As Time Goes By

Rating:
Summary: "Here's Looking At You Kid."
Review: As Time Goes By: A Novel of Casablanca was ex-Time magazine music critic Michael Walsh's second novel, and it serves as both prequel and sequel to one of the most popular movies of Hollywood's Golden Age. Unlike Scarlett, Alexandra Ripley's sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, As Time Goes By was neither widely praised nor reviled, perhaps because there was not as much media scrutiny for Walsh's exploration of the lives of Ilsa, Rick, Victor Laszlo, Louis Renault, Sam, and all "the usual suspects" after the fade-to-black in Casablanca.

Walsh was no fool when he undertook this project. Indeed, in his afterword, he says. "Everyone knows Casablanca. Everyone loves Casablanca. Therein lies both the challenge and the danger of writing a novel of Casablanca."

Walsh's approach is to treat the movie as a centerpiece sandwiched between the two timelines depicted in the 38 chapters of his novel. His prose is crisp and fast moving, echoing the tone of the Epstein Twins' screenplay while expanding the story both backward to Rick Blaine's past in New York's seedy underworld and to a perilous mission in Victor Laszlo's Nazi-occupied homeland, Czechoslovakia.

Purists -- and I know there are always going to be Casablanca fans who feel this way -- will probably say the movie was fine without a sequel (forgetting or ignoring the two failed TV series based on Casablanca), but this book is a pleasure to read. Particularly worth noting is how Walsh blends Casablanca's fictional characters and historical reality. At the heart of As Time Goes By is Victor Laszlo's involvement in Operation Hangman, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi "Protector of Moravia and Bohemia" and architect of Hitler's "final solution." Although the inclusion of the Casablanca cast is fiction, the details of the operation and of its tragic aftermath are historically accurate.

Another bonus is Walsh's literary talent. His narrative captures the pace of its source perfectly, and his ear for the characters' voices is almost uncanny. Readers who allow themselves to fall under this novel's spell will hear the voices of Claude Rains, Paul Heinreid, Ingrid Bergman, and especially Humphrey Bogart in the exchanges between characters. There are also many "inside gags" for knowing Casablanca fans within the pages of this wonderful novel, such as the inclusion of "As Time Goes By" composer Herman Hupfeld, into the storyline. Like the movie it plays homage to, As Time Goes By is romantic, witty, and dramatic.

Rating:
Summary: good, but not amamzing
Review: I think this book didi a good job of capturing the spirit of the movie, but fell a little short in the execution. I am glad I now know where Ilsa and Rick came from, but somehow the book just doesn't do the original story justice.

Rating:
Summary: Writing this book must have been difficult
Review: Michael Walsh writes very readable prose and I am impressed with this grammar, syntax, diction, descriptive ability, and overall use of the English language. He writes far more well than I ever could. Nonetheless, I think he undertook an impossible task in writing "As Time Goes By," which, ultimately, was disappointing to a lover of the nearly film "Casablanca."

Walsh's efforts are clearly a labor of love and I don't know that anyone could have produced a better novel. I like the concept of "As Time Goes By" in terms of its being both a prequel and a sequel to the movie.

What I didn't much like were what he made the characters to be. His reasons for Rick Blaine's inability to return to the United States made me dislike Rick Blaine way too much. I just didn't want Rick to be a reformed mobster and I just couldn't picture him as a renamed Yitzak Baline. Walsh gives all his reasons for the character backgrounds he invented for Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund, Louis Rénault, et al. and, while I appreciate his reasons, the characters he creates just didn't ring true for me.

The sequel plot doesn't cut it for me, either. It just isn't the sort of thing the Victor Laszlo we saw in "Casablanca" would do.

"Casablanca" as a film is a wonderful thing, far surpassing the play upon which it was based (so I'm guessing, from what I've read about the original plot of "Everybody Comes to Rick's"), one of those amazing experiences in movie-making where everything came together -- cast, writers, director, etc.

When something is that good, who could write anything by way of a prequel and/or sequel that would satisfy.

I did finish the book. I had to see where it went and how it ended. But, frankly, I had to get out my video of "Casablanca" immediately afterward as an antidote for the whole thing, to reacquaint myself with the originals of Rick Blaine, Isla Lund, Victor Laszlo and Louis Rénault because I didn't like the ones left in my mind from having read "As Time Goes By."

As I said, Michael Walsh can write and I'd be happy to read other works of fiction by him, hopefully ones with characters he originated himself.