"I like to think you killed a man. It's the romantic in me."

Dispatches from the Forgotten Stars, #12

Here is a drama that lifts you right out of your seat. That Warners had a lucky break in the progress of world events that put the name of Casablanca on everyone’s lips is the answer to the surefire box-office smash the Hal B. Wallis production will enjoy. But in addition to its present timeliness, the picture has exceptional merits as absorbing entertainment, reflecting the fine craftsmanship of all who had hands in its making. Certainly a more accomplished cast of players cannot be imagined, and their direction by Michael Curtiz is inspired. —from the Hollywood Reporter’s review of Casablanca, as quoted in Casablanca: Behind the Scenes, by Harlan Lebo.

As you might guess, I have Casablanca on the mind right now, because we have just an hour ago, as I write this, returned home from a Fathom events screening of the film. There’s a newly-restored print of the movie out now, in honor of the movie’s 80th anniversary: though the film had a soft opening in November of 1942, it went into wide release in January 1943. This was my third time seeing Casablanca on the big screen, and I don’t expect it will be the last; hell, I have every intention of being there when the movie turns 100. (It’s a bit bewildering, honestly, to think of many favorite movies hitting the century mark. 2039 is going to be a hell of a year for movie-goers, I suspect.)

Our screening was at 1pm, so as we left just after 3pm it was still quite light out, though cloudy. This gave me a bit of pause, and it took me a minute to figure out why. So here’s a strange question: are there any movies that you associate with a particular time of day?

For me, Casablanca might well be the only one. I associate the movie with late afternoon, probably because of when I first saw it. Well…not quite my first viewing, which was in the summer between my first and second years of college, when I rented it on a night at home. The next semester, though, I borrowed a VHS copy of the film from a friend and I watched it late one Sunday afternoon, in what was my second viewing. (This is when I discovered the truth of an observation Roger Ebert made: Casablanca is more absorbing the second time you see it than the first, likely because you already know why Rick is so bitter and why the sight of Ilsa Lund in his bar is such a gut-punch.) So when I started the movie, it was still light out, but this was late November, so when the movie ended, it was dark—and I hadn’t turned on any lights in my dorm room, so I was sitting in darkness when the movie ended.

And then, one week later, when the early football games had ended, I did the exact same thing again: I popped in Casablanca and watched it again, as the light faded from the world. A week later? the same thing. And another week. And still another week. I did this every Sunday afternoon until Christmas break. I don’t recall exactly, but I may well have then rented the movie while at home and watched it again on a late Sunday.

Now, not every viewing of Casablanca I’ve ever enjoyed has begun in daylight and ended in darkness, but just about all of them have, or at least they’ve begun in darkness, too. Such was the case five years ago, when The Wife and I attended a 75th anniversary screening for a Fathom event. 2018 to now: as Sam notes in the movie, “a lot of water under the bridge.”

Today we took The Daughter along. I didn’t force her to go—she’s an adult, after all—but after her initial reaction of “Nah, I’ll stay home,” I sweetened the pot for her: I told her not only would I pay for the ticket, I’d pay for her popcorn. She can be an easy bribe! And she went, and she says she liked it, more than she even expected. That made me happy. I’m not sure what she really expected, but the degree to which the Casablanca script continues to be almost a Swiss watch peppered with fantastic dialog is more and more astonishing every time I watch this movie. Perhaps the earnestness of the love dialog is out of style now, but I don’t care: I’m a mess when Ilsa says “Kiss me as if it were the last time.” In fact, I’m a mess through a whole lot of the movie.

Not all of it, mind you. It’s nice to remember how many outright laughs the movie has, and laughs of various kinds: there’s everything from the knowing chuckle when Rick says to Ugarte “I am a little more impressed with you,” and the movie’s funniest line, Captain Renault’s “I’m shocked! Shocked! to find that gambling is going on here!” At today’s screening, the biggest laugh was also one of Renault’s lines, after Rick intercedes to get the young Bulgarian couple the money they need for a visa. Renault tells them to come to his office tomorrow and they’ll do everything business-like; the young man says, “We’ll be there at six!” to which Renault says, “I’ll be there at ten.”

Before the film started, there was the usual slide-show of trivia on the screen. Most of the trivia they showed was stuff I already knew, but one thing gave me pause: since Casablanca didn’t even have a finished script when filming started, Ingrid Bergman had no way of knowing with which leading man she would end up with at the movie’s conclusion. Thus director Curtiz and producer Hal Wallis told her to basically play it right down the middle, and that’s exactly what she does, doesn’t she? Watching it, and paying close attention to her, it’s clear that she really does love both Rick and Victor. The love might be different for each, and it’s a bit harder to penetrate the love for Victor because we’re not given a flashback into that relationship like we are with her one with Rick, but it’s clear that at the end of the movie, she’s not merely going away with Victor because it’s her duty and she has to make a self-sacrifice and all that. Would she be happy if she stayed with Rick? Maybe, but as Rick notes, likely not…and there’s no way she’d live with herself if Rick had actually executed his original stated plan and got away with Ilsa while leaving Victor in Nazi custody.

I know that Casablanca has had its share of attempted follow-ups over the years. There was an outright sequel planned at the time of the original, to be called Brazzaville, in which Bogart and Claude Rains would reprise their roles, likely showing at least a bit of what Rick had described to Ilsa as the “Where I’m going” that she couldn’t follow. There have never been any films directly sequelizing Casablanca or directly remaking it, but there have been movies that take clear inspiration from the great original, which is another thing entirely. A novel called As Time Goes By exists that apparently fills in all the blanks: not just what happens after Rick and Louis leave to build on their “beautiful friendship”, but also what happened before, telling us the specific reason why Rick Blaine cannot return to America. Without intending disrespect to the author, Michael Walsh, something about that just seems a bit…sacrilegious. As a storyteller myself, I do find myself thinking a bit, every time I watch Casablanca, about what happens after. And I always stop thinking about it.

I’m surprised, though, that in this era of reboots and unneeded sequels and remakes made for cynical reasons of holding onto expiring copyrights, Casablanca remains pretty much untouched. The natural question of why this should be the case suggests several answers. It would be nice to believe that as cynical as the entertainment industry is, there are still a few lines that they simply won’t cross, and remaking/rebooting Casablanca is one of them. I don’t really believe this to be the case; I suspect it’s just because nobody has yet come up with a Casablanca remake or sequel idea that captures enough imagination on the part of some Hollywood suit to pull the trigger…and inspires them to think, “Yeah, we can make some money off this.” I don’t imagine that state of affairs can last forever; sooner or later someone is going to try to make a buck off a Casablanca property. But when they do, I reserve the right to ignore it on the basis that we’ll always have Paris.

Until next time,
-K.