Casablanca (1942) – Ace Mini-Review + Thoughts on Hollywood Romance

Casablanca turns 80 today!  The film premiered on November 26, 1942.

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Casablanca
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid
Written by: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Directed by: Michael Curtiz
U.S.A., 1942

How good is this movie?

Casablanca is one of those films that’s a victim of its own success.  Most people, even if they’ve never seen it, probably have an idea of the plot, know multiple lines from it, and have seen parodies and clips of the more famous scenes.  And that’s really too bad, because that kind of fame could easily distract you from the fact that it’s actually a really good movie!  The screenplay is sharp, and the cast is great.  The characters are all keenly memorable, even the bit parts.  It’s very quotable, with Rick, especially, being a master of snarky one-liners.  And it has a message that is at once timely and universal.

How ace is this movie?

Sex and romance are not the main focus of the movie, but they do play an important role in it.  At the film’s opening, Rick is in a sort of on-and-off romance with Yvonne, but it’s clear he doesn’t care much about her.  We see several married couples, most notably the Bulgarian couple Rick has pity on.  Perhaps most shockingly, Louis uses his power to sexually exploit desperate women.  This is, of course, an all-too realistic scenario, and the film may deserve credit for depicting it in defiance of contemporary censorship rules.  On the other hand, it feels incongruous given that Louis is arguably the film’s most loveable character.

Of course, the most famous romance in the movie (and one of the most famous movie romances, period) is the one between Rick and Ilsa.  The film certainly “romanticises” their relationship.  Rick’s time with Ilsa in Paris is portrayed as a rare period of happiness in an otherwise tumultuous life.  Her sudden disappearance leaves him empty, disillusioned, and bitter, and it is only with her reappearance that he begins to soften up again.  The relationship even has a theme-song of sorts in “As Time Goes By” – a celebration of heterosexual love if ever there was one.  “Woman needs a man, and man must have his mate,” go the lyrics, “that no one can deny.”

However, Rick and Ilsa don’t exactly get a traditional “happy ending”.  They eventually decide that fighting the Nazis is their top priority, and that the best way they can do that is apart.  Thus, heterosexual love ends up taking a back seat to the fight against tyranny and injustice.  As Rick himself points out at the end, next to the challenges of defeating fascism and freeing Europe, their own romantic problems “don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Still, even this ending upholds heteronormative values: Ilsa ends up with her husband, thus affirming the sanctity of marriage.  And Rick and Ilsa’s love is used to underscore the seriousness of the situation: it is only because the Nazis are such a great threat that the two heroes are prevented from being together.

Any other thoughts?

Although Casablanca is often billed as a romance, I’ve never found Rick and Ilsa’s love story very compelling.  This may be because we see so little of the characters actually in love.  They spend the bulk of the film bitter and angry at one another, alternately hurling insults or giving each other the cold shoulder.  We are told that they were in love in Paris, but we see only a few broad-strokes flashback scenes of this period that don’t give us much insight into their relationship.

In contrast, Ilsa and Victor’s relationship appears much friendlier.  The two are not very demonstrative with each other – they never even kiss – but they do share a strong sense of camaraderie.  They support each other, pursue common goals, and show concern for one another’s well-being.  And there are moments between them that hint at a deeper affection.

So why is it that Rick is understood (both within the movie and by decades’ worth of audiences) as the love of Ilsa’s life, while Victor is easily dismissed as the “wrong man”?  Yes, Rick and Ilsa are much more emotional around each other than Victor and Ilsa are, but the emotions being expressed tend to be anger, contempt, and pain.  And Humphrey Bogart has more chemistry with Claude Rains than he does with Ingrid Bergman.

Even Rick himself seems to realise that something is not right in the relationship.  A crucial scene in the movie comes when Victor asks him to take Ilsa away from Casablanca to a safe country.  Rick is amazed that Victor can accept the idea of his wife leaving him and going off with another man, but to Victor the explanation is simple: he loves Ilsa and wants her to be safe.  It is at this moment (or so I like to infer) that Rick realises the selfishness of his own love for Ilsa.  For him, loving her means being with her; for Victor, loving her means doing what is best for her.  Rick has been prioritising his own needs; Victor is prioritising Ilsa’s needs.  It is through this scene that Rick realises Victor is not only the better man, but also the superior partner.

I’m not saying that Paul Henreid and Ingrid Bergman have great chemistry or that I’m particularly rooting for the Victor/Ilsa ship.  But I think the fact that one relationship is so celebrated and the other so readily dismissed says a lot about what Hollywood values in a romance.  Hollywood love stories, especially ones from the twentieth century, frequently celebrate passionate emotions – regardless of whether those emotions are positive or negative.  The lyrics to “As Time Goes By” extol “hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate”.  Meanwhile, Ilsa’s relationship with Victor is presented as lacking because it is not passionate.  The two may love each other, but the love is not passionate, it is… friendly.  Ilsa is friends with Victor.  She is not friends with Rick.

Watching this movie as a child, I accepted this distinction, but I didn’t understand it.  And thirty years of life have not improved my understanding.  Although much of the media I grew up with presented friendship and romance as two separate and mutually exclusive things, I’ve always tended to view them as closely connected.  And that makes it difficult for me to get invested in Rick and Ilsa’s relationship the way I’m probably supposed to.

Does that make Casablanca a bad movie?  Absolutely not!  Casablanca is a great movie!  It’s just not a great romance.  And that’s okay, because Casablanca was never so much a love story as a war movie.  Its major concerns are things like the plight of refugees, the ways people under occupation fight back, the importance of individual acts of courage, and, of course, American foreign policy in the early 1940s.  The central conflict is not whether the two leads will end up together, but whether Rick will choose to abandon his “isolationism” and join the fight against the Nazis.  Rick’s love for Ilsa is a significant factor in that decision, and that is ultimately why that love is important.  We don’t need to see that Rick and Ilsa are in love; the movie tells us they’re in love, the same way it tells us about the letters of transit.  Like the letters of transit, we accept it because we need to for the story to work.  And that’s an admission fee that’s well worth paying.

4 Stars; 3 Aces