Editor

Owen Marks

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

Casablanca

Michael Curtiz · 1942

A 1942 Warner Bros. romantic drama set in Vichy-controlled Casablanca, where American expatriate Rick Blaine must choose between rekindling a wartime romance with Ilsa Lund and helping her husband, resistance leader Victor Laszlo, escape to continue fighting the Nazis. Directed by Michael Curtiz, written by Julius and Philip Epstein, Howard Koch and Casey Robinson, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, it is a tightly constructed studio picture whose enduring power lies in its moral economy, disciplined craft and refusal to separate personal longing from political consequence.

13:00

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

John Huston · 1948

John Huston’s 1948 adaptation of B. Traven’s novel follows two American drifters and an ageing prospector searching for gold in the Mexican wilderness. As the find is made, trust fractures, language fails, and morality simplifies to survival. With restrained cinematography by Ted McCord, sparse scoring by Max Steiner, and performances anchored by Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, the film traces the slow, unsentimental collapse of shared reality under pressure. Shot on location in Mexico and California, it remains a benchmark of psychological realism — austere, exacting, and unyielding.