casablanca (1942)
There is no better example of Hollywood filmmaking than Casablanca. The patchwork assembly of a far-off place that exists only in the imagination, dreamed into life on the Warner backlot, filled with the recognizable contract faces and a script that coins phrases with each passing second. The first act alone is relentless, staying put in one location, letting the wide array of characters come to us, and taking the stakes higher with each entrance. Somehow, Curtiz and the team pull off a seamless balance of romance, drama, comedy, and the beginnings of film noir in a WWII picture in realtime before anyone knew what that meant, it was just the current state of things. Into this, Casablanca brings a lucid understanding of what was at stake, of the loss of humanity and the rise of a bleak domination, the dreams of peace and the rumble in the distance of weapons of war, the marching boots of a fascist destruction trampling the lives that could have been. It’s to their credit that the film comes off as light and adventurous, detached with a certain whimsy to it all and the aloof coolness of Bogart taking another drag from the cigarette constantly burning in his hand as his eyes scan a world he no longer comprehends or wants much to do with. Yesterday being so long ago he can’t remember, and the future being too far away to plan, he exists like all do in Casablanca in a state of limbo, neither here nor there, and not even sure if here or there exist anymore in the first place.
Women, and the relationship that the men have toward them, become a symbol of virtue, idealism, liberty, dignity and compassion. The attitudes of the various men toward women represent how far into amorality they’ve fallen. Rick, constantly chastised by Louis as a ‘rank sentimentalist’, has lost his ideal, shut off his heart and plunged into his own underworld. A champion of lost causes, he’s now lost his will to find a cause at all, his isolationism reads as characteristically American in this gin joint United Nations that has arisen in the netherworld of Casablanca, sticking his neck out for nobody and not getting involved. Ilsa, and the bonds of love and commitment in general, become the salvation and hope for peace in a world torn apart by those seeking dominance and acquisition. Rick, losing Ilsa, is cast into the darkness, Victor is fighting to restore the balance and has the will to go forward due only to Ilsa’s presence. It’s not until his encounter with Annina and Jan, the young Bulgarian couple, that Rick is reminded of the nobility in life outside of the hopeless nihilism of the war and the purgatorial city he inhabits. This is the turning point of the entire film as it is seeing those that life hasn’t torn apart yet that gives Rick new eyes, and restores his will to save others even if he can’t save himself. Characters like Louis or Ferrari show us those who compromise and fall in line with the spirit of the times. For Louis the women of Casablanca are objects to be used and cast aside, the law is only as good as it is convenient, and can be changed and broken at any time. His performative act of ‘rounding up the usual suspects’ and legally condoning/covering up the murder or Ugarte as a suicide cement his slow slide into chaos, Ferrari displaying his objectification from the side of the market, with human beings as commodities.
And, all the while, the vaudevillian charm of studio Hollywood plays the whole thing as a mass masquerade of showmanship. The interjection of comedic bits as well as musical numbers via the cafe’s floor shows, even anchoring the entire romance of Rick and Ilsa around the film’s most memorable recurring number ‘As Time Goes By..’ is pure theater. It’s the deft balance of the artifice with the reality that casts a spell in each sequence, the horror of war existing alongside the humane, the tragedy and the comedy, the anthem of the destroyers drowned out by none other than La Marseillaise. The key source of the comedy is almost always in the revelation of the hypocrisy and inherent contradiction which is allowed to run rampant without being acknowledged. Louis using gambling as a pretext to close the cafe while being presented with his winning, the pickpocket warning us of the ‘vultures’ lurking while lifting the wallet at the same time. It is only with the entrance of those who won’t compromise, the selfless ones, that one by one the characters are drawn back toward virtue. Even Ilsa begins to slip, and Rick, returning the favor, won’t allow it.
10