Movie history: Seven Samurai and Casablanca

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people, so when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn Ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of major ad networks. Spend two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get two hundred and fifty dollars credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. That's LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply.

This podcast is sponsored by Pocket Host. I'm a mom and a homeowner, so I feel like I'm always outside using a hose for something. And I used to go through a new hose every year because of kinks and tangles. I'm definitely not gentle with my hose. I drag it across the driveway, around the yard. And I just wanted something that's easy and durable. That's why the pocket hose ballistic has honestly been such a great upgrade for me. It's super lightweight, easy to manage, and easy to store.

You turn the water on and it grows, and when you turn the water off it shrinks back down to pocket size. And I love that it's reinforced with a liquid crystal polymer used in bulletproof vests. So it feels really tough and long lasting. For a limited time, when you purchase a new pocket hose ballistic, you'll get a free 360-degree rotating pocket pivot and a free thumb drive nozzle. Go to pockethose.com/slash podcast.

That's Pockethose.com slash podcast for your two free gifts with purchase. Pockethose.com slash podcast. Yeah. The first one was dropped on a few. City this morning. During the meeting, Mr. Mondela was informed of the government's decision regarding his release. And here. Witnesses have spoken of a wall of water that swells. Sri Lanka. They heard me pray. He was shooting.

And he just stopped and he said, I'm not going to. I'm gonna leave you here to tell the story. Knowing that you have a spy and that you're following a spy. Witness history. Merkel gets up and says I'm going and Tusk says I'm locking the door and I'm not going to be able to Was it shopping carts that made you rich? Well, it they didn't make me poor. Listen now. or witness history wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Hello, this is the History Hour with Max Pearson. This week's stories as featured on Witness History here on the BBC World Service. We're going to the cinema, great moments from the world of film. Including propaganda or art, the Nuremberg Nazi rallies in Lenny Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. That it is not stupid, that it is a little more interesting. That was my desire. Also the social impact of an Indian blockbuster.

It was a very new way of storytelling. How you can use history as a trigger, how you can use something from the past which comes to effect the present and transform people in the present. Plus the making of Casablanca And the mixing of fantasy and fascism for the young star of Pan's labyrinth.

I had to understand the depth of it and the suffering behind the civil war in Spain and what a child in war must have felt like. And so we had a lot of rehearsals and so I was exposed to all of it. But first.

Gendale takes us back to the nineteen fifties and the release of a Japanese movie, one that is widely acknowledged as among World Cinema's most influential films. Seven Samurai, a Japanese film directed by Akira Kurisawa and produced by Sodro Motoki, is released in 1954. It's a three and a half hour black and white epic set in sixteenth century Japan. Farmers from a village threatened by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, and he finds six other samurai to join him.

It was being filmed when I was about nine or ten, so I probably saw the film when I was around ten or eleven. I was a child when I saw it. But even so, I found it interesting. His o Kurosawa will grow up to become a movie producer himself, but when Seven Samurai is being filmed, he is a young boy living in Japan's capital Tokyo. His childhood and the movie industry are intertwined as he lives with his mother, an actress, and father, the director, Ikira Kurosawa.

Occasionally he sees his father at work. When they added some sound to Seven Samurai, I went to the studio and saw it.Editing was probably the most important thing for Akira Kurosawa. He edited all his films. In the studio there was a scene in a seven summarise. Where Mifune was speaking. He's talking there about Toshiro Mifune, one of Japan's leading actors, who stars as one of the samurai. And I remember his lies being re-recorded.

I imagine the sound recorded during the shoot hadn't been good enough, so they called Mihune in to re record it his lines.

The film is due to take three months to shoot. Kurosawa is known for his authenticity and attention to detail. He doesn't want to film on sound stages, instead, choosing outdoor locations, some of them near the Toho Studios in a suburb of Tokyo. Toho tina suba. There was still some woodland right next to Toho at that time and filming was done there.

His work ethic is later summed up by a film critic in a nineteen seventy two BBC TV documentary. In the case of Kurosawa it's straight through he knows exactly every effect he wants, he knows how to get it, and the question is having enough patience and having enough time and having enough money. This all means the shoot takes longer than expected and in movies time means money and going over budget.

as shown in a different BBC TV documentary from two thousand and two. Seven Samurai was the most expensive film ever to be made at Toho Studios, largely because it went four times over schedule. Kurosawa and his crew managed to complete the film But the production brought Toho to the brink of bankruptcy. The film becomes the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time. The longer production schedule means the climax of the film is shot in winter, which presents its own problems.

Later reports say the cast and crew work in freezing temperatures. Kurosawa uses weather for dramatic effect rather than just a backdrop. The assistant director arranges three water pump trucks to create the driving rain for the final battle scene, but Kurosawa tells him to double it. The set becomes so muddy, the crew find it hard to lift their legs, even in waders. And yes, it rained, but it wasn't always raining. They obviously used a fire force as well, as can be expected.

Filming. They all had towels. If they didn't get wet, they wouldn't have been able to do their work same as other outdoor workers, like road workers. Normally, for example, Westerns, it doesn't rain. The stories unfold in places suffering severe drought usually. However, Japan is not dry like that. He had it rain because that's what the weather is really like there.

So he added the rain because he hoped he would be able to use it to create something interesting. It wasn't grueling, he was at his happiest when he was. Filming, so whether it was raining or cold, it didn't matter. He enjoyed himself when filming. He may have enjoyed himself, nevertheless, he works long hours to get the film finished. But a nine year old he so making movies is just his father's job.

Book A Kanto. My father went out to work and he would often come home late. I understood that and lived my life accordingly. So I didn't find it hard but

After the film's release in 1954, it becomes revered for its use of slow motion and dynamic editing. Kurosawa is showcasing innovative methods. So the techniques weren't devised by him alone. John Ford and others were doing the same thing. Akira Krosawa learned by watching films made by his peers. So in the scenes where horses galloped, it wasn't filmed in slow motion, but rather at high speed.

I think the important thing is not so much whether he devised the techniques, but whether he used those techniques effectively. Kurosawa also shoots with multiple cameras, so you, the audience, are inserted right into the middle of the action. A revolutionary method of filming. Critics point the climactic fight between the samurai and bandits as an example. I don't think it had been used before. Most of the second half of the film was shot with three cameras.

Another way of looking at it is when filming a long scene, if it is done using three cameras, it is very easy to piece together in an edit. What makes this film so extraordinary is a technique which is almost perfectional. This is the nineteen seventy-two TV documentary again. with a vision which results in his own personal style, his message, if you will. These two don't often come together in a directory, you know?

particularly in contemporary film. But in him they coincide almost perfectly. But whilst Seven Samurai is later hailed by many film critics as reinventing world cinema, He so doesn't think it's a consideration for his father in nineteen fifty four. Films are not made based on something like that. How can filmmakers, painters, authors work create something that resonates in people's hearts if they are focused on reinvention?

Artists should concern themselves with how to make a great artistic work and how to please the people that go to see it. We are not talking about reinventing. We are talking about how to create a good work of art. Seven Samurai wins the Silver Lion for direction at the 1954 Venice Film Festival. It is remade by Hollywood as a Western, The Magnificent Seven, in 1960.

It influences other directors and movies over the next few decades. The Bollywood classic Cholet and Iran's Savalan are cited by the British Film Institute as having been inspired by it. Yso works with his father on several films in later decades, but Seven Samurai remains one of his favourite Kurosawa movies.

While the fight scenes were enjoyable when the farmers were troubled, the many heartwarming scenes. That's why I find this film enjoyable. But he so says the legacy of Seven Samurai is for you to decide. It is up to the viewer to choose how they feel about the film. In translation, that was Hiso Kurosawa, son of the film director Akira Kurosawa, speaking to Jen Dale about the making of Seven Samurai.

Sarah Gelani is a lecturer in the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries at City St. George's University of London, and Sarah is a specialist in Asian, African and Arab cinema. So let's start, Sarah, with Seven Samurai as our jumping off point if you like. It was made in the nineteen fifties. as Japan was recovering and rebuilding after the defeat in the Second World War. So would Kurosawa and other filmmakers in Japan at that time have been

if you like, remaking the idea of Japanese cinema. Oh, undoubtedly. I mean, war is a very harrowing experience for an entire collective of people. And cinema has never been detached from essentially what society is feeling and thinking. It often becomes a tool of both critiquing and exposing your own conditions in these kinds of situations, but it also becomes incredibly useful for imagining new identities and futures.

Uh you know, after traumatic events uh like wars. And if we're gonna talk about world cinema, the history of world cinema, we can't obviously cover everything. But if we look at world cinema we have to reference Asian cinema and Bollywood. So if we go back to the nineteen fifties, about the same time as Seven Samurai, would that have been something of a golden age for Indian cinema? Oh certainly, not only was Bollywood on the rise, but it was also getting incredible international distribution.

So was something called Indian parallel cinema, which grew alongside Bollywood, but had uh you know, Italian neorealist influences and dealt with Indian history in the moment. Both of these strands were also surprisingly really popular in Africa at the time before local industries hadn't matured. And there is a tradition of African cinema. as well. Now I I understand that there's a film called Black Girl that was made in nineteen sixty six.

that was particularly important as a as a major feature film from an African director. Yes, Black Girl or in the French original La Noire de which actually is a little bit more sinister because it means the black girl of implying belonging. is a nineteen sixty six film by a man who's now kind of remembered as the father of African cinema, Osman Semben from Senegal. And would the success of those films both from Bollywood and from African directors

They would have been driven by big audiences, is that correct? Definitely. Actually film in many former colonies of Europe was introduced pretty early. It was seen kind of as an propaganda tool. So France, for example, had introduced a cinema in Senegal quite early, well before Senegalese independence. and they did like to flood the markets with Bollywood films and Hollywood films. It entertained so called colonial subjects, but it also

w did not really relate to their own conditions, so it was a very safe option for French colonial officers in Senegal. And Saint Ben actually recounts growing up watching these kinds of films. He says he loved westerns in particular. But then he went on to make very different kind of films. Hollywood likes to see itself as the centre of the cinematic world. But what about audiences and directors in Africa and Asia? Do they see it that way?

Oh no, I don't think so. I mean Hollywood does have a global penetration. But you know, I recall the uh Korean director of the popular film Parasite recently quipped Oh, the Oscars, that's a provincial awards show and I I laughed at that because it does actually reflect how large the audiences are in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia. Hollywood is a nice to have for a lot of these directors, but ultimately the numbers of audiences you can attract on home soil doesn't really compare.

There's a political aspect to their interest and focus on their own audiences as well though. Vilm in many parts of Africa and Asia was also part of the project of decolonization. So they turn to film to reclaim self representation. This is nothing short of, in a way, reinventing how they're gonna see themselves, how they're gonna see the role of their new sovereign nation in a post colonial world.

So something Semben actually once said in relation to this is cinema is our night school. And I love that quote because He summarizes how film sure it's entertainment and it's going to be about African directors and Asian directors expressing their personal aesthetic. But it's also going to be film and political education for mass audiences at a time when things are changing rapidly, you know, fifties, sixties, mass independences across Africa and Asia.

That's Sarah Gilani, a lecturer in the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries at City St. George's University of London.

Next, we're taking you back twenty years to the release of a film that would break box office records and send thousands into the streets marching for justice. It was a pivotal moment for Indian cinema. Here's Rena Stanton Sharma. It's India's Republic Day, January 26th, 2006, and the film Rangapasenti, meaning the colour of yellow, which symbolises sacrifice, is being released.

There's a huge buzz in the air. Part of it's down to heartthrob, Amir Khan, in the lead male role. But there's more to it. RDB, as it's known, is temporarily banned. then shatters records during its opening week and becomes the highest earning Hindi film release during its debut. एक जो हो रहा होने तो बर्दाश करते जाओ या फिर जिम्मेदारी उठाओ उसे बतलने के In that clip from the film produced by Ronnie Scruvala, you hear DJ, played by Amir Khan, declare that there are two ways to live.

endure what's happening or take responsibility to change it. It was a very new way of storytelling. That in a very contemporary scenario, how you can use history as a trigger How you can use something from the past which comes to affect the present and transform people in the present. And perhaps teach them a lesson. This was the first time that the young India woke up to a reality which they had forgotten.

That's Gumlesh Pandey who wrote the story, but getting it onto the big screen would take sheer determination. He had his script rejected, not once, not twice, but three times, and it would take six years before anyone would say yes to the project. Eventually he teamed up with director Rakesh Omprakash Mera and got some Stardust on board in the form of Amir Khan.

The actor brought on acclaimed composer A. R. Rahman for the score, and it was then that producers finally thought maybe this could work. Even so, there were concerns that audiences who are more used to romantic musicals wouldn't be interested. Rakesh. He was really concerned because those were the days of Baliwood cinema, which was basically

Candy floss kind of cinema. I mean really candy floss in the sense that very romantic, all pink flowers and shooty out of India and hills and mountains and so on. And we had nothing of the sort. So Rakesh asked me, suppose we get lucky and the film gets made. Who is going to watch it? Because people are watching Candy Floss and we are a very different kind of film.

I said, I don't give a damn, Rakesh. After the film is made and released, even if there is one person, one boy or a girl comes to me and says that, Thank you, sir. My job is done, I'm satisfied, just one person. And that strong faith paid off, turning it into a great success story.

The movie's message became a rallying cry to India's youth, sparking discussions about patriotism, political apathy, and the power to create change. Moving between the present day and the past, a group of friends act in a historical docudrama about Buggert Singh during the independence movement, who's widely considered a freedom fighter. This forces them to confront issues in their own lives around injustice and corruption.

One evening the friends are sat around drinking and chatting when the character Ajay, who's a pilot, challenges them to make a difference. You change it if it bothers you so much. It's your country too. पॉलिटिक्स जॉइन करो, पोलिस्या आइस में भरती हो जाओ, बदलों चीज़ों को. जॉइन पॉलिटिक्स, पॉलिस, पॉलिस, पॉलिस, पॉलिस, पॉलिस, पॉलिस, बदलों चीज़ों को. लेकिन तुम नहीं करोगे, और मैं बताओं क्यों. क्योंकि घर के सफाई में हाथ गंदे कॉंट करे

Huh? But you won't, because who's going to get their hands dirty cleaning up the house? Most of the film's other cast was relatively unknown, including English actress Alice Patton, who spoke to the BBC in two thousand and six. The lead character is an English woman, a a young journalist actually.

who heads over to Delhi to make a film about her grandfather's life. He was an officer in pre independence India. It came about just as a sort of normal edition. I got the script and really loved the story and and the character and hadn't done a film yet so I was quite excited by that. And auditioned very regularly here and then suddenly was whisked off to Bombay for a screen test. But most of my dialogue is in Hindi.

But for Cumlesh, it was cut short. He had to dash off early before the screening to take an overnight flight to Paris. As soon as he landed he got a call from the producer, who was ecstatic and stunned. It had gone down a storm. It recorded the highest opening day box office for a Hindi film at the time. On the day that it was released, I was invited to a media college. And they wanted me to speak to their students.

So there was a a boy waiting at the gate of the college to escort me inside the hall. And there was a picture of me in the afternoon papers. The story was that this film is being released and people are watching, you know, it's supposed to be written by mister Kamleshpan. So this boy he hugged me and said Thank you sir for giving me Rande Basanti. I was thrilled. I immediately rang up Rakesh Ragesh got My job is done. I got one.

Then there were two hundred boys and girls waiting outside the hall of the college, waiting to go inside, and they heard him shout. So they came rushing. What is happening? Zit he is the writer of Rang De Basanti. So they mobbed me, literally mobbed me. And after that it almost became a kind of routine wherever they saw me, the same blinds trying to serve our gibbings Ramja Basanti.

Controversial scenes, including, spoiler, the Defence Minister being shot, saw the film being temporarily banned on release. But this was overturned after a special screening for government and army officials. It challenged audiences to step up and shape their country themselves. A viewing at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology known as IIT Mumbai, where students often end up in Silicon Valley in the US had life changing consequences.

Seven students they were ready to leave for US for their job. They saw the film and they decided not to go to America and work for India. So these boys they had visa stamped on their passport and they refused to go to America. One particularly moving scene saw the characters marching side by side in a candlelit vigil protesting against government corruption. This would go on to inspire real life demos.

Some of the elements of the film, they became very popular. Imagery, a candlelash, which we used in the film for the first time, became a visual metaphor for any protest event, These included marches against the murder of a young woman called Jessica Lal following the acquittal of her killer. Public pressure helped push the case to the Delhi High Court, which overturned the verdict and convicted Manu Sharma, sentencing him to life imprisonment in December 2006.

News reports commented on how protests, including this one, mirrored that scene from the movie. These kind of ideas, they are like a flame. For a brief shiny moment, they have some effect on you. But then there is a daily life. There is a routine that you are following every day. You can't be a revel every day of your life. That was the screenwriter Kamlesh Pandey speaking to Rena Stanton Sharma about the two thousand and six Hindi film Rang Dabasant.

The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people, so when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn Ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of major ad networks. Spend two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get two hundred and fifty dollars credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. That's LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply.

Hey, it's Howie Mandel, and I am inviting you to witness history as me and my Howie Do It Gaming team take on Gilly the King and wallow 267's million dollars gaming in an epic Global Gaming League video game showdown. Four rounds, multiple games, one winner, plus a halftime performance by multi platinum artist Travy McCoy. Watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship match.

Against NEO right now at global gamingleague.com. That's Global Gaming League dot com. Everybody games.

Still to come, as the history hour remains in the cinema this week, the blending of fantasy and fascism in the award winning Pan's labyrinth and the somewhat haphazard production of Casablanca. Well they did not have an ending. They didn't know whether Ilsa, Ingrid poor Ingrid Bergman, was gonna go off with uh Laszlo or or Rick. It was very much another fly and there was a lot of anxiety.

Before that, though, we head to nineteen thirty four and one of the most controversial movies ever made, Triumph of the Will, a propaganda tool for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi. Jane Wilkinson has been through the BBC archives to find out more. Powerful, seductive, terrifying. Laney Riefenstahl's film of Hitler's 1934 Nuremberg Rally, Triumph of the Will. The film's spectacular images glorified, in Hitler's words, the beauty and power of the Third Reich.

Brought the filmmaker herself fame and notoriety. Come, Deutschland. Yet despite her film's glorification of Hitler, she always denied that she'd set out to make propaganda. I was not interested in politics not a little bit. Only how I can make it That it is not stupid, that it is a little more interesting. That was my desire. That's Lenny Riefenstahl in one of several interviews with the BBC. Described as Hitler's favourite filmmaker, to some she was an artistic genius.

To many others like film director Owen Leiser who fled Hitler's Germany as a teenager, she was an apologist and promoter of the Nazi regime. I was twelve years old when Time for the Will was shown on German cinema. I was fascinated and I felt fear. One should not forget when Triumph of the Will was made in nineteen thirty four, there had already been the boycott of all Jewish Chops, lawyers and doctors, there had already been the establishment of certain.

Concentration camps. So somebody who makes a film for this party knows what he is glorifying.

The young Riefenstahl had been a dancer, but after an injury she turned to films, first starring in them and then in 1932 directing her own feature, The Blue Light. Among her fans was a rising figure in German politics, Adolf Hitler. He commissioned her to make a film of his rally in Nuremberg, an annual showcase for the Nazi party, attended by hundreds of thousands.

I get the order from Hitler to do the picture. And every artist Germany must do in this time what to get order but I was independent. I was always independent. And this independence seems to have caused problems with one of Hitler's closest allies. Joseph Goebbels. According to Riefenstahl, the propaganda minister interfered in her filming of the nineteen thirty three rally, and she went straight to the top to complain.

I was coming to Hitler and he was very kind and friendly and we go in a little room, Dr Goebbels, Hitler and I. And Hitler asked me what happened. And so I told Hitler it is too difficult for a girl, I can't do this, and the men are jealous. And I have seen that Dr. Goebbels was very white in his face. I couldn't understand the whole situation. But Hitler says that the men they are stupid You must make it to next year and I told him, Please I can't do it.

And so I go home and there's coming a call from Ministerium of Dr. Goebbels. And he cried to me, What you have done? You speak bad about my people to him. No, you are a bad girl. You have not to do this. I am the man responsible for this. You have to come to me. And from this moment it started a very great hate from Dr. Goebbels against me. The following year, Hitler invited Riefenstahl back to film in Nuremberg, but she claimed that at first she turned down his opposition.

And now it was a very dramatic dialogue. Between him and me, he said Lenny, why do you not want to make the film? I say you remember what I have had for trouble. I can't do it, he says, but this year it will be good.

You are an artist and I don't want that the party maker stupid famous it is only possible that you make the famous artist. Rifenstahl was persuaded, and in september nineteen thirty four she began work with a crew of around a hundred and seventy. The set included a sunken camera pit and a motorised aerial platform, over four days scenes of the military marches, speeches

and parades were shot from dramatic angles. Long focus lenses recorded close ups of the crowds, while cameras filmed from moving cars. It was pioneering. All was improvisation, yes? I have had only one idea. It was the first time it was done. I think everything must be moving. if you remember the beginning of the film. She's talking about the opening scene. Hitler's plane flying through the clouds into Nuremberg. Hitler is coming on the fight, he's going to the hotel

everything, the buildings that was moving and to do this was new. And so my cameraman took roller skates to make this with roller skates moving. And that gives a life. And later in my cutting room it was the most difficult work in my life and I was eighteen hours day and night to think always what I can do that it is interesting It took Riefenstahl seven months to edit the two hour film. The result was Triumph of the Will, a title apparently suggested by Hitler.

In nineteen seventy two, the BBC's Keith Dewhurst asked Riefenstahl about their relationship. What was it all right to talk to? Oh look, I wasn't afraid. He was very natural. He has spoken like another person to me and only about my work. So it was not difficult to speak with him. He've never spoken about things what I don't understand. And uh natural in this time he was for me a very um important person.

And I was proud that he have such uh confidence to me, yes. But the film was deeply controversial. While some admired the artistry, it was also condemned as glorifying a regime that would go on to be responsible for millions of deaths. And from portraying a genocidal dictator as a godlike saviour. Here's the academic George Steiner, who escaped the Holocaust, speaking in nineteen ninety one.

two. Lenny Riefensteil is totally at home. At home in what she's doing and projecting and admiring, at home in Nazism. Riefenstahl not only admired, not only flattered, but captured and gave back to them the very nasty magic of their own image of themselves. She was an eye that was both a mirror of the horror and A creator of its veneer. The criticism was put to Riefenstahl by Dennis Chewy on the BBC in nineteen seventy six.

There was one critic who said that this film could never have been made by anyone not fanatically at one with the events depicted, and another critic called it a hymn of praise to Groot's strength and mindless history. opinion of critic people, they have this opinion but this has nothing to do with the truth. Well, many people seem to keep this opinion after the war.

The people have never asked me, the journalists have never asked me never what is my private life. They only asked the same question. Always the same. Because it was written in headlines. It was interesting to sell it. After the war, Riefenstahl was arrested by the Allies and faced several denazification investigations. And although she was never a Nazi Party member or charged with war crimes, she was found to be a fellow traveller, in other words, a sympathizer.

Her film career was effectively at an end. Do you regret it now, the triumph with the world? In one way, naturally because I have suffered through this film so much that I have lost my work after the war because triumph of the will was a dark cloud about my person. In other way, if I have baked a fame, it was very interesting to make it as an artist. Very interesting.

That was the filmmaker Lenny Riefenstahl, director of one of the most controversial propaganda movies ever made, Triumph of the Will. Jane Wilkinson was our guide through the arc.

The Second World War provided the backdrop to many movies which have left their mark on the history of cinema, among them Casablanca. It premiered on the twenty sixth of november nineteen forty two. It went on to become one of the most recognizable and quoted films ever made in Hollywood. It was written by the screenwriting brothers Julius and Philip Epstein.

Leslie Epstein was Julius' son. He died last year, but as another example of the importance of oral history, he had told Louis Hanot O'Mara in twenty twenty four about the challenges involved in the making of an all time classic. It's the golden age of American movie making, and two young writers, brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, are hard at work on their latest movie.

They're approaching the last day of shooting, but there's just one problem. Well they did not have an ending. The climax of the drama rests on a moral dilemma faced by the heroine in the final scene. They didn't know whether Ilsa, Ingrid poor, Ingrid Bergman, was gonna go off with uh Laszlo.

Or or Rick. It was very much on the fly and there was a lot of anxiety and Jack Warner, the head of the film studio, was tearing his hair out and there were tremendous conferences with everybody. That's Leslie Epstein, the son of Philip and nephew of Julius. And the title of the movie they're struggling to finish is Casablanca. So, with just a couple of days filming remaining, the question is, how did the Epstein brothers pull off the iconic ending to this World War II romantic drama?

Julius and Philip Epstein, often known as Julie and Phil, were identical twins born in nineteen oh nine to Polish Jewish immigrants. They grew up in the Lower East Side of New York. They fought their way through their neighborhood. They were tough guys. Despite this, the pair made it to Pennsylvania State University, where they excelled academically and athletically.

Julie and Phil were boxers for Penn State. They took political science courses in journalism and so forth and they came out of Penn State. And we're struggling to make a living. And like many Americans trying to get by in the Great Depression, they found themselves working undesirable jobs. Uh, they went on stage. I mean I I understand it. My father was the second half of a horse's ass.

And with a stage credit to their name, the pair set their sights on Hollywood. Technical innovations meant increasing numbers of films now contain speech and music. Cheap movie tickets were snapped up by a cash-strapped clientele, and cinemas swelled with audiences captivated by men with strong jaws delivering wisecrack lines to luckless women. Hollywood's golden age was in full swing.

And what Julie did, he went out there alone. He rented a little bungalow in the valley, and he would write a treatment every single day. As well as story outlines, or treatments as they're known in the business. Julius also ghost wrote scenes for his friend, Jerry Wall.

A radio columnist turned Hollywood producer. Walt would get in his car, race out to Julie in the valley. Julie would hand them the lines. Wald would come back to the script conference in Burbank and they would say, Jerry, you're a genius. Julius was eventually offered a writing job at Warner Brothers in nineteen thirty five, and after a successful collaboration on a Broadway play with his brother, Philip soon joined him.

It wasn't until nineteen forty two that the twins were assigned to write their career defining film, Casablanca. There was a script reader and to her lasting credit

She's the one who noticed it and brought it to Warner. I know that it was on december eighth of forty one, the day after Pearl Harbor. that Warner signed it and they called for the Epstein's and it was underway. For roughly four hundred thousand dollars in today's money, the screenwrites for a stage play originally titled Everybody Comes to Ricks were bought. Though the title needed work, the basic story outline was

Bitter and brokenhearted American starts to run a cafe in Casablanca. A Moroccan city occupied by the French who were under Nazi rule in nineteen forty one. And in the course of the film He helps the man who got the woman who broke his heart escape to America with that woman that he could have reclaimed for himself but did not.

Rick, the owner of the cafe, greets Czechoslovak resistance leader Viktor Laszlo and discovers that his wife, Ilsa Lund, is the same woman who left him without explanation in Paris hours before Nazi troops stormed the city. Rick must wrestle with his conscience. Does he help Ilsa, the woman he loves, flee Morocco with her husband Victor? Or give them up to German Major Strasser. Jack Warner asked the Epsteins to adapt the initial play and Michael Curtiz to direct the play.

Meanwhile, the producer secured Hollywood Heartthrob Humphrey Bogart as Rick and Ingrid Bergman for Ilsa. I mean Ingrid Bergman Ugh God would that lie on her at the end at the airport. Has there ever been a more beautiful portrait of a woman in film? The cast was soon confirmed, but production was far from straightforward. The Epstein still had much of that old New York fighting spirit.

The fact that made their relationship with their boss turbulent. Everybody at the studio is supposed to come in in the morning at nine o'clock. Julie and Phil would saunter in after lunch and Warner would have fits and he called them into his office and said, Who do you think you are? Bank presidents They come in to work at nine. University presidents come in at nine. What do you think you're doing? And Julie or Phil said to him, fine, Jack, then have a bank president finish the script.

Casablanca was no exception to the rule. After making a start on what would become one of the most famous screenplays of all time, Julius and Philip took a break. They flew to Washington, DC to work on something completely different. And in their absence, writers Casey Robinson and Howard Koch also contributed to the script. When they got back to Hollywood, uh Koch had also been working on it.

And they basically tore up what he had done and just launched in. Now there were other people who contributed to it. That line It's that my heart beating or the German guns. Frank for your thoughts. I'm happy to have KC Robinson get the credit for those things. As filming rapidly drew to a close, the twins have one more vital scene to write. The ending.

The final act of Casablanca hinges on Ilsa's moral conundrum. Does she leave Victor to be with Rick, the man she still loves? Or does she stay loyal to Victor, a heroic resistance leader whose fight against the Nazis is of global importance? And you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? You might as well question why we bring.

If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die. Racking their brains for an answer, Julius and Phil decided to break for the afternoon and took a long drive through Los Angeles. And here's the here's the true story. Julian Filler riding down Sunset Boulevard And they come to the red light at Beverly Glen in Sunset. The twins have written and rewritten this final scene a dozen times already. They had to eliminate the film's antagonist, Major Strasser.

And the hero, Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart, must make a sacrifice in order to facilitate Ilsa and Victor's escape from Casablanca. And their top is down in their car and they're sitting at the red light and they look at each other. They knew that Strasser had a gun and that the b Bogart was gonna shoot him, and they simultaneously say to each other, Round up the usual suspect. And by the time they went through the tunnel and got to Burbank, they had

It's a miracle, it seems, that the film came together the way it did. With countless lines written in the pressure of the moment that sound as though they've existed forever. Of all the gin joints and all the towns and all the worlds. She walks into mine. And pitch perfect wartime messaging at a time when it was still unclear if the Allied forces would prevail. social consciousness, duty,

She'll go off to a man she doesn't love, but that duty and patriotism means that she has to. But what in the end was their secret to the making of a masterpiece? It's the triumph of the studio system, the factory system. the lighting guy was no genius, Bogart is no genius, but the level of sheer competence came together in a way that I think exemplified this wonderful period in Hollywood, where they didn't take themselves so seriously.

And then every now and then it would spill out something that would last. And how it has lasted. The late Leslie Epstein was speaking to Louis Harnett O'Mara from Embra Productions in twenty twenty four about the making of the Hollywood classic Casaplan.

Our final feature film of this week is a story about a fairy tale, but it's probably not one you'd tell your children. It intertwines the world of a child's fantasy with the backdrop of the brutality of Franco's fascist Spain in the aftermath of the country's civil war. It's a movie that took the world by storm in 2006, as Tim O'Callahan discovers. In a dark time when hope was bleak. Whose only escape was in a legend. That wanted her back.

That's the trailer for the Spanish language film Pan's Labyrinth, which was written, produced and directed by the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. The film tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl, Ophelia, who meets fairies, a thorn and other mythical creatures in an abandoned labyrinth, a type of maid. On a quest to achieve immortality and return as Princess Moana of the Underworld.

The title of the film refers to the Greek and Roman god Pan, who was a faun, a mythical creature with the legs and horns of a goat but the torso of a man. Although Del Toro has said the fawn in this story isn't meant to be that mythical deity.

I think it was a very powerful moment. By the end of it, Guillermo actually came to me with script in hand and asked me, Do you want to be myophilia? It was Such a special moment that I will forever remember. Ivana Bacquero played Ophelia when she was just eleven years old. Pan's Labyrinth was first In two thousand six. It received a 22 minute standing ovation, a record for the prestigious festival. It then went on to win Oscars, BAFTAs, and Goya's, Spain's highest film accollection.

Ivana's first memories of the film are the audition process, when she was selected out of around a thousand potential affiliates. I had to travel to Madrid for it. I was from Barcelona. So that was already in and of itself kind of an adventure having to go to a different city to audition in person with the casting director. I had to go through a couple of rounds and then I remember at a particular part in the process

They called my parents and they asked them to not change my look. They said, don't cut her hair, don't change anything about her appearance. and we'd like to have her come once again, I think it was like the second or the third round, to Madrid. Ivana had learnt her scenes and was ready, but when she arrived it was a bit of a disaster. They wanted her to perform something completely different.

I'm an eleven year old kid and Guillermo del Toro's in the room. I remember his wife was in the room. There were a bunch of people and they looked at the ones I had and they're like, Oh no, it's these ones that we want you to read for. So do you think you can memorize them in like ten minutes in the other room? And I was like, Yeah, of course, no problem at all.

So I memorized an extra twelve pages and then I went into the room and I delivered the scenes. It was very emotional. I think everyone connected in that moment. Having been cast, Ivana began working on the role almost straight away with Guillermo del Toro. I had to do a lot of preparing for this role because I had to understand the depth of it and the suffering behind the Civil War in Spain and what a child in war

must have felt like. So we had a lot of rehearsals and so I was exposed to all of it. There was nothing that was hidden from me. Mm. The film is hard hitting and at times violent, with scenes featuring Ophelia's stepfather, the fascist Captain Vidal, hunting down and torturing communist guerrilla fighters.

Guelmo del Toro told the BBC in two thousand and six why he chose to set the film in nineteen forty four Spain. Because the movie is about choice. It's essentially about the power of choice, even if it's executed by or or especially if it's executed by an eleven year old kid. Fascism is the removal of that choice.

you know, the absolute nullification of personality, you know, and I thought it was very important to show a masculine world of basically uh destruction and a very feminine world of creation. Clashing. The film is set at a remote house in Woodland, and it was mostly filmed on location in the mountains outside Madrid. I really discovered my passion for acting and for being on a set. It was a massive learning curve, that's for sure, because I had to learn how to conduct myself on a set and

I was surrounded by these amazing actors, which in and of itself was quite intimidating for such a young girl. You wanted to Step up your game so that the other actors could do their job and could shine. And then obviously, needless to say, working with Guillermo was a master class in acting. He leaves nothing to chance. He always knows exactly what he wants.

Everything's already been pre-planned a million times, and if he doesn't get the exact shot that he's envisioned, he will literally retake that twenty times if need be. Do you remember any notes that he gave you?

He gave me a bunch of tips. I I remember we had a thing for Ophelia where Whenever she sees something for the first time that causes her curiosity, in Spanish we say perrito, he would say do the dog, and the dog meant for us Move your head side to side, kind of like a dog who is seeing something for the first time. A piece of great advice he gave me is an actor's most important scenes are the very first one in a movie, because that's a first impression.

and the very last one in the movie for them because that's the lasting impression that the audience is gonna stay with. And the lasting impression for audiences was great. But it wasn't just Ivana's acting and the story that impressed people. The film's use of special effects and elaborate costumes were big hits. A lot of it was not physically there for me to see. For example, the fairies. Most of the time I had to imagine the fairies, or at best there were golf balls. These guys, the CGI.

crew. They had these golf balls on a stick and they would sort of move them around pretending they were the fairies. The film has an ambiguous ending and for Ivana her interpretation of it has changed throughout her life.

The doors are so wide open for anyone to choose their experience watching the movie and their path. And you can do so many readings into it, even just the end. There's so many things that are left. for the audience to fill in those spaces and I think that's what's so magical about this movie. And the thing is, like full disclosure, there is no answer.

How proud are you that you were a part of this film? But also how proud are you that this was a Spanish language film that did so well around the world and has such a legacy? I mean, you couldn't be prouder as an actor to be a part of something so unique and that has had such a lasting effect. and that at the end of the day is a cold movie. I mean, when people ask me, you know, does it bother you that they still sometimes call you, you know, the child from Pants Labyrinth?

the little girl from Pants Labyrinth, and that people still ask you about it and approach you about it. I'm like, Are you kidding? It's an honor. It's opened so many doors for me. Why would I turn my back on it? I'm nothing but proud of it. That was Ivana Bacero talking to Tim O'Callaghan about starring in the Spanish language film Pan's Labyrinth when she was just eleven years old.

Our final story from the past this week shifts the focus away from cinema, but onto a group of women who perhaps should feature in a film of their own one day. This is our sporting witness. We're going back to two thousand and two and the very first women's Six Nations rugby champions. In 2023, Laura Jones spoke to one of the star players of the French team who would crown her glittering career by taking home the championship trophy.

It's March 2002, and Natalie Amiel is about to play for France, knowing it will be her last season after a glittering career. Winning a six nations tournament is almost better than winning the European Cup against Italy. It's the holy grail, the top of the basket. It's the best you can do in European rugby. Natalie grew up in the southern French countryside in the quiet village of Capistan, where they were crazy about rugby.

I live in a village where we live and breathe rugby, and we discuss rugby on a daily basis. Rugby is a big part of my village. In fact, on weekends when the French national team lost, we would take out the football, never the rugby ball. That should tell you how people in the village feel. Rugby definitely wasn't seen as a sport for women though, but that changed for a young Natalie in nineteen ninety nine. When her mum saw an advert in the local newspaper.

No, no, no. There was no visibility of women. It was a newspaper article recruiting female players who wanted to try rugby in Narbonne that encouraged me to go into this sport. At the time, I thought women were not allowed to play rugby. I remember my first time there because I was turning twelve the next day, and they didn't want me because I was only twelve. I was too young.

My mom asked them to let me train anyway, to give it a try to see if I liked it or not. After that go, they told me, we're keeping you. Never mind the age, we'll adapt. So Natalie was playing rugby at the age of 12 in two teams, one with Narbonne women and the other with boys in her village. And she loved it. She was allowed to do things she wouldn't normally get away with. Everything that was prohibited at school shoving, falling on the ground, heckling.

Fighting for the ball, all these things that I did on a daily basis with my brothers. See you I loved everything. There wasn't anything that I didn't like. It was rugby as a whole that worked perfectly for me, for my character. I did judo and I learned how to fall and stand back up immediately, being tackled, standing up again, tackled, and keep getting up. I rarely stayed on the ground.

In 1986, after just a few years playing rugby, Natalie was selected to play for the French women's national team and travel abroad. She was still just a teenager. I was a bit young, so I didn't understand at first what was happening to me. The year before, they'd refused me because of my age. So being able to do them after, I didn't really know where it was taking me.

Honestly, at fifteen years old, you don't imagine yourself playing in the French national team with adults. It was during our first game against Great Britain that I realised the privilege that I had to be able to play at this level. I was only fifteen. I was in London. It was my first big tree, my first game. At the time, Natalie says women's rugby was definitely not taken very seriously.

There was the French Federation of Men's Rugby and the French Federation of Women's Rugby. Two completely separate federations. We weren't really accepted, even more, we weren't tolerated. Start playing internationally aged just fifteen. Nathalie became an integral part of the France team for more than a decade, winning the Five Nations once and the European Championships four times. I played flanker, scrum half, center.

And a bit of fly half. I played all positions a bit, come to think of it. At the end of my career, I enjoyed being the center or eighth. We managed the game, we managed the ball. When you have a bit of experience, you master that a bit better than when you're young.

The women's rugby teams of England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Spain and Wales were set to have their own six nations in 2001. Natalie had been playing internationally for fifteen years, and France were doing well. I was captain twice for two world championships. My role was mostly to be an example, to be unifier in the game and the engagement of players on the field.

But in february two thousand and one, events outside of the rugby team's control put the brakes on both the women's and the men's competition. Thanks to the highly infectious foot and mouth disease outbreak across the UK, as reported on the BBC. No international rugby and cardiff this weekend. The Irish team won't travel to play Wales, and England's fourth coming match in Ireland is in real doubt. The whole Six Nations program faces huge.

We were worried because we were told it might not happen. So we were impatiently waiting to know if we were really going to do it. Or be able to do it. Finally the tournament happened properly in two thousand and two, the very first women's six nations, and France were on top form. The team was well regarded. Winning in France when you're a woman's team is not enough. The show was there, and the victories too. We checked both boxes. So the team was popular because we gave a good performance.

Новерика реуните and live a beautiful collective story. We sense we could do something that year, which wasn't true the years before. France were the ones to beat. Here's Naomi Thomas from the Welsh side speaking to the BBC. But Wales didn't stand a chance against France, and neither did any of the other teams. They beat each and every one. We played rugby à la French. We counterattacked, taking risks that succeeded. A la French indeed, playing against the play of our.

We had finally won a major title, the Six Nations Tournament. There were a lot of people in the stadium, it was in Moulin in France. My family was there and it was something I could share with them. It was a good omen for the World Championship which was coming up in Barcelona. So this was not only an important moment in women's rugby history. But also Natalie Amiel's last season of her career. For me it was my last game in the Six Nations tournament because I stopped playing rugby that season.

It was special. Even if you tried to forget, there was always someone to remind you. Also on the last game they had the bad idea of getting my oldest son to bring me the ball for the game. So in terms of emotions, it was huge. It took me until half time before I was able to feel back in the game.

I had my son Quentin who was then three and a half years old. I was tired of running, preparing myself physically, using up my family time. It waited on me more and more. I was not physically tired, but I was mentally tired. If you combine work, family, rugby, training from the end of July to the end of June every year, those are long days.

Natalie still thinks there's a long way to go in the journey for equality between the men's and the women's rugby game. It lasted for my whole career. It's still ongoing, and it will probably last a little bit. We were first accepted because the previous president, Albert Ferraz, said we have to keep these female players, because later they will be mothers, teachers, sports teachers, and they will more likely bring their child to play rugby than football. That's how we were considered.

Nathalie Amial is now a rugby coach, still living in Kapistan in the south of France. She believes she was very lucky to be part of the growth of women's rugby. I was privileged to have the skills at a time when women's rugby needed them. I don't necessarily look back on it. I'm privileged. I participated and met incredible people.

But I don't really look back on things. I mostly look forward. Not what happened in the past. Nathalie Amiel, star of French women's rugby for more than fifteen years, she was speaking to Laura Jones. And that's where we have to turn up the lights and leave the world of cinema and sport, which has been the focus of our first hand stories from the past this week. We'll be casting the net wide, Norway, India, Cyprus, and Mauritius when the history hour returns next week.

So until then, this is Max Pearson from All of Us Here. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world. Through the eyes of the people who were there. We weren't going to ask mission, we were just gonna do it. It was such an amazing feeling. It was incredible. He started to write a story about how he came up with the idea for the red and yellow cars. I got to go. We cried a bit, we laughed a bit. Ah it was wonderful. There's a magic.

moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history. Sporting witness subscribe wherever you get The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why.

That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.