A lot of people say the movie Casablanca was the greatest American movie of all time. Maybe, maybe not, but it’s an enduring classic and universally popular. And I think it’s time for a rerun on Primetime for the whole country to see, or see again. Our country needs this right now, a flashback of nostalgia in a time of historical amnesia. Too many people seem to have forgotten what Democracy is or maybe stopped caring. As George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Casablanca is not your average love story because, really it’s core level, it is about the love of freedom and Democracy’s fight against Fascism. This movie is bigger than any war-time romance; it helped light a patriotic fire within many Americans. Sure, Bergman is mysterious and beautiful and the chemistry was there with the suave, cool Bogart, but one of his best lines was: “ … it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Some day you’ll understand that.” And then Rick (Bogart) sends the love of his life away forever on the plane with Victor Laslo, a hero of the resistance.1
In 1940 America was an an Island nation, far from the horrors of the Nazi Blitzkrieg in May of that year. But not so far away from the haunting memories of WW I and the static trench warfare with gas attacks. Eight million died there, and twenty million soldiers were wounded. It’s hard to even conceive now of a 175 mile long line of barbed wire and trenches that ran from the English Channel to the Swiss border.
Young British officer Harold Macmillan, who later would become Prime Minister wrote: “Like rats or moles … Never showing themselves, hundreds of thousands of men launch at each other bullet, bomb, aerial torpedo, and shell. And somewhere too . . . are the little cylinders of gas, waiting only for the moment to spit forth their nauseous and destroying fumes.“
Americans wanted no part of that horror again and turned a blind eye to the war in Europe with tepid neutrality. President Woodrow Wilson ran successfully for his second term, his campaign slogan bragging: “He kept us out of War.” But Hitler sneered, sinking American ships that were supplying the British and he tried to recruit Mexico to attack us. But the isolationist feelings about fighting in somebody else’s war all came crashing down with the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We need to be reminded of what patriotism is and where our roots as a country lie. Many of the actors, including the extras, in Casablanca were immigrants, often refugees from that war. A virtual U.N. of famous actors, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and many extras fled Europe and the Nazis. Some escaped concentration camps; others lost family in them. You don’t have to speak French to feel the fire of patriotism in the rousing scene when Victor Laslo leads the patrons of Rick’s Café in singing of the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise,” to drown out the singing German soldiers. Many of the actors and extras in that scene directly felt the horrors of the Fascist war. And that scene wasn’t just about watching some good acting because in 1942 Americans couldn’t be absolutely sure they would have a country in a couple of years.
Everybody has skin in this game; back then and right now. It’s time to wake up the sleeping giant of real American patriotism, not the partisan sham being weaponized by some. As the patriot Sam Adams noted: “It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
Casablanca is the movie for everyone, despite its humble origins. Born on a Warner Brother’s back lot during the “Hollywood Factory” era, it was one of 150 some films being shot at the time and no one knew it would be an incredible success. It crystallized Humphrey Boggart as a leading man and catapulted 26 year old Ingrid Bergman’s career. Based on a never-produced play “Everyone Comes to Rick’s” it won best picture, best screenplay and best director for Michael Curtiz, a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant with many relatives who were refugees. Lines from many of the characters are woven into our pop culture:
“Round up the usual suspects.”
“Play it again, Sam.” (actually a misquote - real line is: “Play it once Sam, for old times’ sake”
“Here’s looking at you kid.”
“Kiss me as if it were the last time.”
As iconic film critic Roger Ebert once said: “It’s the only film I can think of that never had any bad criticism about it. Seeing this film over and over, year after year … it plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it.” Ebert noted how Ingrid Bergman’s face reflects confusing emotions in many scenes and no wonder! The cast and crew didn’t know the ending until final day of filming when Bogart delivers his lines and sends Ilse (Bergman) away on the plane.
At the end of the movie, Ebert noted, “ … as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that … little people do, after all, amount to more than a hill of beans.” We are those little people; because all of us are Americans and, like it or not, we’re all in the same boat. It’s time we all started rowing in the same direction if Democracy is still going to be our destination.
clips are from the brilliant commentary Casablanca: An Unlikely Classic, directed and produced by Gary Leva from Warner Bros. archival footage of Casablanca.