Casablanca | Film Review | Slant Magazine

FILM MOVIE REVIEW

Casablanca ****

by Jeremiah Kipp on December 13, 2008 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

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The first thing that comes to mind watching Casablanca again is the elegance with which it quickly moves along. The second is the wizened faces of foreigners in the crowd; when a plane flies over the titular city, refugees look up, and their faces are lined with experience. We're immediately reminded that old Hollywood was populated with émigrés from Europe, fleeing Hitler to discover a new life in America, and the creases in their faces say more than the terse studio narration and globetrotting maps that set the scene.

By the time we arrive at Rick's saloon, a certain atmosphere of paranoia, exoticism, and vivacity has been set, and then comes romance, in the form of piano player Sam (Dooley Wilson) and his charming rendition of "It Had to Be You" as the camera makes a slow dolly toward him through the bustling crowd and wafts of cigarette smoke. It's easy to fall into the rhythms of this picture, long before the appearance of the star-crossed lovers and their damaged idealism, or most of the great character actors who populate the world of Casablanca make their presence felt—such as bemusedly sinister fat man Sydney Greenstreet and sweaty, nervously twitching Peter Lorre.

The movie has a peculiar magic to it, and it's in the richness of its details that mostly go unnoticed because of the film's pace. We make generalizations about Casablanca because all those little particulars add up. Movie lovers discuss it with that starry look in their eyes as if they were describing their first kiss because something in it touches them, its theme of dignity and decency, of rediscovered idealism, and a fleeting moment with a lost love from long ago. Male viewers instinctively like Humphrey Bogart's Rick because he's a man of integrity, and women like him because he's a mystery. But there's something else in him too, in Bogart's hangdog face, which looks slightly tired and grouchy.

When we first see Rick, he's playing chess by himself, and the light picks up on a small glimmer of spittle on his lips. Bogart was always a sputtering actor, which made him so great as a B-movie villain cowering for his life before getting shot to death by the hero. But his sudden stardom revealed something so human about him, so relatable. He seemed more like a real guy than, say, Errol Flynn, who was an idealized man. The fact that this guy was a movie star says a lot about his particular charisma—the kind that is earned by an actor who has paid his dues and figured out who he is. We like Rick because he's his own man. Like those refugees at the start of the picture, his life experience is written on his face.

As for girls, Rick is first seen with his back turned to a local who's had too much to drink ("Rick, where were you last night?" the man says, to which Rick replies, "That was so long ago, I don't remember"). Even though there's no overt sex in Casablanca, it's implied almost constantly. When Rick orders his bartender to take the girl home in a cab, he asks him to come right back. In scenes Bogart shares with classy, debonair Claude Rains (as Captain Renaud), they frequently, cheerfully discuss women as if they were pleasing baubles to be admired, then dropped. Renaud also fawns over his friend with the most extravagant, slightly ironic hero-worship, with his classic line being that if he were a woman, he should be in love with Rick.

But there's really only one classic woman in this film, and that's Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). Her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) is set up as a great freedom fighter, yet he feels more like an abstract idea or plot point, not unlike the letters of transit that allow people safe passage out of Casablanca. She, like Rick, is a full person, with vulnerability in her eyes and magnetism to her presence that goes beyond gauzy lenses and classical three-point lighting. She doesn't appear until nearly 30 minutes into the film, after Lorre has whimpered for his life and been shot dead, and Bogart has proclaimed that he "sticks his neck out for no one" and came to Casablanca "for the waters."

When Bergman finally materializes, one of the most astonishing things about this glamorous starlet is that the shot doesn't call attention to itself, or highlight her, and yet we can't take our eyes off her. It's strange, because the shot is very wide, the dress she wears is plain, and she looks nervous and hesitant. How can a woman be so luminous when she's moving her face back and forth like a deer in headlights? She still captivates attention. It's the same thing about Bogart: She's a movie star because of that ineffable thing we call presence, the character that is conveyed through who she is, which we somehow understand immediately. When the audience finally sees her in close-ups, sitting at a table in the café with her husband, her face is somewhat round, her eyes are sharp, and her voice has a certain breathless quality. If we are to admire Rick and Bogart, we are also to adore Ilsa and Bergman.

She has a lot of those big moments we remember, but I enjoy the small ones just as much, such as that tiny, mischievous gleam in her eyes when she asks Sam to play some of the old songs. There are, of course, the close-ups when Rick and Ilsa see each other for the first time in Casablanca as Sam plays "As Time Goes By," but there is also the furtive glance they throw at one another for an instant, before their eyes flicker back to the table, as they sit chatting about precedents being broken with Victor and Renaud. Those are the times that Casablanca resonates not only as a great example of movies made during the studio era, but also reminders of moments we've had ourselves. It's a movie that inspires personal nostalgia.

Casablanca is about many things, and it all really depends what mood you're in when you watch it. Nowadays, it could be seen as a push toward change, with a sudden fresh wave of hope and a belief that, if you strive for something meaningful, everyone's participation can make a difference. Or it can be seen as a tale of sacrifice in the name of greater good, set in a mysterious world of shadows, booze, cigarette smoke, and memories. The love story at the center allows its heroes to tap into something special within their selves, and if they lost it in Paris, somehow they got it back in Casablanca. The movie does all of those things, sure, but it's also about these people, these faces, and the moments between them. It reminds me that when we're in relationships, we learn more about who we are reflected in other people, and when we go to the movies, the great ones can do the same thing.

Director(s): Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Runtime: 102 min.
Rating: NR
Year: 1942