San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

“Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in.”

This week the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival descends upon Palo Alto, setting up shop at the CineArts theater at Palo Alto Square. I attended two shows last night, “Curtiz” and “Tel Aviv on Fire.” The review of Tel Aviv on Fire will appear on Indieplex on August 9th, along with an in-person interview with director, Sameh Zoabi. That’s the same date that the film will be released theatrically in the US. A great chance to see it on the big screen.

The narrative structure of the two films are, in effect, films within films – but more specifically films about screenwriters

Curtiz

How many times have you seen Casablanca? Once, Thrice, 5, 10 times? Now, add another. The plotline of Curtiz centers on the filming of Casablanca on Warner Brothers Stage 4 by Hungarian immigrant Michael Curtiz. The film presence is a gorgeous film noir from the start. Most of the main story takes place on the 2018 recreation of the set of Rick’s Café Americain on a Warner’s soundstage. There are four stories to the plot:

• A troubled production and finished by the writers providing script pages in real time;
• The screenwriters: the Epstein Twins (Philip and Julius Epstein);
• The back-story of Michael Curtiz and his daughter from an earlier marriage and her unresolved questions;
• Governmental influence of the story line to show the issues in Europe and patriotism to gather support for US assistance in the European theater;
• And how to end the story, such as how do you remove General Strasser.

Screen writing that gave many memorable lines to our vernacular. From https://thoughtcatalog.com/oliver-miller/2013/05/50-quotes-from-casablanca-in-order-of-awesomeness/

• “Round up the usual suspects.”
• “Louis, I think this is beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
• “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
• “We’ll always have Paris.”

Yan Feldman and Rafael Feldman as the Epstein Twins

Do not miss this film.