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      ‘Casablanca’ and the Romance of the Refugee

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      A showcase of memorabilia at the Neue Galerie spotlights the Central European exiles who crafted Hollywood’s great wartime love story.Round up the unusual suspects. “Casablanca” has turned 80, and the most esteemed of all Hollywood classics enters its octogenarian years with a new ultra-high-definition DVD release. There’s also, right now in New York, an engaging new display of “Casablanca” artifacts, though you won’t find it at MoMA or the Museum of the Moving Image. Of all the joints in all the towns in all the world, the relics of this paragon of the Hollywood studio system have ended up in … a museum of German and Austrian modern art.That would be the Neue Galerie, conceived by the cosmetics baron Ronald S. Lauder and the art dealer Serge Sabarsky (1912-1996), which opened in 2001 in a former Vanderbilt mansion on a prime corner of Fifth Avenue. It’s celebrating its first 20 years with a showcase of its surviving founder’s own collection: not only jewels of modern Mitteleuropa, but ancient sculpture, medieval broadswords and reliquaries, and gleaming oddities from Renaissance cabinets of curiosities. Least expected are more than five dozen posters, lobby cards, props and press materials from the collector’s favorite movie, which he reports seeing “at least 25 to 30 times” — and whose memorabilia he has been buying up with foxhound-grade avidity.Medieval armor from Lauder’s personal collection is also on view.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“The Ronald S. Lauder Collection” had its grand opening on the evening of November’s midterm elections — whose result, by the way, Lauder may have decisively influenced, having spent millions on lawsuits and campaign advertising for Republicans in New York, where the G.O.P. flipped four congressional seats. (Among his animating causes are crime, taxes, and a proposed wind farm off the Hamptons shoreline.) “I’m no ogre,” Lauder assured The Times this month in an interview at Café Sabarsky, the charmingly ersatz Viennese cafe on the Neue Galerie’s ground floor, and, certainly, the 500-odd objects here do not have an outward suggestion of barbarism. If anything, its rooms of princely baubles are rather oversaturated, as if Lauder didn’t know where to stop; drawings by Egon Schiele are hung sky-high, essentially invisible, and stuffed vitrines induced in me the novel feeling of ivory fatigue.The unexpected highlight is the “Casablanca” gallery, the show’s smallest and densest, which in its way fits right into an institution devoted to Central European genius and American inheritances. Its walls are covered with soft-focus images of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and posters both printed and painted. (“They Have a Date With Fate in … CASABLANCA,” reads one hand-lettered display from 1942, the title sparkling gold.) Lobby cards — those black-and-white stills you’d once see by the popcorn stand — take us back to the louche purgatory of Rick’s Café Américain, where the dashing Resistance hero Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) is gathering intelligence, and the charmingly corrupt Captain Renault (Claude Rains) is sizing up the loveliest exiles.Posters and lobby cards cover the walls with images of the film’s stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesDetail of a brass lamp, fringed with imitation jewels, used in the movie.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesA hand-lettered display from 1942 announces the film’s title in sparkling gold.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesYou’ll also find memorabilia from the film’s postwar releases in France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and, by 1952, Germany. Bergman appears in solo splendor on the German poster, beaming above a set piece of fez-topped musicians. There’s a brass lamp from Rick’s, fringed with imitation gemstones, and two rattan chairs where Europe’s desperate and displaced drank their cognacs and plotted their escapes. Looping in the background is “As Time Goes By,” performed by Dooley Wilson, a veteran of the Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project, in the role of the nightclub crooner Sam. Lauder apparently also owns the 1940 Buick Phaeton in which Rains drives our heroes to the Casablanca airport in the film’s final act. Lauder wanted to station the car outside the Neue Galerie for the run of the show, but no dice. Even with a net worth of $4.5 billion, nobody beats alternate-side parking regulations.“Casablanca” premiered in New York on Nov. 26, 1942; Warner Bros. pushed up its release date to capitalize on the excitement around that month’s Allied invasion of North Africa. It opened nationally in January 1943, and its tale of refugees and people smugglers was not only topical; it was nearly autofiction. A stunning number of its performers were Jewish refugees or anti-Nazi exiles — among them Conrad Veidt, previously a star of the Berlin studio system, who played Major Strasser; S.Z. Sakall, a Hungarian Jewish actor, as the club’s affable headwaiter; and Peter Lorre in the small but crucial role of Ugarte, who sells exit visas to the rich and desperate. The French actress Madeleine Lebeau, in the small role of Rick’s jilted mistress, cries real tears during the film’s stirring performance of “La Marseillaise”; she too was a refugee, fleeing via Lisbon to Mexico, and then to Hollywood. She escaped with her husband, Marcel Dalio (born Israel Mosche Blauschild), who plays the croupier at Rick’s, and who left France after antisemitic critics denounced his appearance in “The Rules of the Game.”The production’s transit papers for Victor Laszlo, “signed” by Charles de Gaulle, which Rick finally hands over in “Casablanca.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWhen it plays in the revival houses on Valentine’s Day, when it surfaces as the late movie after “Nightline,” “Casablanca” still endures as a wartime love affair, with Bogie and Bergman letting each other go in the airport fog. But for me “Casablanca” has always been a movie of visas and exit stamps, embassies and expediters, bribed officials and underground operators. It paints the modern world as the province of emigrants and evacuees, and subordinates the most enthralling of all Hollywood romances to the welfare of the persecuted. Which is why I was so astonished to discover, in Lauder’s collection, an extraordinary relic: the original (prop) letter of transit that sets the plot in motion, made out to Victor Laszlo and “signed” by General de Gaulle. The prop passports are here too, with Bergman’s and Henreid’s photographs stamped with the seal of the Casablanca colonial administration.I couldn’t believe I was seeing them, and seeing them here, in a museum of German and Austrian art. It was as if these fictional travel documents concentrated all the exiles and displacements that built midcentury American culture, of Mies van der Rohe and Marlene Dietrich, of “Doctor Faustus” and “Broadway Boogie-Woogie.” They burn, especially, with the shame of knowing that a contemporary “Casablanca” cast member could probably not procure one. Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has forced an estimated five million to flee, the world has been shaken by the largest refugee crisis since everybody came to Rick’s. The United Nations now puts the number of displaced at 100 million — one in every 78 people on Earth — from Afghanistan and Venezuela, from Central America and Myanmar, and above all from Syria, whose civil war will soon enter its 12th year.The prop passport for Ilsa Lund, Ingrid Bergman’s character.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesNevertheless, under President Donald J. Trump, the United States cut its quotas for refugee admissions to the lowest level ever. The numbers have barely budged under his successor. Though President Biden increased the cap of the refugee admissions program, his government has come nowhere close to fulfilling it; just 25,400 refugees were admitted in the last fiscal year, leaving 80 percent of the places unfilled.The fundamental things apply. In “Casablanca” the Hollywood system reached the acme of its artistic and civic potential, and on that Orientalist soundstage, as the displaced of Europe oscillated in and out of character, these foreigners offered America a new self-portrait. It taught us that love and displacement went hand in hand, that ideals were thicker than blood. “I bet they’re asleep in New York,” Bogie mopes into his tumbler of whisky at the end of the first reel. “I bet they’re asleep all over America.” But the passionate clarity of “Casablanca” was not something we only dreamed.The Ronald S. Lauder CollectionThrough Feb. 13, Neue Galerie New York, 1048 Fifth Avenue, 212-628-6200; neuegalerie.org. More

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      ‘Four Samosas’ Review: A Romp Through Little India

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      This snappy indie comedy by Ravi Kapoor sees a group of Indian American teenagers hatch a harebrained plan to steal a bag of diamonds.Colorful and handsomely composed like a Wes Anderson movie, but far from that director’s world of gloomy, globe-trotting dandies, “Four Samosas” is a jovial romp through the Indian enclave of Artesia located outside of Los Angeles.The film, written and directed by Ravi Kapoor, is steeped in the traditions of Indian culture and its cuisine. It’s a carousel of sari shops and curry stands — bursts of sparkly, Bollywood-inspired dance numbers as well. Inside jokes that might only perk the ears of other Indian and Indian American viewers are scattered throughout, too — there’s a shop girl with a perpetually bobbing head, and a general emphasis on the maintenance of one’s eyebrows — but this quirky comedy’s snappy humor and winsome (if slightly amateurish) cast should make everyone feel right at home.Vinny (Venk Potula), a charismatic wannabe hip-hop musician, mills about town with his second-in-command, pining over his nihilistic ex-girlfriend, Rina (Summer Bishil). Turns out Rina is engaged to Sanjay (Karan Soni), a goat-poop recycler who, douchey as he may be, also makes good money off his smelly cash scheme.The revelation prompts a particularly harebrained plot: steal the diamonds that Rina’s father has locked away for her wedding — to, uh, pay for Vinny’s aunt’s surgery, of course. The duo join forces with a Hermione Granger-esque brainiac, Anjali (Sharmita Bhattacharya), and an unusually industrious computer engineer, Paru (Sonal Sha), to infiltrate Rina’s dad’s grocery store.But the endgame matters little — “Four Samosas” is all about the team’s goofs. They’re not particularly original (there are silly disguises and a marathon-eating competition), but Kapoor’s timing and the actors’ commitment to the bits pull it off.And, unlike so many new movies that seem to be algorithmically manufactured to appeal to diverse audiences and tick the boxes of representation, “Four Samosas” feels organic and true as a slice of Indian American life — even if it’s all fun and games and movie magic.Four SamosasRated PG-13 for stylized burglary and rude language. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Darby and the Dead’ Review: Sixteen With a Sixth Sense

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      A high school junior talks to dead people in this familiar but good-natured tale of adolescent female friendship.Seeing dead people may seem like a curse, but to the teenage protagonist of the gothic, good-humored “Darby and the Dead,” necromancy is a Friday-night side hustle. Directed by Silas Howard, the movie begins by bringing us up to speed: When Darby (Riele Downs) was 7, she survived a drowning accident that accorded her the ability to speak to lingering souls, and she began to act as their envoy to the earthly.That’s a hell of a lot of narrative table-setting. Yet the movie’s real drama occurs not on the stairway to heaven, but in the terrestrial halls of high school, where Darby wears black clothing and sneers at her cliquey classmates. Most loathsome of all is Capri (Auli’i Cravalho), the school’s flawless queen bee who disdains Darby for her stubborn self-sufficiency. But after a tragedy unexpectedly unites the two teens, the social rivals are forced to band together.Setting aside the sixth sense element, “Darby and the Dead” borrows liberally from “Mean Girls”; similar to the machinations in that teen classic, Capri gives Darby a makeover that earns her a gratifying degree of popularity, before the power goes to Darby’s head. The predictable story arc is spiced up by Darby’s frequent, sassy asides to the camera, reminiscent of the TV series “Fleabag.” (A third-act moment breaking the fourth wall nearly quotes a “Fleabag” scene.)But as familiar as this tale of female transformation feels, there is an authentic sweetness to Darby and Capri’s fledgling friendship. Their bond resuscitates a movie that might otherwise have been dead on arrival.Darby and the DeadRated PG-13 for ghostly gossip. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Return to Seoul’ Review: Found in Translation

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      On a whim, a Frenchwoman goes to visit South Korea, the country of her birth, in Davy Chou’s drama.“Return to Seoul” is a startling and uneasy wonder, a film that feels like a beautiful sketch of a tornado headed directly toward your house. The first-time actor Park Ji-Min, a French artist, delivers a full-bodied performance as Frédérique Benoît, a reckless 25-year-old adoptee born in South Korea and raised in Paris who books a flight to her birthplace on a whim. Freddie doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t have the names of her biological parents, and doesn’t want to blend in. Nudged to obey the local custom of pouring alcohol only for others, she snatches a bottle of soju and chugs.In this boozy opening sequence, the writer-director Davy Chou unleashes a character who, one senses, has never felt comfortable anywhere. Magnetic, sexy, mercurial and bold, Freddie is an object of fascination to everyone she meets: a bookish hotel clerk (Guka Han), a sweet-faced nerd who wants more than a one-night stand (Kim Dong-Seok), a grimy tattooer with a stash of psychedelics (Lim Cheol-Hyun) and an international arms dealer twice her age (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) who arranges a rendezvous on a hookup app.Freddie craves stimulation, shifting personalities several times over the eight years of the film — tomboy to glamour punk to wellness drone — confessing that South Korea’s effect on her is “toxic.” The script, shot in vivid colors by the cinematographer Thomas Favel, doesn’t indulge in psychoanalysis. Still, it’s not hard to imagine how a kid who couldn’t help standing out in the schoolyard would grow into a misfit incapable of forming genuine bonds with those she meets and discards.Chou himself is the French-born grandson of a Cambodian film producer who vanished in 1969 as the Khmer Rouge began to seize control and shred the country’s movie industry, and he seems to understand the contradictions in Freddie’s feeling that she’s been robbed of a life she doesn’t actually want to live. The director is intrigued by dislocation, and is attentive to both its dry specifics and its messy frustrations. The film credibly details the strict procedure through which South Korean adoption agencies connect children to their estranged families (telegrams!), yet the reveal that Freddie’s blood relatives named her Yeon-hee, meaning “docile and joyful,” lands like a bitter joke. Clearly, they never knew her in the slightest.Park’s trickiest scenes are with the fantastic actor Oh Kwang-Rok as Freddie’s birth father, an air conditioning repairman who, like her, acts out when he’s drunk. Their time together feels both momentous and aggressively dull: awkward lunches, boring drives, stilted exchanges of banalities peppered with grand statements that strike Freddie as pushy and overly paternalistic. Barriers of language and resentment are difficult to surmount, especially when the acquaintance Freddie totes along to interpret pads their conversation with anxious politesse, making a frank talk frankly impossible.When communication fails, music takes charge. Jérémie Arcache and Christophe Musset’s score is made of thrumming drums and insistent bleeps, building twice to explosions where Park dances with abandon, gyrating as though Freddie doesn’t care if she sees anyone in Seoul ever again. The camera chases after this human whirlwind, and we’re thrilled to be swept up in her storm.Return to SeoulRated R for drug use and nudity. In Korean and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Farha’ Review: A Most Brutal Coming-of-Age Story

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      Set in the early days of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this drama depicts the upheaval of Palestinian society from a 14-year-old girl’s perspective.Set in 1948, the year that Israel declared independence, spurring a war that would result in the upheaval of Palestinian society, “Farha” depicts a relatively small-scale tragedy considering the scope of the violence. Yet the drama, which primarily unfolds in a tiny storage room, speaks volumes.The film, by the Jordanian writer-director Darin J. Sallam, is a brutal kind of coming-of-age story. It follows Farha (Karam Taher), a plucky 14-year-old who chafes against gendered traditions. She petitions her father (Ashraf Barhom), the leader of their village, to let her go to school in the city with her best friend, Farida (Tala Gammoh). Dad eventually concedes, with nudges from a modern-minded relative, but Farha’s time on cloud nine is abruptly cut short.Sallam doesn’t go out of her way to detail the politics fueling the moment — basic knowledge of what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) that impacted the region at the time should make it clear that the newly arrived soldiers are from the Israel Defense Forces.From Farha’s teen-girl perspective, life is scowling at boys and daydreaming about urban adventures. So when the gunfire starts and the village descends into chaos, it’s all a blur. Not grasping the dangers, Farha impulsively jumps out of the family getaway vehicle, refusing to leave her father behind.Almost immediately, Farha’s father throws her into a storage cellar and locks her in for her safety. She remains there for an indefinite amount of time, rummaging through the preserves, catching rainwater, peering out of a peephole. She finds a gun buried inside a sack of grains — was the threat present all along?One day, a scene of great barbarity plays out before her tiny window, with the camera approximating Farha’s obstructed point of view. Most of the rest of the time, however, Sallam keeps the camera fixed on Farha’s face. Farha doesn’t do much besides wait, yet, by simply looking at this young girl, we witness a devastating transformation.FarhaNot rated. In Arabic and Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Scrooge: A Christmas Carol’ Review: Slightly Off Key

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      Luke Evans, Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley lend their voices to this animated musical of the holiday classic.In a season of movies that singe the rich — we see you “The Menu” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” — the animated musical “Scrooge: A Christmas Carol” spares one of literature’s more infamous capitalists, Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge (voiced by Luke Evans). Perhaps “spares” is not the right word for what Jacob Marley’s partner in predatory lending endures in the director Stephen Donnelly’s vivid if hardly warranted adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella.The timing for Dickens’s Industrial Revolution jabs may be apt, but this outing’s gilded extravagance muffles the author’s less-is-moral observations. The animation waxes psychedelic. The songs, arranged by Jeremy Holland-Smith, often have an auditioning-for-Broadway belt to them. The opener “I Love Christmas” — with Scrooge’s good-hearted nephew, Harry (Fra Fee), singing and dancing his way to his uncle’s establishment — feels pushy.Before his death in 2021, the distinguished lyricist-composer Leslie Bricusse wrote that new song. Holland-Smith and Donnelly penned two others, and the arranger revamped the other songs, which Bricusse had created for the 1970 adaptation, “Scrooge,” including the Oscar-nominated, zest-for-life-and-death number “Thank You Very Much.” That film starred Albert Finney and featured Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley. This cast, too, brims with class acts: Jonathan Pryce as the cautioning Marley; Olivia Colman as Past; Jessie Buckley as Scrooge’s onetime fiancée. Especially winning are Giles Terera (as Tom Jenkins) and Trevor Dion Nicholas as that most Falstaffian of the Christmas Eve ghosts, Present.This update has its moments of aplomb, but too many of Dickens’s most incisive lines are no more, which invites the not entirely charitable, two-word retort Scrooge made famous.Scrooge: A Christmas CarolNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Hunt’ Review: Spy vs. Spy vs. Subplots

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      A dense espionage narrative proves all too tangled in this directorial debut from the South Korean actor Lee Jung-jae.“Hunt,” the feature directorial debut of the South Korean actor Lee Jung-jae (a star of “Squid Game”), is a tangled espionage thriller that recalls the suspenseful works of the British novelist John le Carré.Set during the early 1980s, the film, dominated by flashbacks, features double crosses, subterfuge, geopolitical angst and professional regret as the backdrop to an intense pursuit by two competing intelligence agents — Park Pyong-ho (Lee) and Kim Jung-do (Jung Woo-sung) — to uncover a North Korean mole embedded in their agency who intends to assassinate South Korea’s president.A dense narrative bursting with elaborate red herrings proves an unmanageable mess as the film wears on. Kim and Park accuse each other of being the spy; student protests explode; missions misfire; anonymous soldiers eliminate key witnesses; and Kim uses an allegation of treason against Park’s adoptive daughter (Go Yoon-jung) as blackmail. All of this is barely held together by vigorous shootouts littered throughout. Lee’s overt visual homages to Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” and Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” his keen eye for period detail, the rising body count and the moral quandary that arises when Park and Kim question their loyalty to their country do little to reclaim one’s interest.A convoluted conclusion, begot by an unconvincing change of heart, obliterates any chance of “Hunt” offering the clarity it needs to be entertaining. Instead, Lee’s directorial effort wanders toward something unmemorable.HuntNot rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      The Cast and Crew of ‘Women Talking’ Reunite Over Mushroom Risotto

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      Claire Foy: We formed a really strong bond [working on the movie “Women Talking,” out this month]. It felt like so little time had passed since the shoot [in summer 2021], and the film went down really well [at its New York Film Festival premiere in October], so it was a wonderful, cyclical thing to enjoy it together.We exposed a lot about ourselves [at this dinner] and were very honest in our opinions — that’s just the way we speak to one another. But what happens in the hayloft stays in the hayloft [where much of the movie, which takes place within an isolated religious community, unfolds].Sarah Polley: This has always been a really fun, imaginative, intellectually stimulating group of people. Claire is a real truth teller; Rooney [Mara, who didn’t attend the dinner] does a lot of connecting; Jessie [Buckley, who was away filming] is the life of every party; Judy [Ivey] is incredibly wise but holds that wisdom lightly; Sheila [McCarthy] is a bridge builder and peacemaker; Michelle [McLeod] always sees the “funny” in a moment; Liv [McNeil] is an attuned observer; and Kate [Hallett] can imagine how people feel before they feel it.Our conversations weave fluidly in and out of very serious and light things — sharing things personally and talking about the world at large — which is, I think, what groups of women who are close do. I’ve been fascinated by how women in groups don’t finish one line item, resolve it, then move on to the next. It’s not a linear thing.On the CoverFrom left: McCarthy, Hallett, McLeod, Polley, Foy, McNeil, Gardner and Ivey of the film “Women Talking.”Jason SchmidtThe attendees: All from the “Women Talking” family, the guest list included its director, Sarah Polley, 43; its producer Dede Gardner, 55; and its actors Claire Foy, 38; Judith Ivey, 71; Sheila McCarthy, 66; Michelle McLeod, age withheld; Liv McNeil, 17; and Kate Hallett, 18.The food: The mushroom risotto at Lincoln Ristorante at Lincoln Center took both Foy and Polley aback — Foy enjoyed it despite being suspicious of fungi ever since watching the poisoning scene in “Phantom Thread” (2017), and Polley because it was “the best I’ve ever had in my life.”The conversation: They all discussed Hallett’s first visit to New York City (she’d never been) and Ivey’s 1992 turn on “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” where, as Polley put it, she got “smoked” by Luke Perry. In keeping with a theme of “Women Talking,” they also talked about sexism (Polley says that’s “probably something that comes up often for women everywhere in groups”).Polley has picked these songs for gatherings she’s thrown in the past:Interviews have been edited and condensed.All Together Now More