Ingrid Bergman Tribute: Casablanca

Director Michael Curtiz

Curtiz with Ingrid Bergman

Bogart and Bergman 

CASABLANCA                    A                                                                                                    USA  (102 mi)  1942  d: Michael Curtiz

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

—As Time Goes By, written by Herman Hupfield, 1931

Any list of the most beloved films etched into American culture must incude this one, along with Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) and Victor Fleming’s THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), all made before, during, or in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the epitome of the Golden Age of Hollywood, becoming synonymous with the best of who and what we are, as they all represent a piece of the American experience, where viewing these films during different stages of our lives is never less than memorable.  Listed at #3 on the American Film Institute’s list of greatest American films of all time, AFI'S 100 YEARS…100 MOVIES — 10TH ANNIVERSARY ..., and while it had an A-list of actors, it didn’t have a huge budget and was rushed out to coincide with the allied invasion of North Africa, released just eighteen days after the General Dwight D. Eisenhower-led Allied forces landed in Morocco and liberated Algiers, Oran, and Casablanca.  Arguably the most beloved Academy Award Best Picture winner ever, nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three for Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Curtiz), and Best Screenplay (brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch), the film may be most remembered for the romantic pairing of Humphrey Bogart with Ingrid Bergman, who was borrowed from David O. Selznick’s Paramount studio.  With this film, Bogart, better known for playing tough-guy gangster roles or playing a hardened detective, made the transition to becoming a romantic hero in every movie afterwards, while Ingrid Bergman was barely known in America until this film, which remains her best-known role, with both quickly becoming the darlings of the silver screen, the picture of bravery and moral conviction, showing how to fight through adversity.  The war was on, after all, and people were struggling in all facets of their lives, with this couple blazing a trail for how to survive with your freedom and dignity intact, where you can still stand for something even during the worst of times when all appears lost.  CASABLANCA is the ultimate war melodrama, a movie about political resistance, where the ongoing war is the backdrop to the film, making effective use of current historical events, transformed into a North African setting in French Morocco, where it’s important to remember that this was a film that took a heroic stand in the middle of a war, where the outcome was by no means certain, which may explain why the film resonates on so many levels, but the quotable dialogue may be the crown jewel, one of the most quoted movies of all time, where so much of it remains etched into the American consciousness, memorable enough that viewers still have much of it memorized.  Jukeboxes even incorporated the dialogue spoken over the equally memorable songs, none greater than pianist Dooley Wilson as Sam singing “As Time Goes By,” Dooley Wilson - As Time Goes By (HD) "Play it, Sam. Play As ... YouTube (1:29), voted the second best song in American film history in AFI's 100 YEARS…100 SONGS, trailing only Judy Garland’s version of “Over the Rainbow” from THE WIZARD OF OZ.  Of interest, Dooley couldn’t even play the piano, as he was a professional singing drummer, where the music, originally written for the 1931 Broadway musical comedy Everybody's Welcome, was dubbed into the scenes.  And that’s just one of the extraordinary aspects of the film, as this was Hollywood after all, makers of dreams and artificial realities.  While it's not a flawless film, with mostly one-dimensional secondary characters, some ludicrous rear projection shots in a flashback montage, while second unit director Don Siegel, the director of Clint Eastwood in DIRTY HARRY (1971), filmed the opening newsreel-style montage, yet the flaws are easily overlooked by the power of the performances and the wonderful way this film is stitched together, where it’s hard not to be lulled into the sentimental allure that includes Max Steiner’s superb musical score, as something tugs at your heartstrings throughout, drawing us into this exotic studio creation, transporting us back to a simpler life before the war tarnished everything. 

Legendary film critic Pauline Kael dismissed the film as “schlocky romanticism,” while director Billy Wilder described it as “wonderful claptrap,” and like hundreds of other Hollywood studio films churned out at this time, this is a propaganda film that reinforced the nation’s support for the Allied war effort, screened by President Roosevelt in the White House, coming at a time when most Americans still preferred to remain isolationist and neutral, even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, yet no other film captured the American psyche as well as CASABLANCA, a movie that literally lives with us and becomes part of our lives, with the iconic figure of Humphrey Bogart standing at the center of the film’s popularity, featuring some of cinema’s most romantic scenes with Ingrid Bergman, while the secondary characters, nearly entirely drawn from an international cast, have become embedded in popular culture.  Actress Emma Stone’s character in Damien Chazelle’s film 2016 Top Ten List #10 La La Land is obsessed with the film, working in a Warner Bros. backlot coffee shop in Burbank opposite the CASABLANCA set, while sleeping underneath a giant poster of Ingrid Bergman in her bedroom, while opposite her Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian character opens his own jazz club named Seb’s, inspired by Bogart’s bar Rick’s, right down to the neon-lit signage.  Michael Curtiz was not the original choice of director, as that would be William Wyler, but he was busy with other projects, while Hedy Lamarr was the producer’s preference over Ingrid Bergman, and Bogart, curiously enough, was also not the original choice according to a Warner Bros. press release in 1942, claiming it was Ronald Reagan, but that was only a publicity stunt trying to build publicity for another one of the studio’s films starring Reagan, KING’S ROW (1942).  Adapted from Murray Burnett and Joan Allison’s unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, a stage play allegedly inspired by Burnett’s trip across Europe in 1938, where he and his wife were surprised by the vehemence of the anti-Semitism in Austria after its 1938 annexation by Nazi Germany, a period characterized by the immediate implementation of Nazi racial laws, the violent persecution and forced emigration of its Jewish population, and the systematic destruction of Jewish property, while a visit to a nightclub in southern France, La Belle Aurore, transformed into the idea of Bogart’s character, the owner of Rick’s Café Américain, a nightclub that was the place to be in Casablanca.  While there are noirish elements to the film, including a cynical, existentialist anti-hero in a trench coat, a dangerous and corrupt environment, snappy dialogue, and the prominent use of low-key lighting, this would never be described as a film noir, largely due to the patriotic and propagandistic messages as well as an optimistic and upbeat ending.  Filmed during the war while history is still being shaped, a time when the Nazi’s are invading Europe, and the Europeans want to get out of their path as quickly as possible, where many in the cast were themselves refugees, it’s important to note that from 1939 to June 1942, nearly 20 million people moved from one part of Europe to safer terrain.  A native Hungarian, Curtiz, who himself was in the process of smuggling family members out of Hungary, was known for making concise films, with no wasted footage, where his lightning-fast pacing was the fastest on the studio lot, having a penchant for German Expressionistic lighting and using dark areas of shadows to create atmosphere, while also using high crane shots and unusual camera angles.  If this film has anything, it is drenched in stylish atmosphere, which may explain why it has passed the test of time, yet actress Ingrid Bergman initially found the plot confusing, thinking the film would do nothing for her career, believing the part wasn’t very demanding, yet Bogart, who would play opposite her, was on the verge of becoming a big star, and the studio insisted she would be dressed immaculately, while the extra dimension she provides is her luminous onscreen vulnerability, where she never looked more beautiful, luminously shot in soft focus for close-ups, making her appearance around the 30-minute mark, instantly turning her into a major international star.    

Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is introduced as the owner of a bustling nightclub and gambling den operating in the German-occupied territory of Casablanca, defined by a seedy underworld and questionable morals, a place where espionage, war, and love exist simultaneously, where there’s a huge bottleneck for transits trying to get out of the country, stuck in limbo, waiting interminably in a desperate hope to escape the Nazis and reach neutral territory in Portugal.  Almost immediately we hear Rick is a cynical man who borders on selfishness, whose motto seems to be “I stick my neck out for nobody,” an American ex-pat with a mysterious, checkered past, like a man without a country who can never go home again, escaping to an exotic locale to reclaim a lost identity, yet it’s his cool demeanor that stands out, looking smart in a white dinner jacket, professing to be independently neutral in all matters, though we learn he ran guns for Ethiopia in 1935 and fought for the anti-fascist Republican side of the Spanish Civil War.  Newspaper reports two German couriers were murdered while carrying letters of transit, allowing the bearers free passage out of the country, documents that would be worth plenty of money, as everything in Casablanca is for sale, with Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt), a German major, sent to Casablanca to investigate the killing of the two couriers.  Emblematic of that dark underside, Ugarte (Peter Lorre) hands off the letters to Rick for safe keeping, knowing the Germans will want him for questioning, Casablanca (1942) -- (Movie Clip) Letters Of Transit YouTube (3:51), while Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), an underground figure, has cornered the black market, which he runs out of his Blue Parrot Café.  But Rick’s best friend and charming partner in crime is none other than Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains in his most iconic role, where there’s even a tribute song written about him from a New Zealand musical duo, The Front Lawn - Claude Rains), the equally cynical yet thoroughly corrupt French Prefect of Police under the Vichy government, as they seem to have a secret code of understanding, where the beauty is as much about what’s left unsaid as what’s spoken aloud, much of which is pure poetry.  Rains is given some of the best lines, a wry observer of the absurdities of the time, always the opportunist, making the best of a tragic situation.  As he rounds up “all the usual suspects,” a show of force largely to impress the Germans, he’s also the one to arrest Ugarte, who is shot trying to escape, leaving the question of the undiscovered letters of transit a big mystery.  Then, in perhaps the biggest mystery of all, Rick’s former Norwegian lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), enters the establishment accompanied by her husband Victor Laszlo (the uncharismatic yet super dignified Paul Henried), a renowned fugitive Czechoslovak Resistance leader.  When she asks a reluctant Sam to play “As Time Goes By,” it finally brings the two protagonists together in a moment of stunned surprise, where the two obviously have a history together that remains embedded in the unspoken drama.  While we learn Laszlo has broken out of a German concentration camp, his legendary reputation as a freedom fighter is well known and respected, making him an emphatically appealing character, providing much of the moral heft of the picture, as he’s a stark contrast to the Nazis.  Later that night Rick drinks his sorrows away, absolutely certain Ilsa will show up, eloquently summoning up what’s eating at him, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” which leads to a brilliant flashback sequence, Casablanca 4K Ultra HD - "All the gin joints in all the towns in ... YouTube (4:05).  When Ilsa does finally visit Rick later that night, we learn she is the biggest reason for his deep cynicism, having inexplicably disappeared from Rick’s life in Paris on the eve of the German occupation, leaving him emotionally devastated afterwards, having never forgotten or forgiven her, drowning himself in liquor and self-loathing, Casablanca (3/6) Movie CLIP - I Don't Know the Finish (1942 ... YouTube (2:42).

The letters of transit everyone needs to get out of Casablanca are a kind of Hitchcockian MacGuffin, as in real life they never actually existed.  Yet everybody wants them, but nobody knows quite what they are, only that they are highly desirable.  No one is troubled by their irrational nature.  This is part of the cinematic magic that has drawn audiences into the film’s unreal ambience since 1942.  A perfect example is how easily the black market uses and exploits people, literally spitting them out on a daily basis, like a merry-go-round of refugees, as the entire story revolves around these letters, allowing anyone to escape from the hell of Nazi occupation, like a fictitious open door to freedom, leaving desperate people in a permanent state of anxiety and unease trying to get them, Casablanca (1942) -- (Movie Clip) You're A Fat Hypocrite YouTube (3:31), yet the underlying message is being oppressed against one’s will, which is always the flipside of war, where there are winners and losers, because in the real world, the good guys don’t always come out on top.  Imagine, for instance, if the losers actually won the war, and what a substantially different world this would be.  Both Laszlo and Ilsa want to get their hands on these letters of transit, believing it’s their only way out, yet going through Rick seems to be the only way, suspecting he knows where they are, making him a unique person of interest, elevating his level of importance in this story, where no one knows how it will end.  Will Rick or Laszlo get the girl?  That’s the open question in this love triangle, where even the writers were unsure, which kept the actors in the dark as well, especially Bergman who was openly frustrated and confused over the fact that no one would tell her who she was really supposed to be in love with.  That’s all part of the fun of this film, as it could have any number of multiple endings.  The film quickly pivots from Rick’s self-absorbed self-pity to rousing patriotism, where the patrons of Rick’s establishment are forced to hear Nazi officers sing their rendition of Die Wacht am Rhein, only to be countered by Laszlo, joined by Corinna Mura, the uncredited café singer and guitar player, and Madeleine Lebeau as Yvonne, a real-life 19-year old French refugee, who can be seen with tears in her eyes as they all collectively sing a spirited rendition of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise (still the greatest national anthem ever written), that drowns out the Nazis, an emphatic punctuation of the film’s moral high ground, Victor Laszlo Gets a Crowd To Sing "La Marseillaise" (Clip ... YouTube (3:02), shifting the film into a morality play with a fierce antifascist message.  As if to emphasize that intoxicating allure of freedom, Ilsa reveals just how desparate they are to get out of Casablanca, and begs Rick for the letters, adding love and romance to the mysterious ingredients of the story, all fueled by the radiant presence of Ingrid Bergman, who could make you believe just about anything, Casablanca (4/6) Movie CLIP - I Still Love You (1942) HD YouTube (2:36).  One of the best things though about Rick's character is that as the film progresses, we watch him do his best to overcome the cynical side of his personality, and actually help others when they need it.  As if on cue, Rick agrees to help Laszlo escape to Lisbon, gaining Captain Renault’s cooperation by telling him that he and Ilsa plan to leave, and promising Laszlo’s arrest at the airport.  Suspecting Laszlo, not Rick, will board the plane at the last moment, Renault phones Strasser, who rushes to the airport.  It all comes to a maddening conclusion, with a melodramatic whirlwind rush of sentiment that envelops the screen like the low-lying fog, with the director never informing Bergman who she would leave with until the day of the shooting, as Strasser is shot and killed by Rick when he attempts to stop the flight, and Ilsa and Victor escape together, with Rick sacrificing love for a higher purpose.  When the police arrive, rather than point out the man responsible, Renault tells them to “round up the usual suspects,” which leads to a fitting epitaph, with Rick eloquently remarking “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Humphrey Bogart Parts Ways With Ingrid Bergman ... YouTube (6:33).  The film made both Bogart and Bergman into living legends afterwards, with CASABLANCA added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1989, one of the first 25 films added in the Registry’s inaugural year.

Carrotblanca (1995) Looney Tunes take on Casablanca, YouTube (8:59)

The Lost Patrol

 

 

 

 

Director John Ford (right) on the set with Victor McLaglen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE LOST PATROL             B                                                                                                  USA  (73 mi)  1934  d:  John Ford     re-released in 1949 (66 mi)

Arabs are almost always easy targets in war movies. From as early as 1912, decades prior to the 1991 Gulf War, dozens of films presented allied agents and military forces—American, British, French, and more recently Israeli—obliterating Arabs. In the World War I drama The Lost Patrol (1934), a brave British sergeant (Victor McLaglen) guns down “sneaky Arabs, those dirty, filthy swine.”

—Jack G. Shaheen, 2003, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People 

Easily overshadowed by David Lean’s epic spectacle in the desert, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), John Ford decades earlier took a stab at what in hindsight looks like a mission of pure human folly, sending a British expedition into the blazing heat of the desert during WWI on some utterly senseless cavalry campaign, where they quickly realized they were lost in the ever-expanding horizon of endless sand dunes, assigned to some unknown mission that remained a mystery to them all, finding themselves literally alone in the middle of nowhere as the baking sun was about to take the last living breath out of the men and their horses.  Shot in the Yuma Desert of Arizona, with desert images reminiscent to von Stroheim’s Greed (1924), where the labyrinthian landscape is a human death trap, as so many of those that enter never find their way back out.  While it’s easy to get lost in any historical account of the British colonial involvement, which is all but absent in this picture, recounting instead the misadventures of a small British patrol of a dozen men during the WWI Mesopotamia campaign (Iraq, for all practical purposes, which didn’t yet exist as a nation), the film is meant to be metaphorical instead of historical, creating a mythical universe depicting the madness of war, as one by one this small renegade group is picked off by unseen snipers lurking just over the horizon, creating a psychological panic and interior hysteria among the men, who have no defense for this kind of guerilla war, where at no time in the film is there any motivation provided for just why they are at war or coming under attack, as it appears they are acting upon their own projected hatred.  Adapted by Garrett Fort from the 1927 war novel Patrol by Philip MacDonald, the film is a remake of a 1929 silent British film by Walter Summers under the same title, which happened to star Cyril McLaglen, the younger brother of Victor McLaglen, both playing the same role.  Written by Dudley Nichols, his initial experience as Ford’s screenwriter, working on 16 productions together before having a falling out, where he went on to direct Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), but this is a production that excludes women, that reveals the casual conversations that take place among the men, including references to home, and the dysfunctional lives many of these men lead, viewed as outcasts, which led them to sign up for military experience, sent to British territories around the globe, recalling former campaigns, where we hear the exaggerated sagas of former experiences that have been embellished through the years.  Finding themselves in the hot Mesopotamian desert, aptly described in the opening intertitles as a desert “that seemed on fire with the sun.  The molten sky gloated over them.  The endless desert wore the blank look of death,” surrounded by an unseen enemy that strikes like ghosts, as a shot rings out and the commanding officer falls to his death without ever revealing his regiment’s objective or their final destination.  A gutty Sergeant takes command, Victor McLaglen, an ex-boxer who fought against heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, becoming the heavyweight champion of the British Army, a big burly presence whose calm demeanor helps stabilize the troops, having been through it all before, who would win the Best Actor Oscar the very next year for his role in Ford’s The Informer (1935), working together in a dozen pictures, perhaps the most recognizable John Ford actor after John Wayne.   

A reflection of the British class system, where WWI was an attempt to protect a dying aristocracy, the remaining soldiers show little remorse for their fallen officer, coming from a distinctly different social class than the rank and file.  As the film was released during the Depression, largely viewed as a disaster caused by the super wealthy inflicting their incompetency upon the poor, giving the film an allegorical message about the rich refusing to share the wealth with the common man.  Lean and concise, perhaps a predecessor to films like Delmar Daves’ 3:10 TO YUMA (1957), André de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw (1959), Robert Aldrich’s FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965), John Carpenter’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976), or Ridley Scott’s outer space sci-fi saga Alien (1979), the oppressive desert heat leaves the men weakened and exhausted, with little water left to share, while their horses are under the same strain, with some falling by the wayside.  By some miracle, they fall upon an oasis, providing water and fig trees, literally a lifesaver in what is otherwise a death march into a pit of Hell.  While the men are euphoric, recovering quickly, Reginald Denny is Brown, an experienced veteran who boasts of adventures in faraway places, like the Malayan Islands, which has a casual air of racism when they mention the skin color of the girls, as if that’s tainted goods, yet it makes no difference to men who are so far away from home.  A small group of isolated men under stress speaking that all-too familiar Irish brogue, where the stories resemble the talk along the ship decks in The Long Voyage Home (1940), among many Ford films built around a distant journey, though often the object of the journey is never attained, like a mythical quest for the Golden Fleece, or immortality.  A young inexperienced soldier Pearson (Douglas Walton) talks about living with his mother at home, but having no future, so he signed up for military service hoping to gain some experience, driven by heavily romanticized Kipling-inspired dreams of glory that preached the benefits of British imperialism, but by morning he’s shot dead by a sniper, while all their horses were also stolen right out from underneath them, leaving them stranded out in the open like sitting ducks.  Boris Karloff is Sanders, a Bible-toting religious fanatic who initially claims the oasis is a Garden of Eden (though clearly the land is Islamic territory), but he never joins in with the others, always keeping to himself, annoyed that his attempts at conversion fail, viewing the others as heathens and scoundrels for failing to follow the Word of the Lord, perhaps viewing this military venture into the land of infidels as a religious crusade.  He grows more maniacal as the men are picked off one by one, where the mystifying tone of the film is charged by the eerie silence that surrounds them, where no movement is ever seen, with the sand dunes concealing the face of the enemy.  Like Zurlini’s THE DESERT OF THE TARTARS (1976), the men are haunted by a lurking dread of an impending sense of doom, exacerbated by the fear of the unknown, psychologically projecting their own fears into the actions of the enemy, which eats at the inner core of these soldiers who live in a world abandoned by time.  Certainly a study of questionable leadership, the Sergeant is perplexed right from the outset at never being told the mission, allowing behavior that has disastrous consequences, like allowing the most inexperienced soldier sentry duty the first night, or allowing another to climb the highest tree, where he’s immediately picked off, while others panic and run out into the open desert, as if blinded by temporary insanity, but it costs them their lives, with a militaristic score by Max Steiner heightening the emotional impact, his first (out of 24!) Oscar nominated score.

This film is shrouded in a Macbethian gloom of paranoid delusion, countering the imperialist myth that war is glorious, growing progressively dark as the body count grows, becoming a staunchly anti-war fable.  The fact that it all takes place in such an artificialized environment that couldn’t be more remotely isolated, stuck in a state of paralysis, not knowing where they are or how they got there, or even where they’re going, giving this a staged theater of the absurd appearance with characters trapped in a modernist No Exit situation, allowing Sanders in particular to go off on the deep end, losing himself in his zealous fanaticism, shouting at one point, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”  Another internal conflict is existentialism against religious faith, with a grandstanding Boris Karloff pouring out the over-the-top melodrama as he expounds upon religious conviction, yet his obsession with holding the Bible near and dear to him in times of trouble feels as much like a crutch as the escapist, immoral tales told by ordinary men, whose drinking exploits and carnal desires are called upon in times of stress, if only to help alleviate the fear that engulfs them.  A primal tale of survival against implacable forces, a complete breakdown of moral order, growing ever more isolated and alone in their internalized sense of desperation, veering towards a horror film.  As the men bicker among themselves, their group dwindles in dramatic fashion, becoming panicked, held together by a primal desire to kill as many Arabs as possible, aligned in their mad desire for revenge, but what the men lack is faith in one another and faith in their mission, instead feeling stranded, as if left on a deserted island, where the only surety is that no one will be coming to rescue them, perfectly capturing a mood of bleak fatalism.  By the way, the solemn final image was borrowed by Akira Kurosawa for the conclusion of SEVEN SAMURAI (1954).  Even this early in Ford’s career, showing progressive moral values, the racial element is an unmistakable component to his filmmaking, where Arabs are a stand-in for what will become the Indians, as a non-white enemy is perpetually demonized, viewed as less than human, with the director expressing no interest in exploring or expounding upon their character, yet they are continually dehumanized as evil.  This vein of bigotry exists throughout his legendary career, and this film is no different.  In Hollywood, the celluloid mythology dominates the culture, becoming the predominate train of thought, a stand-in for truth that literally infects generation after generation.  In less than a decade, 100,000 Japanese-Americans would be sent to internment camps, American blacks would march off to war but were denied basic civil rights back here at home, while hate groups like the Klu Klux Klan were still burning homes and organizing lynchings, while also resorting to murder.  Earlier in history, American Indians were slaughtered and displaced.  Certainly part of the problem is the Hollywood depiction, as the mythology of Arabs and Indians are still rooted in evil, where this kind of racist hysteria becomes the norm.  These all-pervasive stereotypes have more of an effect on viewers today than they did during the Depression, for instance, when this film was released, as the motion picture industry has extended their influence into mainstream culture.  Even without revealing the face of the enemy, it’s hard not to view Arabs as threatening after watching this film.  Perhaps more importantly, the television and motion picture industry of today perpetuates the same threat, as Arab-Americans are nearly entirely non-existent except when depicted as villains, where they are routinely stereotyped as “terrorists.” 

Note

The film was reportedly a favorite of Peanuts creator Charles Schultz in his youth, which may be the reason Snoopy’s cousin Spike lives in the desert.