Anti-fascist cinema: Casablanca (1942)
Obvious? Sure. This movie about moving from cynicism to commitment is justifiably legendary
Casablanca (1942)
Written by Philip and Julius Epstein and Howard Koch
Directed by Michael Curtiz
So much has been written about “Casablanca.” The critical consensus is that the movie — a film about not sitting on the sidelines, presciently shot in 1941 before the U.S. was drawn into World War II — is the perfect example of the brilliance of the Hollywood system of the day. Even though Michael Curtiz was an ordinary director, he outdid himself with this picture, supported by a savvy, well-structured script, a brilliant cast, and a fantastic turning-point scene that, for all its corniness, has stood the test of time; more than the sum of these parts, the movie still rates high among both critics and the public. Anybody who watches movies even casually has probably seen it, probably more than once, and they can relate the premise: in a Vichy France-ruled Casablanca, refugees from Europe wait while they try to get visas or an exit permit that would allow them to reach Lisbon, Portugal, a neutral port from which they hope to get passage on a ship to the New World.
At the center of this community of exiles is Rick’s Cafe Américain, the most popular nightclub in town. (Having recently seen “Cabaret,” given the introductory shot of the club, in which the camera pans past its mishmash of customers — Europeans, Africans, Foreign Legionnaires, French police, Russian bartenders, Nazi officers — I half expected the black American pianist Sam (Dooley Wilson), who plays and sings between staged numbers, to break out singing “Willkommen.”
In this setting, the mysterious American who owns the place, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), glowers and pouts and issues clipped orders to staff and customers alike, and suffers fools not at all. When a slimy procurer, Ugarte (Peter Lorre), tries to ingratiate himself by saying that the bribes he takes from refugees to get them exit visas are compassionately less than the bribes taken by the local Prefecture of Police, Rick snarls, “I don’t mind a parasite; I object to a cut-rate one.”
This snappy bit of dialogue, along with the fact that these two actors played off each other in the previous year’s “The Maltese Falcon,” puts the viewer in the land of Film Noir. It may seem an incongruous dimension of a Moroccan city, but in the beautiful work of cinematographer Arthur Edelson (who also shot “Falcon” and many lesser-known films noir for Warner Brothers), the blazing sun of Morocco is only an excuse to darken the shadows, even in daytime. Comparing his filmography with that of director Michael Curtiz, one gets the sense that Curtiz’s success at the helm of “Casablanca” owes much to the experience and brilliance of his director of photography. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time that was true of a picture, and far from the last.
But that’s the kind of movie-critic inside-baseball lore that others have literally written volumes about. I’m more interested in the movie’s anti-fascist themes and scenes. Because a film about refugees is one thing; add Nazis and it becomes another thing altogether.
The part about Nazis begins with the entrance of commandant Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) who, like most Nazi commanders in Hollywood movies, is handsome and has a charming side. When the Prefecture of Police Louis Renault (Claude Rains) welcomes him at the airport, Strasser warmly thanks him — but this is just politics. He has to get along with the French authorities, especially since Renault reminds him that Morocco is part of “un-occupied France.”
Renault’s a great character. The script has him constantly on the knife-edge between submission and independence, and each time someone thinks they’re forcing him into a corner, he elegantly escapes with élan:
Renault: Rick, we are very honored tonight. Major Strasser is one of the reasons the Third Reich enjoys the reputation it has today.
Strasser: You repeat “Third Reich” as though you expect there to be others.
Renault: Personally, Major, I will take what comes.
But it’s not just Bogart vs. the Nazis. There’s a love triangle as well. Ingrid Bergman stiffed Bogart after a fling in Paris because she was secretly married to Europe’s greatest pro-democracy politician, Viktor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). And this plot line plays out against the movie’s real theme: Whether it’s possible to remain standing on the sidelines (as illustrated by Bogart’s famous line, uttered twice during the film, “I stick my neck out for nobody”) while the world is in flames around you. And that is why “Casablanca” is an anti-fascist film.
You have to understand two bits of context. One is that all during the 1930s, as first Spain and then Europe fell to the fascists, a strong isolationist movement (funded largely by anti-Semitic millionaires) argued against first the U.K.’s and then the U.S. involvement. By remaining neutral and keeping out of the war, these capitalist nations could continue making money off the conflict without risking their own citizens’ lives.
The second thing you must understand is that by 1941, when this picture was made (before the December entry of the U.S. into the war), Hollywood was host to a very large contingent of refugees who had managed to flee to the U.S. This included many German, Hungarian, and other directors, actors, composers, and so on — many of whom appear in “Casablanca.” Conrad Veidt himself, who plays the Nazi commander Strasser, was a Jew who fled Germany with his wife in 1933. Same with the Slovakian-German Jewish actor Peter Lorre, who fled around the same time; though he had just attained stardom with his appearance in Fritz Lang’s “M,” he risked leaving his career behind when he left Germany. S.Z. Sakall, who plays the rotund, kindly waiter, was a Hungarian-German who also fled Germany. Perhaps just as important, the film’s American writers, Howard Koch and the brothers Philip and Julius Epstein, were all Jewish.
This makes Rick’s Cafe Américain a reflection of Hollywood — of the U.S. itself: filled with immigrants whose work carries forth their identities even as American anti-Semitism soon forced them to downplay their Jewishness. To them, there was no question of whether or not the U.S. should enter the war and play a part in defeating Hitler. And so the film focuses on this question, symbolized by Rick’s internal struggle — not to mention his own pain at having fought for the losing side in Spain’s civil war. It’s that trauma, suppressed at first (“I stick my neck out for nobody”), that he has to get through in order to take a side by the movie’s end.
The film’s emotional turning point happens halfway through. Angered that the Nazi officers have captured Sam’s upright piano and are spitting out a German war lied, the heroic Laszlo strides through the club and up to the orchestra, ordering them to play the French anthem:
The camera lingers on the face of a young French woman, Yvonne, whom we met a few scenes before. Rick 86ed her because they had a toss the night before but she has become ungraciously needy; this night she has come to the club in the company of a German officer. Seemingly gone over to the other side, she’s startled back to herself by joining in the singing of “La Marseillaise.”
The actress is Madeleine Lebeau, and she, too fled the Germans when they invaded France. In fact (according to IMDB and Wikipedia), her personal history was very literally reflected in “Casablanca,” as she and her husband landed there as refugees and procured forged visas that allowed them to travel to Lisbon and eventually on a ship to Mexico; she learned English from her husband during the crossing. Less than 18 months later, she was a 19-year-old appearing in “Casablanca.” Knowing this, it’s hard to see the tears that appear in her eyes as she sings as anything but heartfelt.
Everyone cheers Laszlo, while the Germans are pissed at this “demonstration” and order the club closed. The effect on Rick is not as dramatic. It’s only later that he surrenders to his better nature and helps send Laszlo and Ingrid Bergman off to freedom. The “Marseillaise” scene — one of the most famous in the history of cinema — is not for him. It’s for the audience.
Yes, it’s Hollywood corn — but it’s also great.1 Perhaps such scenes — another one that springs to mind is the filibuster scene in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which James Stewart drives himself to exhaustion defending the nation against corruption — unfairly raise the bar for real-life politicians and others. Indeed, one big problem is that people have been trained by Hollywood to expect a hero.
But look at the scene in “Casablanca.” Yes, it begins with the heroic Laszlo, but its power is in the fact that everyone joins in the liberating experience of singing together about a shared struggle. This is the way: to unite with those around us. We may not have a great song to sing, but the outrage with and resistance to fascism and the billionaires is all we really need.
Among other things, the scene expresses the truth that singing together unites people. One of the problems we have today is that we Americans lack a great song. And if you think it’s “We Shall Overcome,” you’ve never tried singing that at a street demonstration, where the tempo inevitably drags and the descending melody is the opposite of inspiring. Much better is “John Brown’s Body,” the forerunner of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” — but people today hardly know who John Brown was.