale exodus of European film talent in response to Hollywood offers, in the 1920s and 30s. See also Grand Illusion on the Marseillaise vs. Wacht am Rhein.

*Actor-director Stroheim, even in his silent days (see the engaging Foolish Wives, 1922), was, like Conrad Veidt, very much at home playing worldly aristocratic Central Europeans. Stroheim looked incomplete when not sporting a monocle.

As much as I remember and love the film (I've seen it at least a dozen times), I alway smile when at the end the German soldiers withhold their gunfire for the escaping pair, saying "Don't shoot. They're in Der Schweiz." Don't ask me why I remember half in English and half in German--I don't know--but it's incredibly unrealistic.

The other line from the film that's burned into my memory is "Lotte hat blaue Eigen."

Got me, Max, though I too was thrown off by your "wartime" modifier, since La Grande Illusion was filmed long after the events it depicts. Still, I haven't seen it since college and I had forgotten that that scene appears in the earlier film, a lapse I intend to fix by getting the Criterion Collection DVD of said film forthwith.

Mark Lipton

"Mark Lipton" in news:H7aNf.802659$_o.409064@attbi_s71:

Both movies have wartime stories. (Slightly different wars.) (Coulter's reply came in BTW as I posted my last message, and I didn't see it until now.)

Anyway I do recommend the Criterion 1999 DVD of Grand Illusion (if that's not obvious!)