Bronenosets Potyomkin/Battleship Potemkin (1925) is a sixty-minute piece of overblown propaganda. A silent film with a muddled narrative, despite innovative montage editing. I've seen it once, and I don't think I'd watch it any time soon, but I do regard it as one of the best films ever made.

Why?

Because of its cinematic significance and, at the time, social importance. Its importance and influence on cinema is immeasurable.

If I want ultra-realistic acting, I don't watch Casablanca (1941), I watch Kes (1969). If I want to see cinema par excellence, in that it is the finest example of Hollywood at its most collaboratory perfect, I watch Casablanca, not Kes. Humphrey Bogart's acting is nothing short of dated these days, but he's still the most charismatically cool American actor to have lived, and he remains unequalled in that department.

If you want nothing but post-Brando, fair enough, you're never going to enjoy this. But my taste in films is an omnivorous one; I can fully enjoy a film for its technical and social merits at the time of its original release. I think great film analysis comes through the ability to empathise with a film and its scenario.

Film isn't just solely a means of entertainment. If it was, then why go to all the trouble of investing millions in production design etc? It is, I think, supposed to be as entertaining as it is an art form, and Casablanca happens to hit home on both accounts.

If you weren't thrilled by its genuine romance, threat, suspense and all things American, then fair enough, nobody can make you. But to say it's overrated without any kind of conviction is a little tedious.

And in saying "without any kind of conviction" I mean certain references to the film's "corniness" and the "rigid, unpassionate" acting therein.

On a side note, I found To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) too ambitious and overlong, saved by great acting.

Mick