Casablanca - movie

I am not much of a movie buff, and nowadays I seldom even watch a motion picture. I have never had any particular interest in the making of movies. But for some reason that I cannot even recall I asked my son a question about the movie Casablanca. I don’t even remember the question. Anyway, he brought me a book entitled The Making of Casablanca by Aljean Harmetz. This was published originally under the title, Round Up the Usual Suspects. The edition I was given was the 60th anniversary edition. This is not the kind of book I would ordinarily read but as I began reading it I found it fascinating so continued until the end. At the very least I learned that this movie making business is (or certainly was) far more complicated and involved than I would ever have suspected. To me, Casablanca was always just a kind of war/adventure movie starring a couple of my favorite actors, Bogart and Bergman. I guess in the course of my lifetime I have seen it probably five or six times. I suspect that anyone who has seen it has seen it more than once, and some people are known to have seen it dozens and dozens of times. I was surprised to learn a while back that it has been considered by some the finest motion picture ever made. And it seems to always be among the top five no matter whose list is involved.

Harmetz does a great job in linking the production of Casablanca to WW II, not only because of the subject matter, but also to the restrictions that were placed on movie makers at the time, the censors that became involved at that time, and the relationship of Jack Warner to FDR and the war effort. Neither Warner nor Hal Wallis believed they were making a movie that would someday be so highly regarded. Indeed, they thought of it as just another movie that was being made at the same time as a number of others. None of the writers or actors or anyone else thought it was anything more than just another run-of-the-mill production. Bogart and Bergman did not particularly like it, and Paul Henreid didn’t want to be in it and later in life still expressed his regrets at having done so. There was no particular chemistry between the stars and Bogart and Bergman seldom even saw each other for years afterwards. Henreid thought Bogart was a terrible actor (there are a few who believe he was one of the greatest). When it received an Oscar for best picture of the year, Jack Warner rushed to the stage before Hal Wallis to receive it, thus creating a break between the two moguls that never healed. Bogart had been nominated for best actor, but did not win. Bergman was not nominated for Casablanca but, rather, for, For Whom the Bell Tolls which she had starred in immediately after Casablanca. She also did not win. But Casablanca made them both huge stars and allowed them to go on to bigger and better things.

One of the greatest features of Casablanca to me was always the cast of supporting actors. I thought they were all marvelous. It was a movie about Europeans trying to escape from Nazi Germany and interestingly enough, most of the actors were people who were in that category. I don’t believe there are character actors nowadays that approach the stature of Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Leonid Kinskey, “Cuddles” Sakall, and others (my son does not agree with me but as I do not watch recent movies I have no idea if he might be right or not). It was certainly wonderfully cast. Of course Paul Henreid and Claude Rains were both wonderful in their respective parts.

There was nothing about the story that was particularly unique or unusual. It was mostly boy has girl, loses girl, find her again, eventually sends her off with a rival as it was the right thing to do for the war effort. The sets were hardly outstanding although perfectly adequate given the constraints of the time, the photography was excellent for the time, and much of the dialogue has been added to our common language: “we’ll always have Paris,” “here’s looking at you, kid,” “Louie, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” and “round up t he usual suspects,” for example. It was, and is, a great motion picture, and it continues to please and fascinate us even after all these years, in spite of being in some ways dated (a bit sexist and racist). To me it’s just a really good movie. I still enjoy watching it once in a while. I have no explanation for why it has attained the super reputation and standing that it enjoys, although I believe I now understand how and why it was so successful at the time.

By now, of course, it has been analyzed and psychoanalyzed, sociologized, symbolically interpreted, and otherwise interpreted and dissected to the point that I think perhaps I really didn’t even see it (as most of these interpretations would certainly never have occurred to me, especially the suggestion by some of a suggested homosexual relationship between Captain Renault and Rick). If Bogart would have lived to see these attempts I believe he would have said, simply, “cut the crap.” I remember once hearing an interview with Golding after he wrote Lord of the Flies. A woman asked him if it was true there were something like five levels of symbolism involved (or something like that). Golding replied, “I wrote it a long time ago, I don’t know anything about that.” But don’t let this distract you from reading this unusually well-researched, fine and interesting book (if you have any interest in such things.)