Except, for all his semantic masturbation, that's not the association he makes in the quote:
“Full of yearning, story and stardom... because Casablanca’s a Hollywood classic, Ingrid Bergman’s lit like a movie star, highlights in her eyes... it’s all filmed on a studio set. But films like Casablanca are too romantic to be classical in the true sense.”
He's making a clear association with classic and classical, even using the phrase 'true sense.' His misuse of the language is further compounded in interviews he gave about the quote, when he said "classical doesn’t mean beloved. It means balanced." The definition of classical is a lot more complex than that: it's like picking one ingredient off the back of a cereal packet to back the claim that it's healthy natural food. He also ignores the widely accepted definition of 'classical Hollywood cinema' as outlined by David Bordwell and others, which Casablanca does embody, because to Cousins words mean only what he wants them to mean.
"Security - release the badgers."
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moilane
10 years ago
I still think you are reading too much into it. Cousins clearly admits Casablanca is what's generally described as a classic - when most trigger-happy naysayers in these forums claimed he doesn't. They didn't see the distinction between classic and classical, and got unnecessarily alarmed.
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