#250: Casablanca
Here’s looking at you.
This review was originally posted to Twitter on April 30, 2020.
Initial release: November 26, 1942
Director: Michael Curtiz
There’s no real way to predict the success of a film. Some films are just iconic without ever trying to be. We put them on pedestals they may or may not deserve, but there’s no denying that history has lodged them indelibly in the popular consciousness. Such is true for Casablanca, which if things had gone differently would just be another wartime love drama.
It’s late 1941. America has yet to join the war, but everyone knows it’s inevitable. A long stream of refugees leaving Europe eventually filter through Casablanca, in French-occupied Morocco, looking for passage to neutral Lisbon, Portugal and from there on to the Americas. Casablanca’s position on the refugee trail as well as the difficulty of securing passage to Lisbon has turned the city rather cosmopolitan; there’s no better place for cynical American ex-pat Rick Blaine to run a nightclub, with gambling politely overlooked by the gendarmes. He’s got a good thing going, with a loyal staff (including Sam the piano man), a friendly rivalry with underworld businessman Signor Ferrari, and a professional relationship with Renault, a corrupt local police captain. But it all crashes down when someone from his past walks in.
Despite his history as an anti-fascist sympathizer who ran guns to Ethiopia and fought Franco in Spain, Rick maintains a strict neutrality in his nightclub that soon becomes threatened by the arrival of a former girlfriend, her husband, and the Nazis they’re on the run from. What follows is a messy tale of politics, intrigue, and broken hearts. The Nazis want Victor Laszlo, a notorious Czech resistance leader who’d escaped them five times. Laszlo is married to Ilsa, with whom Rick had a whirlwind romance with in the days before the fall of Paris. The two are looking for passage to Lisbon, and thanks to the antics of a (soon-deceased) petty criminal who murdered a pair of German couriers, Rick happens to be in possession of a pair of letters of passage, which are invaluable to refugees. But Rick and Ilsa’s past is a roadblock. It seems she’d run out on him the day they were to leave Paris, with no explanation. Rick was embittered by the experience and grew into the hard-bitten, cynical bastard he is today. It’s an open question as to whether they can talk him into helping them out…
If you looked at the film purely on the merits of the plot it’d seem almost cliche. Take away the politics and the intrigue and you have a fairly standard romantic drama about broken hearts and love triangles with a little bit of accidental infidelity mixed in. But in a very real way this is otherwise the best golden age Hollywood can offer: a massive ensemble cast of famous names, all playing memorable characters; quippy, quotable dialogue; and some solid set design and lighting effects. There’s so many names here: Humphrey Bogart in his most iconic role as Rick; Ingrid Bergman reviving her career as Ilsa; Conrad Veidt (what an actor!) in his second to last role as the German Major Strasser; Sydney Greenstreet as Ferrari; and Peter Lorre as petty criminal Ugarte.
It’s not a perfect film, of course. Some of the acting is stiff; the dialogue is that kind of hokey that we only really accept from films of the 30s and 40s. Much of the camera work is a bit workmanlike, save for a few good scenes that get across the nightclub’s controlled chaos. There’s just so much going on in this film, and it’s not at all neutral on who the real bad guys are in this film. In the end, even the corrupt French cop sides with the resistance. But this political bent is strictly background, woven seamlessly into the main story.
While the film wasn’t immediately successful the way it is now, time has been very kind to it, with the film first becoming a cult hit in the mid-1950s before turning into the top-shelf A-lister that we know it as. None of the cast or crew guessed this would happen. So why is it so everlastingly popular? My guess is because it represents 1930s/40s Hollywood at its best. Despite its complicated politicking and basic technique, it’s a simple love story that’s easily identified with, from a very uncertain time in American and world history. In its own way this film is a rebuke to its major contender for the #1 spot on any given best-film list, 1941’s Citizen Kane. Where Citizen Kane signaled the death knell for the golden age of Hollywood, Casablanca promised that the golden age wasn’t quite over yet.
