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The last time I saw this film was in high school for a Film Studies class my senior year of high school, over 25 years ago. In that class, we focused our studies on the aspects of lighting, the use of shadow to highlight certain scenes of dialogue, the underlying themes of the setting, and each role represented by the various actors in the film. After watching the film for that class and trying to pay special attention to all the things my instructor told me to keep an eye out for, I remember thinking at the time that I had ended up looking at this film more than actually just watching it. I was determined not to let that be the case when I watched it again for this class.
But, no matter how hard I tried to ignore those aspects of the film, I still found myself peering into the scenes trying to see where the cinematographer had placed the light so as to bounce off the shoulder of Ingrid Bergman so effectively. Or trying to deduce the implied meaning behind the shadow-box technique used to show Bogey getting the cash out of the safe. I found myself searching websites to find translations of the French quote on the wall painting featuring Vichy in the opening sequence when the refugee is gunned down in front of it.
This is the problem with Casablanca. We end up looking at it rather than watching it. This film has been praised and lauded over for so long by the Hollywood film critic that we've convinced ourselves that it's a good movie by believing the technical depth of it somehow outweighs the mediocre performances, a paper-thin plot device, and the subtle yet prevalent jingoist subtext. Technically, it is a very well shot film. The use of lighting techniques alone make this film a compelling watch. But, "One of the Top 5 Films of All Time"? I just don't buy it.
Bogey is a terrible actor and an extremely unattractive male lead. Bergman is gorgeous but her portrayal of a woman is laughable by today's interpretations. Claude Rains is.... well, Claude Rains is amazing so I don't really have any complaints there. I don't know if it's because I've gotten older and therefore more aware of the media presented reality that has colored my interpretation of a film like Casablanca, but when I finished watching it this time, all I could think about the film was: "Wow, this movie might be the most successful piece of American World War II propaganda ever filmed".
Here is Rick, the "every American": a reluctant hero who refuses to get involved with the foreign policies of a world at war all around him; who only acts when he decides it's the moral right and then selflessly sacrifices everything so that order can be maintained and hope can survive (boldface to indicate rhetorical "buzz phrases"). There is the eeeeevil dastardly German officer Major Strasser (who couldn't have been lit more horribly if they had put him under fluorescent tubing) making everyone's life miserable. And who could forget the French officer, Louis Renault; a truly corrupt cop who spends his days split between entertaining German soldiers and indulging his own hedonistic desires... only to turn on his "masters" at the last minute to help the American when the American finally decides to get involved. The Czech terrorist (read as: "underground freedom fighter") and the pretty girl from Oslo are safe and sound on a plane to America: a fabled land of gumdrop kisses and the warmest reception for immigrants and refugees fleeing their homelands to find hope in the American Dream. There might as well been a footer running along the bottom of the film with the saying, "America is the greatest country of all time and you're welcome, Europe. You owe us one!" and had flag pins handed out to audience members at the door.
Germany at the time was putting out plenty of propaganda films of their own, of course. War is funny that way. There's a deluge of information filtered into the common sector that helps everyone cope with the fact that horrible things are happening somewhere else between warring nations. I think that, at the time of it's release, America was just more subtle and more clever with the dissemination of their propaganda. It's so slick in this film that it practically slips past the viewer completely unnoticed, thanks mainly to the romantic plot. And it's effective! I, too, felt my heart rise with the emotional release of the singing of "Marseillaise" over the arrogant, outnumbered German soldiers in the bar. It's hard not to get wrapped up in the emotion of that scene, especially when trivia sources reveal that "many of the extras had real tears in their eyes; a large number of them were actual refugees from Nazi persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and were overcome by the emotions the scene brought out." (www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/trivia)
I guess the point of my blog entry here is that, when I was young, I looked at this film with a critical eye towards the technical. As I've gotten older and understand better the use of film as a medium to distribute emotive content for the purpose of informing one's emotional bias towards a thing, I examined this film with a critical eye towards its rhetoric.
And, as before when I was younger, I still didn't really get a chance to just watch the film. I was too busy looking at it.
---------------------Thanks for reading,
-d@n
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