Casablanca: Film Analysis

Casablanca: A Classic Hollywood Film with an Un-Classic Ending <r>Summary

Along with Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane, Casablanca is probably the greatest example of the classic Hollywood film. Shot entirely on Hollywood sets, using studio actors, directors, and writers, Casablanca perfectly displays the art of collaborative studio production, rather than the vision of a single, independent auteur. With its black-and-white earnestness, hardboiled male lead, and beautiful, demure heroine, it is a paradigmatic film from Hollywood's golden age. The story itself is straightforward, but the film is hardly simplistic, partly because of its unresolvable central conflict and partly because it functions as both a realistic movie and a political allegory. The film's lasting enchantment is due to its dramatic conclusion.

Casablanca may be a classic Hollywood film, but it lacks a classic Hollywood ending, in which everyone rides happily into the sunset. For Casablanca to fit this outline, Ilsa would have to declare her love for either Laszlo or Rick and leave with her choice, and the rejected male would let her go without a struggle because his love was so great that above all else he wished for her happiness. Casablanca's ending resembles the classic ending, but it has been twisted and complicated.

In the standard Hollywood film, no conflict would arise between the political and the personal. Love and political idealism would go hand in hand, and no painful choices would be necessary. The conclusion of Casablanca involves much more than the triumph of the idealistic values of sacrifice and restraint, and Casablanca is much more than pro-Allied propaganda. If the film concluded with the simple message that victory requires sacrifice, then the ending would be a happy one. Rick's decision to let Ilsa leave with Laszlo would privilege long-term concerns over short-term ones. In exchange for love today, victory and freedom will prevail in the future. Laszlo may think of his actions similarly. He will sacrifice himself today by suffering imprisonment in concentration camps and constantly running, in exchange for a better future. Such calculations are consistent with the classic Hollywood happy ending, and, indeed, Laszlo does get the girl in the end, just as we might expect.

For Rick and Ilsa, however, the conclusion is neither as happy nor as simple. Not only do the lovers have to split up a second time, but neither truly knows what the other is thinking. Laszlo undoubtedly loves Ilsa, but Rick's and Ilsa's feelings aren't so clear. The film demonstrates the moral value of sacrifice and the triumph of the political over personal desire, but the final scene is full of ambiguity. Ilsa's true preference for Rick or Laszlo remains a mystery. She suggests that her preference is for Rick when she visits him in his apartment to ask for the letters of transit, but her potential ulterior motive, to do what it takes to get the letters so her true love, Laszlo, can flee to safety, adds an element of doubt to what she says and does. In the final scene at the airport, Ilsa may fail to declare her love for Rick because Laszlo is never far from earshot, but she may also refrain from declaring her love because she doesn't want to lie again. She leaves with Laszlo in the end, but in a way, Rick has forced this decision on her, and which of them she truly loves remains a mystery.

Rick's feelings are almost equally ambiguous. He seems to truly love Ilsa, and his final gesture, when he not only lets Laszlo and Ilsa leave together but tries to patch things up between them by telling Laszlo about Ilsa's visit the previous evening, seems a courageous act of self-sacrifice. Yet we can't know with any certainty that Rick hasn't gotten over Ilsa. Perhaps he realized he couldn't compete against the war hero Laszlo and gave up on her, or perhaps all he really needed from Ilsa before he could move on was to hear her say she still loved him. Rick's final gesture could also be in part an act of revenge, payback for Ilsa's having abandoned him. Perhaps Rick wants to send her into a life of loneliness and solitary whiskey drinking, the same life that he himself has been leading ever since being abandoned at the Paris train station a year earlier.

Rick finds some consolation in his friendship with Louis. Rick is not substituting one relationship with another here—he is substituting one type of relationship with another. Ilsa and Rick's relationship is one based in romantic love, while Rick and Louis's relationship has been and still is one of expediency and political alliance, even if they have now added an element of genuine personal affection. Rick's substitution of Louis for Ilsa at the end of the film underscores the idea in Casablanca that politics trump romantic love, and the public is of greater significance than the personal.

We can only speculate on Rick's and Ilsa's true feelings and motives, and the point is that the ending remains a mystery. It is neither happy nor sad, but both at once, and far from the kind of ending one might expect from a typical 1940s Hollywood film.

<r>Analysis<r>Acting <r>Summary

Though the ambiguous conclusion is part of what makes Casablanca such a remarkable film, not all of the ambiguity was intentional. During the filming, director Michael Curtiz and the writers could not agree on an ending. As Ingrid Bergman acted the part of Ilsa, she repeatedly asked for a clarification as to which man she truly loved, but no one gave her a straight answer. Bergman made the best of this frustrating situation by making this uncertainty fundamental to Ilsa's character. Ilsa is reunited twice with old lovers at the most inopportune times, and she has become shut off from her own feelings. The real choice at the conclusion is hers, but she elects to place it in Rick's hands. When she tells Rick to think for both of them, she absolves herself of having to take responsibility for her fate. Rather than take action, for which she would have to accept responsibility, she abandons herself to the whims of fortune. If Rick chooses wrongly, the fault will be his, not hers.

Bergman portrays Ilsa as stony-faced and almost cold, but Ilsa suffers most of all the principal characters. Although Ilsa gets a chance at both love and freedom in the end, she has not chosen her own fate. Her inability to steer her destiny is the result of her choice to let Rick decide, and in this decision, we see in her a dark, tragic fatalism. The romance of Casablanca is undeniable. The male characters are able to love completely and convincingly without appearing maudlin or sappy. Throughout the film Laszlo is an unapologetic optimist, and by the conclusion, Rick and Louis can envision brighter days ahead. Ilsa reveals herself to be a character of a different sort. Only in the final scenes do we even begin to grasp the full extent of her tremendous despair. Her dark fatalism makes Casablanca much more than a romantic tale set during a time when happy endings were not possible, and the fact that Bergman actually had to struggle to figure out who should be the object of Ilsa's true devotion renders Ilsa's despair and indecision all the more realistic and affective.

<r>Analysis<r> Soundtrack <r>Summary

Casablanca is a tale of two songs. The first song, "La Marseillaise," is the French national anthem, written during the era of the French Revolution about fighting for freedom from political repression. In Casablanca, it represents a free France, and, by extension, the Allied side in World War II. The song plays many times throughout Casablanca, most significantly when almost all the patrons at Rick's join in a stirring rendition intended to overwhelm the sound of the Nazi anthem that a few German soldiers are singing. In this dramatic scene, World War II shifts from geopolitical contest to ideological and cultural battle. The war is not only between the Allies and the Axis, but also between the ideals of the French Revolution, liberté, egalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, brotherhood), and the rights of man, and the darker obsessions of the Nazis, including evil, tyranny, and death. In this scene, the patrons of Rick's show themselves to be fiercely pro-Allies. Even the cynically promiscuous Yvonne, who just that evening has shown up with a new German beau, sings with passion and conviction.

"La Marseillaise" may win an easy battle with the Nazi anthem, but it has a harder time defeating the other song that is central to Casablanca, "As Time Goes By." In World War II, the conflict is between the Axis and Allies, while in Casablanca, the struggle is between the public and private. Whenever "La Marseillaise" plays, including as a voiceover describing the plight of political refugees during World War II in the movie's opening and when Louis and Rick walk down the empty runway together with their friendship linked by a new political bond, Casablanca is a film about politics and war. When "As Time Goes By" plays, the film becomes the love story of Ilsa and Rick. Unlike "La Marseillaise," whose meaning never changes, "As Time Goes By" has many roles in the film, each with a different slant. In Paris, "As Time Goes By" was Rick and Ilsa's song, a symbol of their love. In Casablanca, it is a forbidden song that Rick fears will remind him of Ilsa, but which by its absence has come to represent her. When Ilsa does arrive in Casablanca, the song takes on a third meaning. Sam plays the song at both Ilsa's and Rick's request, and it suggests both halves of their relationship: the Parisian idyll and the train station betrayal, as well as the possibility of the love story beginning anew in Casablanca.

"La Marseillaise" isn't played in Rick's Café until after Sam plays "As Time Goes By," and this ordering is significant because we can see that Rick's political apathy relates to his disenchantment with all forms of commitment, both political and personal. Only after Ilsa reawakens his heart by coming to the bar can Rick become politically engaged again. At the same time, the fact that Casablanca begins and ends with "La Marseillaise" suggests that the political is the foundation upon which all things personal happen, including Rick and Ilsa's love story. The actual words of "As Time Goes By" argue that the one timeless truth is love, but in Casablanca, the political ultimately triumphs. Ilsa's return to Rick's life lasts only a few days. When she leaves Casablanca, she leaves Rick forever, but the war is still far from over for them both.

<r>Analysis<r> Political Allegory <r>Summary

Casablanca is an exploration of the universal themes of love and sacrifice, but when the film was released in 1942, audiences viewed it as a political allegory about World War II. The film is set in December 1941, the month in which the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. That attack changed the course of American history, awakening the nation from political neutrality and thrusting it into the midst of World War II. Casablanca tells the story of a similar, though much smaller, awakening. At the beginning of the film, Rick is a cynical bar owner in the Moroccan city of Casablanca who drinks only by himself and doesn't care about politics. By the end of the film, he has become a self-sacrificing idealist, committed to the anti-Nazi war effort. The event that prompts this change in Rick is the appearance of Ilsa, his old flame, in Casablanca. Ilsa's arrival is unexpected and devastating, and it hits Rick just as hard as the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor hit America. Once Rick overcomes the initial pain, his moral sense is reignited. He doesn't get to live happily ever after with Ilsa, but he accepts the necessity of his sacrifice and the heartbreak that accompanies it. If Ilsa hadn't reappeared in his life, Rick would still be stuck in a life of bitterness in Casablanca. Instead, he is reawakened to the world and to himself.

The film also tells the story of another transformation, that of the local French commander of Casablanca, Captain Louis Renault. Louis begins the film as a pro-Vichy Nazi-appeaser but winds up a committed partisan of free France. American Rick and European Louis look out for each other's interests throughout the film, but only at the end does their relationship become anything more than the self-serving alliance of two cynics. "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Rick says in the film's last line, thereby cementing not only their friendship, but also the maturing anti-Nazi coalition their friendship symbolizes. In the film's political allegory, Rick and Louis's relationship suggests the U.S.'s relationship to its allies in World War II.

While Rick and Louis find their political identity only at the end of the film, a number of other characters know where they stand from the beginning. In large part, this certainty has to do with their nationality. Victor Laszlo, the famous anti-Nazi writer, is Czech, and since Nazi Germany's first expansionist move was against Czechoslovakia, the Czechs knew of Nazi evil before anyone else. Similarly, all of the characters who support Casablanca's anti-Nazi underground are from nations that resisted German rule. They include the Norwegians Berger and Ilsa and the Russian bartender Sacha. On the other hand, many of the film's unseemly characters, such as the criminal Ugarte, the black market schemer Signor Ferrari, and the bumbling officer Tonelli, are Italian, and Italy was an ally of Germany during the war. While the Italians may not be worthy of admiration, none are as cruel and ruthless as Major Strasser, the film's archetypal Nazi villain.

<r>Analysis<r>

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