Here's Lookin' at you, kid: Casablanca, Analysis and Review

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Casablanca, the 1942 classic starring Humphrey Bogart (Rick Blaine), Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa Lund), Paul Henreid,(Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (Captain Louis Renault), Peter Lorre (Ugarte).

Casablanca is a classic, a one of a kind gem, a happy collection of talent and circumstance that happens once in a life time and not often enough in filmdom. Casablanca is the inspiration for spinoffs and wannabes. Some are themselves inspired. Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam (1972) was a "reverential homage" of great humor and merit. Lesser movies are likewise a nod to the original. They include Cabo Blanco of 1981, Barb Wire 1996 and a Bugs Bunny short, Carrotblanca of 1995.

The Hollywood fairy-tale was actually filmed during a time of US ties with Vichy France when President Roosevelt equivocated and vacillated between pro-Vichy or pro-Gaullist support. And it was rushed into general release almost three weeks after the Allied landing at the Axis-occupied, North African city of Casablanca, when Eisenhower's forces marched into the African city. Due to the military action, Warner Bros. Studios was able to capitalize on the free publicity and the nation's familiarity with the city's name when the film opened.

It played first as a pre-release engagement on Thanksgiving Day, 1942 at the Hollywood Theater in New York. [On the last day of 1942, Roosevelt actually screened the film at the White House.] Its strategic timing was further enhanced at the time of its general release in early 1943 by the January 14-24, 1943 Casablanca Conference (a summit meeting in which Roosevelt broke US-Vichy relations) in the Moroccan city with Churchill, Roosevelt, and two French leaders - DeGaulle (the charismatic Free French leader) and General Henri Giraud (supportive of Marshal Petain). [Note: Stalin declined the invitation to attend the so-called 'Big Three' Conference.]

-- Casablanca (1942)

While all movies use language to reveal character, Casablanca is especially artful. Early in the film, we are treated to a linguistic portrait of Rick himself. Rick tells Renault that he came to Casablanca for the waters. Renault objects. Casablanca, he says, is in the desert. "I was misinformed", Rick replies. A single phrase sums up Rick's enigmatic character: "I stick my neck out for nobody". Later, Renault ticks off Rick's war time resume to include the running of guns to Ethiopia. He did it "for a price", Rick tells Renault. The inspector's reply pierces Rick's tough, defensive wall. "But the other side", he reminded Rick, "would have paid you twice as much!"

Much of the dialog has either become a part of the language or it has helped shape the way we speak it. It also sets up the film's most tragic character --Ugarte, a desparate, smarmy little man willing to sell "letters of transit" but, as Rick disdainfully replies: "...for a price, Ugarte. For a price!

Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?

Rick: Well, if I gave you any thought, I probably would.

Ugarte: But why? Oh, you object to the kind of business I do, huh? But think of all those poor refugees who must rot in this place if I didn't help them. Well that's not so bad, through ways of my own, I provide them with exit visas.

Rick: For a price, Ugarte, for a price.

Ugarte: But think of all the poor devils who can't meet Renault's price. I get it for them for half. Is that so parasitic?

Rick: I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.

Ugarte: Well, Rick, after tonight, I'll be through with the whole business, and I'm leaving finally, this Casablanca.

Rick: (quipping) Who'd you bribe for your visa, Renault or yourself?

Casblanca revolves about Rick's Cafe Americain. The most famous quote of all --"Play it again, Sam"--was never voiced in Casablanca. The actual exchange is associated with the film's first major plot point, the arrival of Ilsa, Rick's old flame of happier days in Paris before the Nazi occupation:

SAM: Leave him alone, Miss Ilsa. You're bad luck to him.

ILSA: (softly) Play it once, Sam, for old time's sake.

SAM: I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.

ILSA: Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By."

Casablanca - As Time Goes By

The music --as much as the improbable cosmopolitan atmosphere, the smart white jackets and bow ties, the Nazi threat --conjures up our nostalgia for a past we wouldn't want to live in were it not a movie. As Time Goes By is not the only standard made timeless by its use in Casablanca. Sam is playing and singing It Had to be You as we enter Rick's Cafe Americain for the first time.

Everyone in Casablanca, it seems, is trying to escape the Third Reich. Those that are not have made a Faustian bargain with it. At every turn, compromises are offered, intrigues are entered into, allies are betrayed, integrity is bought and sold. No stranger to compromise, Inspector Renault seems most comfortable with his Vichy responsibilities. He closed Rick's upon a gambling pretext but not before taking his own winnings. A beautiful, young Bulgarian bride is willing to sleep with Rick for letters of transit. So too, Ilsa, now married to Victor Lazlo, a resistance fighter, an intellectual of some renown, a man of unshakable integrity. Everything that Rick is not.

Critics, most notably Humberto Eco, will often tell you that Casablanca is a mediocre movie.

It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects. And we know the reason for this: The film was made up as the shooting went along, and it was not until the last moment that the director and script writer knew whether Ilse would leave with Victor or with Rick. So all those moments of inspired direction that wring bursts of applause for their unexpected boldness actually represent decisions taken out of desperation.

--Umberto Eco, Casablanca, or The Clichés are Having a Ball

So far, Eco is wrong. There is no evidence in the final draft of its having been made up as it was shot. Even if it had been --who cares? There is evidence that some of Shakespeare's plays went through last minute, desparate revisions. I've analyzed a few motion picture scripts. Few are as finely crafted as Casablanca. [See: The Existentialist Cowboy, Analysis and Review: Elizabeth (The Movie)] But, as Rick is redeemed in the end, likewise Humberto Eco by his more thoughtful conclusions. Having told us that Casablanca is a mediocre film, Eco goes on to tell us why it is great.

It opens in a place already magical in itself -- Morocco, the Exotic -- and begins with a hint of Arab music that fades into La Marseillaise. Then as we enter Rick's Place we hear Gershwin. Africa, France, America. At once a tangle of Eternal Archetypes comes into play. These are situations that have presided over stories throughout the ages. But usually to make a good story a single archetypal situation is enough. More than enough. Unhappy Love, for example, or Flight. But Casablanca is not satisfied with that: It uses them all. The city is the setting for a Passage.... The passage from the waiting room to the Promised Land requires a Magic Key, the visa. ...But eventually we discover that the Key can be obtained only through a Gift -- the gift of the visa, but also the gift Rick makes of his Desire by sacrificing himself For this is also the story of a round of Desires, only two of which are satisfied: that of Victor Laszlo, the purest of heroes, and that of the Bulgarian couple. All those whose passions are impure fail.

--Umberto Eco, Casablanca, or The Clichés are Having a Ball

Eco's language is familiar to anyone who's read Joseph Campbell or Christopher Vogler. These ideas influenced a generation of film makers --most notably George Lucas and Steven Speilberg. Quite simply, Casablanca speaks to us with the same force and with the same authority as the Arthurian legends about which Winston Churchill wrote: "If they are not true, they ought to be."

My own reasons for loving Casablanca are simpler but sufficient at least for me. Casablanca does what every movie should do. It invites you to become one of its characters. I will leave it to readers to decide for themselves which character they wish to be. That's the essence of movies, the secret of their magic. It's why we loved them as children. It's why we still seek them out as adults. For about one hundred, twenty minutes we get out of our skins. In about one hundred, twenty minutes, we, like Rick, muster up whatever it takes to do the right thing. In some one hundred, twenty minutes, we survive an inhuman tyranny and eventually triumph over it. What more do you want from mere celluloid? Here's looking at you, kid.

---

Bumps Along the Road to Freedom

We may escape a close encounter with tyranny. As the GOP self-destructs, The Nation declares that Democrats are poised to roll back the excesses of George W. Bush. The battle is won when Democrats retake the government; the war is lost if Democrats fail to restore the republic and the Constitution. We have stared into Nietzche's abyss and saw ourselves! We remain our greatest threat since the 1930s.

Every heroic struggle deserves an equally heroic soundtrack. In 1830, Hector Berlioz orchestrated not a film score --but a life score: La Marseillaise.

Casablanca - Rick´s Bar

The year 1830 was recalled by Hector Berlioz in his memoirs. While he had been two weeks shut up in the Paris Conservatoire writing a cantata, a revolution had broken out.

I was finishing my cantata when the Revolution broke out," "I dashed off the final pages of my orchestral score to the sound of stray bullets coming over the roofs and pattering on the wall outside my window. On the 29th I had finished, and was free to go out and roam about Paris till morning, pistol in hand. A day or two later I was crossing the courtyard of the Palais Royal when I heard a tune I knew well - a dozen or so young men singing a battle hymn of my composition [one of the Neuf Mélodies on texts of Thomas Moore]. Unused as I was to this kind of popularity, the discovery delighted me and I pushed my way through to the circle of singers and requested permission to join them. The audience grew steadily and the space round the little patriotic band got smaller and smaller. We barely escaped, and fled with the crowd streaming behind us till we reached the Galérie Colbert. There a haberdasher asked us up to a second-floor balcony, where we could 'rain down our music on our admirers' without the risk of being suffocated.

We struck up the Marseillaise. Almost at once a holy stillness fell upon the seething mass at our feet. After each refrain there was a profound silence. This is not at all what I had expected. On beholding that vast concourse of people I recalled that I had just arranged Rouget de Lisle's song for double chorus and full orchestra, and that where one normally writes 'tenors and basses' I had written instead 'everyone with a voice, a soul and blood in his veins.' After the fourth verse I could contain myself no longer, and I yelled, 'Confound it all - sing!' The great crowd roared out its Aux armes citoyens! with the power and precision of a trained choir.

--Memoirs of Hector Berlioz on La Marseillaise

Berlioz dedicated his setting of the Marseillaise to the anthem's author, Rouget de Lisle, who, by 1830, was living in indigent retirement in Choisy, on the southern fringes of Paris. The rise in popular democratic zeal surrounding the 1830 Revolt caused a renewed interest in his patriotic hymn, and King Louis-Philippe granted the poet an annual pension of 1500 francs. De Lisle wrote Berlioz a letter of appreciation on December 30, 1830, inviting Berlioz to visit him in Choisy to discuss an unnamed proposal. "I heard later," Berlioz continued in his Memoirs, "that de Lisle - who incidentally wrote many fine songs besides the Marseillaise - had an unpublished libretto on Othello that he wished to offer me. Being obliged to leave Paris on the day after I received this letter [for Rome as prize winner], I sent my apologies and explained that my visit would have to wait until after my return from Italy. The poor man died in the interval. I never met him."

--La Marseillaise - Berlioz

And in historical New Orleans, a reminder that the city's current problems with the Federal Government in Washington are not new.

New Orleans, LA (AHN) - The City Council of New Orleans unanimously voted to demolish 4,500 government-subsidized homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, despite overwhelming criticism and riotous protests that included a brawl in the council chamber before the vote.

The 7-member council supported a redevelopment plan of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to replace the C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper, Lafitte and St. Bernard public housing projects with a mixed-use development that has 744 public housing units. ...

--Update 2: New Orleans City Council Unanimously Votes To Demolish Public Housing, December 20, 2007 7:01 p.m. EST

History, it seems, does repeat itself. Certainly, the battle for "liberte" is not won. In 1917, the government of the United States --the War Department, I believe --imperiously decided that certain parts of New Orleans had no right to exist. Those areas were "shut down", residents forced to relocate. The War Department presided over the destruction of property. I call that tyranny!

Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong - Farewell to Storyville

The area is known to us as "Storyville" for Alderman Sidney Story, who decreed in 1898 that prostitution should be legal in the area called by locals --"the District". The photographic images of photographer E J Bellocq, circa 1912, are among the few visual records of Storyville that survive. Bellocq, a commercial photographer for shipping companies, is remembered for the "studies" he made of working women in Storyville. His images, at once prurient and artistic, capture perfectly the ambiguity with which the rest of the US regarded New Orleans --a "French city" in America, a city in which the famous French Impressionist Edgar Degas lived for a while and produced important work. He found himself in the middle of post-Civil War politics. New Orleans itself was comfortable "in its own skin" if puritans elsewhere in the South were not.

I have yet to find the legal authority for the Federal Government's closure of Storyville during World War I. The New Orleans City Government protested vigorously to no avail. Nevertheless, with the Storyville's loss segregated "dens of prostitution" emerged around the city. By the 1930s very little remained of famous old mansions along Basin Street, some of the finest structures in the city. It seemed a deliberate effort to erase the very memory of Storyville. Efforts to rename Basin Street "North Saratoga" failed. Today, Basin Street is Basin Street and a classic blues tune bears its name. The video above is from a 1947 film featuring Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong.

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