Why would anyone want to leave CASABLANCA (1942)?

Posted by Stephen Jannise

When talking about classic film like Casablanca, the word “timeless” is often applied. But what do we mean when we say that Casablanca is timeless? After all, this is a film set in a very specific place and time (Vichy-controlled Morocco in the early 1940s), with characters dealing with a unique situation that no modern viewer can entirely understand. Nevertheless, Casablanca retains its appeal and, despite the passing of time, remains as enthralling and poignant as ever. Here are a few reasons why.

The allure of the film Casablanca is, in large part, the same as the allure of the place Casablanca as depicted in the film: Rick’s Cafe Americain, or, more informally, Rick’s. As the voice-over narration explains at the outset of the film, Casablanca has become a kind of limbo, with many Europeans, having fled their homelands, waiting indefinitely for an opportunity to fly to the United States. Rick’s is this limbo’s watering hole, and it is one of the great settings in the history of cinema.

Here, a melange of humanity comes together to drink their cares away, plot their next moves, or simply keep each other company in the midst of a world war. Here, strange and exotic characters, like Peter Lorre’s Ugarte and Sydney Greenstreet’s Ferrari, come and go not because they are needed to push the plot along but because people are always coming and going in Casablanca. Here, an old love affair can be rekindled thousands of miles away from its origin not because of narrative coincidence but because “Everybody comes to Rick’s.” With Rick’s, the filmmakers have created a space that allows for any number of dreams and nightmares to seem entirely believable, simply because the otherworldliness of the locale reminds us of how unbelievable the world had become in the early 40s.

Indeed, Rick’s is reminiscent of the titular Grand Hotel, another film that takes a common setting and turns it into a compartmentalized metaphor for the world as a whole. However, unlike Grand Hotel, which is a great film in its own right but has not been graced with the kind of legend that results in Casablanca being shown every year at the Paramount, Casablanca does not fill Rick’s with a set of prefabricated stereotypes. Where Grand Hotel is populated by the Dying Old Man, Boorish Young Cad, Pitiably Loose Young Woman, etc., Rick’s is frequented by genuine human beings, with all the strengths and faults that come with them (aside from the Nazis, who are of course entirely evil). This is perhaps World War II’s greatest gift to the film. Where Grand Hotel frequently focused on the haves and have-nots, Casablanca reminds us that, in times of war, everyone becomes a “once-had.”

It is this basic humanity of the characters that make them imminently watchable. There is nothing dated in their behaviors or their emotions. What does Bogart’s Rick do when the woman who broke his heart wanders into his saloon? He gets drunk and wonders, “Of all the gin joints…?” What does Claude Rains’ Captain Renault do when beautiful young women start begging him for exit visas? He demands sex in return, even for the married ones. And what does Paul Henreid’s white knight Victor Laszlo do when Rick offers him a plane ride to America with Bergman’s Ilsa, even though Rick and Ilsa clearly would rather take that plane for themselves? He accepts.

With the exception of this final sacrifice by Rick, the characters in the film have one thing in common, which prevents any of them from emerging as the kind of identifiable heroes one normally looks for in films from this era: they act in their own self-interest. This is the truth of human nature, which is brought out by the inescapable facts of war, and this is why Casablanca is timeless. It’s true.

Here are some related titles you might be interested in: