Film (image) analysis

"Still the Same Old Story": The Refusal of Time to Go By

in Casablanca

The most remembered scene in Casablanca is also its epitome. A sputtering propeller scatters the fog at an almost deserted airport as two lovers, fulfilling their destinies, separate for the second and the last time, she to board the plane he sends her to and he to walk into the gray mist with a new comrade to fight for the cause that earlier had led her to leave him. But the enduring qualities of the film go beyond the poignance of this scene, the contemporary reasons for its success, and its continuing popularity as melodrama, romance, camp entertainment, or nostalgia. They begin with its writing. Generally considered one of the finest achievements of the Hollywood studio system,1 Casablanca has moie often been called great craft than art but - almost falling victim to that system - the script (available to the public since 1973) is a minor miracle of writing. The writers and the film are undeniably affected and influenced by their time, but as in this scene, they create an atmosphere unique to the film that reaches beyond the film and the time to touch people of other generations.

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The film script is a unique creation because its writers carry it so far beyond its source, the play Everybody Comes to Rick's 2 by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, that almost no resemblance remains. After writing some of the most memorable dialogue, the senior writers who had begun the adaptation, Julius and Philip Epstein, left the details of plot and continuity to Howard Koch, a junior member of the Warner Brothers staff who wrote the final version "at breakneck speed and under appalling pressure" (Corliss 165). These writers universalize the film by developing characters that allegorically present the American position prior to World War II, by so intertwin- ing the political and the personal in their lives that their involvement and the reader- watcher's is assured, and by so structuring the story that it stresses the paradoxical nature of the American character, which expresses itself politically and individually and by extension nationally and internationally. These paradoxes appear as attraction to and repulsion from worthy goals and as alternation between independence (expressed politically as isolationism and personally as loneliness) and differing types of alliances and entanglements, including love and its loss.

The separations of the lovers Rick and lisa reflected the personal lives of millions of couples who also separated and sacrificed because of the war (Giannetti and Eyman 222). More than the more famous separation at the end of Gone with the Wind , the airport scene ending Casablanca reverberated then and does now in those who lived in those war years. The coincidence of the film's opening after the Allied landings in North Africa (Nov. 1942) and its general release during President Roosevelt's confer- ence with Churchill and Stalin in Casablanca (Jan. 1943) not only increased this popularity but emphasized its political significance. The personal and political relevance did but was not needed to call attention to the allegorical relevance of the film: Rick (Roosevelt), proprietor of the Café Américain (the U.S.) in Casablanca ("White House") in December 1941 , bruised from past experiences (WWI) - though obviously leaning toward those to whom he was formerly close (lisa: Europe) - tries to remain detached from the conflicts about him but finally joins again in a fight against a common enemy. Other allegorical figures include Louis Renault as France; Victor Laszlo for the Allies; Major Strasser representing Nazi Germany; Captain Tonelli as an ignored Italian ally of Germany; lisa for American ties to Europe; Corinna, Berger, and Cari to represent the Resistance; Yvonne standing for conquered people forced to compromise but whose spirit remains unbroken, the compromise symbolized by her sexual collaborations with the Germans [In the typical mixing of the political and the personal, Rick says, "So Yvonne's gone over to the enemy," and Renault responds, "In her own way she may constitute an entire second front" ( Casablanca 107)] and the undying spirit symbolized by her jumping to her feet to join tearfully but rousingly the singing of the "Marseillaise"; Jan and Annina Brandel, Sacha, and Mr. and Mrs. Leuchtag as displaced peoples; Ugarte, Ferrari, and the Dark European for the war profiteers who prey upon them and others of diverse nationalities in Casablanca. This problem confronting a world community has already entered the house (café) of the so-called uninvolved. The message is clear: An individual cannot avoid commitment, in this case political involvement. According to one commentator, in Humphrey Bogart's role, that "of the hard-bitten, disillusioned man trying to stay aloof from conflict, but [who] would eventually join in the call for 'a world in which there's no place for [Major Strassers]' ... we were being offered the familiar 'forties theme: we must resist evil - that is, Hitler, [gangsters], etc. - at any cost" (Sennett 68-69).

Yet the film retains and gains viewers decades after the times it mimics. America had already been in the war almost a year when the movie first appeared and indeed was at war before it began production. So, the allegorical point was moot. Surprisingly, Casablanca has little of the propaganda associated with films made during the war. The emphasis is not on German atrocities or inherent evil. The film contains good Germans - Mr. and Mrs. Leuchtag and Carl the waiter - and, as Richard Corliss says, "Even Major Strasser ... the chief representative of the Third Reich's arrogance and

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humorlessness, is entertaining in a verminous way - a quality . . . lacking in later Hollywood Nazis, once the makers of war movies decided that putting a two- or three-dimensional villain on the screen was a creative act of treason" (170). Carl, according to Corliss, "represents the humanistic ... the Jewish side of the German psyche" (168). Mr. and Mrs. Leuchtag, with Carl, balance the picture of the enemy so unbalanced in more propagandists later films. Much of the fascination of Casab- lanca is the result of contrast and oppositions rather than of its straightforward and assured political message, the result of which is never really in doubt. The political is made real mainly through a love story but one with a difference.

Of course, it is a romantic film, but one is more interested in and concerned about Rick and his reactions than in lisa and their love affair. Though two endings were written and only one filmed, the avoidance of the cliche of boy-gets, loses, gets-girl is more truly right than the other ending could ever have been, for the film is more truly about the pain of lost love, about loneliness and dedication, more (but less than one might expect) about strengthening the home front than about the fighting itself or what one could have had if circumstances were different. Not only is the film not about the war, but as Michael Wood notes, it does not end on the battlefield or in romantic Paris (26) but rather before the war adventure begins and after the romance ends. One critic says, " Casablana is one of the few adventure films where the adven- tures take place indoors. There are no fights, no outdoor adventures. . . . There are, instead, adventures of verbal jousting, of dialogue and innuendo . . . dominated, in fact ruled, by a supreme adventurer, Rick" (Bayer 136). The image that endures for the movie-watcher beyond the last scene is that of this brooding Bogart character (Wood 26), an image of loneliness, a romantic theme which goes beyond wartime propaganda and morale-boosting to comment allegorically about the American attitude toward alliances and commitment. Richard Blaine represents not only the United States but the American character as well. The writers use several devices to present the ambiguous nature of this archetype that Americans have created of themselves and that the movies have perpetuated.

The American is a loner. Individualism and independence are rooted in the Ameri- can's history and, as the word implies, in a loneliness which is not only attractive and characteristically American but - like the American character - paradoxical: "We [Americans] long to be lonely . . . even as we go in search of others, and Casablanca ," Wood says, "plays out this puzzle perfectly" (25). To be independent is to be lonely, to isolate oneself, but the removal and the remover, despite tendencies to feelings of alienation, egotism, self-pity, self-importance, or selfishness, are tremendously attrac- tive to others but especially to Americans who sense separation, and therefore freedom from others, as part of their destiny. Even as Americans lean toward one side over another, they hesitate because, as Wood explains,

there is in America a dream of freedom . . ., which lies somewhere at the back of several varieties of isolationism and behind whatever we mean by individualism, which converts selfishness from something of a vice into something of a virtue, and . . . confers a peculiar, gleaming prestige on loneliness. It is a dream of freedom from others; it is a fear ... of entanglement [with anyone, enemy or friend ... It is the fear .... that all alliances are entangling alliances. (28, 29, 30).

This desire for separation is partly the notion of not becoming involved in the affairs of others (twice Rick says, "I stick my neck out for nobody" (42, 51), which Renault calls "A wise foreign policy"); partly the American distaste for politics (Rick says to a German soldier, "Either lay off politics or get out" (109), to Major Strasser, and later to Laszlo, "I'm not interested in politics. The problems of the world are not in my department. I'm a saloon keeper" (56, 122)); partly selfishness ("I'm not fighting for anything anymore, except myself. I'm the only cause I'm interested in" (133)); partly American cynicism and skepticism (to Ugarte, "They got a lucky break. Yester- day they were just two German clerks; today they're the Honored Dead" (31), to

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Annina about trading sex for exit papers, "Oh, [Renault* s] just like any other man, only more so" (113), to Laszlo, "[If the world dies] then it'll be out of its misery" (140)); partly the bitterness of lost love and idealism (when Annina tells Rick that she loves Jan so much that she intends to give herself to Renault to gain their exit papers, Rick responds, "Nobody ever loved me that much" (115); told that Laszlo needs two exit visas because he is with a lady, Rick says, "He'll take one" (46); to lisa, "Was it Laszlo, or were there others in between? Or aren't you the kind that tells?" (88); to Laszlo, "Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for?" (140); lisa merges the pain of lost love and lost idealism: "With so much at stake, all you can think of is your own feeling. One woman has hurt you, and you take your revenge on the rest of the world" (134)); and finally it is partly the American denial of and embarrassment about nobility ("lisa, I'm no good at being noble. . . ," Rick says as he puts her on the plane before he re-enters the fight (156)). Just as these personal and national traits have political equivalents, so they also have personal and political opposites which recurrently pull both the man and the country (loneliness opposes sociability and alliance, individualism: society and world commun- ity, selfishness: altruism and foreign aid, uninvolvement: commitment and common cause). These oppositions reflect in the contradictory nature of Rick's character, which is at times tough and tender, cynical and sentimental, skeptical and idealistic, selfish and generous.3

As motif and archetype, time is, by definition, repetitive or recurring. Through this pattern, the writers convey the timeliness and timelessness of the story, which is set in real time with the first eight words by the narrator (19). The significance is under- scored by the appearance of the words "time" and "timing" more than forty times in the 142 pages of the script in addition to numerous references to the passage of time (33, 37, 38, 39, 49, 59, passim). Named are a specific month and year in the present, December 1941 (77), suggesting a date known to the audience, if not to Rick, when America and he will renounce isolation, Rick's personal reasons merging with Ameri- can political reasons but each a symbol for the other. This date creates a sense of destiny and inevitability in the audience which underscores for them that sense in the characters. Events balance one another and repeat themselves with variations; time creates its own urgency and a sense of no urgency, moving rapidly or not at all.

When we first meet Rick, he is alone, and the script describes him as of "indeter- minate age" (29). Time has stopped for Rick. In the second speech by his friend Sam, who knows Rick's emotions, are the words, "I ain't got time. . . ."(36). Answering Rick's question, "Sam, if it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?," Sam says, "Uh, my watch stopped," and confirming that time has stopped for other Americans, Rick continues, "I bet they're asleep all over America" (77). Earlier Rick snarls "no" to Sam's "Ain't you planning on going to bed in the near future?" (75). When lisa comes to explain, though not asleep like the rest of America, Rick is in a drunken stupor, another metaphor for a state in which time stands still or is meaningless. Soon ("in the near future"), Rick will leave his self-imposed stupor to rejoin his old bedfellows to give his time meaning once again. The sexual conno- tations of bed and sleep are symbolically and temporarily if not literally appropriate as he and lisa momentarily recapture Paris. lisa had given meaning to their time together. When she left, time stopped and meaning ended.

Their meeting and their separation are timed to the pattern of events in the story and in real time ("I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue" (71)). Thus, the script contains many references to bad timing ("With the whole world crumbling we pick this time to fall in love" (81) and other comments about the uncertainty of this "crazy world"), but more prevalent is a sense of destiny, recurrence, and unfinishedness or continuation. The story seemingly goes beyond the end of the film; in fact, the last lines speak of a beginning. The universality of the film is most evident in this blurring of time. Casablanca simultaneously concerns the loss of a

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'26l Casablanca

past that will not go away, a present that will not become the future, and a future that becomes the continuing present.

The key to the past in Casablanca is the song that is also a key to understanding the enduring qualities of the film. Dsa asks Sam to play "As Time Goes By" "for old time's sake*' (68), and Rick orders Sam to play it (78) as he recalls the "Paris of . . . happier days," his sarcastic description to Dsa (1 16-1 17). The song reminds that generally people and events are interchangeable, that basically people undergo the same struggles in different periods, that love and lovers are essentially the same, that similar passions affect all, and that people must always fight for "the fundamental things [that] apply." Events in the story recur: what he tells lisa at the airport in the final separation scene, she said to him in Paris before that separation. A sense of destiny emerges because a pattern seems to appear. The song notes: "It's still the same old story." Rick's airport comments epitomize the struggles of all lovers and fighters in conflict with "this crazy world" and with their own ideals and desires. He is both idealistic and practical; he realizes that, though she loves him, she also loves Victor and his work and that he would never fully have her as he did in Paris. That he will have forever. Having recaptured Paris, he can let her go because now he has her and his ideals more truly than Keats had his Grecian urn. And because the story stops when it does, he continues to hold both. The frozen moment has become a forever-living moment. It becomes that for its viewers as well.

This unfinished quality of the film is its most endearing. When lisa tries to explain her actions to the drunken Rick and he interrupts, "Has it got a wow finish?," she says, "I don't know the finish yet"; his suggestion, "Maybe one will come to you as you go along" (87), is one to the observer as well. After they reconcile, he comments, "But it's still a story without an ending" (137). Although the script itself had no end at the point, these statements are more than inside jokes, for Rick seizes an opportunity denied to most, that of filling in the last page of the story when he controls the actions and the lives of the other characters in the final reel. But, in effect, as Rick and Louis walk into the fog, so does the story, left hazy, even as no end is foreseen in real time for the war to which they go. Left in endless time, it is a continuing story for its viewers to finish. They can because it is archetypal - ". . . still the same old story/ A fight for love and glory,/ A case of do or die./. . . . / As time goes by."

Casablanca speaks to our beliefs about oursèlves. Whether those beliefs are factual or not, they are true to certain conceptions Americans hold about themselves.

John H. Davis

Chowan College

Notes

' " Casablanca has all the qualities of romantic Hollywood films at their best: a tightly worked out plot, crisp dialogue, satisfyingly predictable characterizations, and the polish of a well-knit studio team working together" (Bawden 1 15); " Casablanca , like The Wizard of Oz , is one of the happiest accidents of the studio system, one of those films made in an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion that nevertheless meshed perfectly" (Giannetti and Eyman 222); "... the director functioned as a member of a team and usually had little to say about the scripting, casting, or editing .... movies like Yankee Doodle Dandy and Casablanca can be discussed more profitably as Warner Brothers movies rather than Michael Curtiz movies" (Giannetti 420-421); "... Casablanca succeeded in fusing all of its elements - story, cast, photography, direction, and music - into a magical film that has become a legend, a cult, and perhaps the single Warners movie most cherished by filmgoers" (Sennett 263); ". . . Casablanca is good on its own merits. It is extremely well written and very well directed. . . . Obviously, it is not a work of ait, but just as obviously it is a masterpiece of entertainment" (Bayer 137); ". . .the Warner Brothers are telling a rich, suave,' exciting and moving tale in their new film, ' Casablanca ' .... They are telling it in the high tradition of their hard-boiled romantic-adventure style" (Crowther 183); "Like the very best Hollywood films . . . Casablanca succeeds as allegory, popular myth, clincial psychology or whatever, and as a superb melodrama . . . . Superficially, Casablanca is another Bogart vehicle, driven at Warners' usual reckless pace .... And the script that Koch hastily wrote on the substructure of the earlier Epstein efforts [is] a job that virtually defines Grace Under Pressure (Hollywood style) . . . ." (Corliss 178); "Our candidate few the best Hollywood movie of all time" (Maltin 145)

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Casablanca/ 1 27

2 According to Corliss, James Agee called it "one of the world's worst plays" (165).

^ Alistair Cooke has said of the Bogart movie character: '"Here was a universal type of our rebellious age but one that never appeared in life quite so perfect: never quite so detached in its malice, so inured to corruption, so self-assured in its social stance before the diffidént, the pompous, and the evil. . . a touchy man who found the world more corrupt than he had hoped, a man with a tough shell and a fine core.'" A caption for a picture of Rick and Ugarte playing chess reads: "A game of chess well symbolized the relentless logic of the Bogart character's relations with friend and foe" (Griffith and Mayer 408).

". . . . in Casablanca, the crowds are a collage of human types whose identities are exaggerated for easy recognition. Even the main actors play caricatured people" (Eidsvik 86); "The two long sequences at Rick's café, in which a dozen characters and nine or ten subplots are developed with wit and clarity, are unbeatable examples of shorthand storytelling" (Bayer 137).

Works Cited

Bawden, Liz-Anne, ed. The Oxford Companion to Film. New York: Oxford U P, 1976.

Bayer, William. The Great Movies. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., 1973.

Benchley, Nathaniel. Humphrey Bogart. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1975.

Corliss, Richard. "Analysis of the Film." Casablanca: Script and Legend. Ed. Howard Koch. Woodstock, N Y. : The Overlook Press, 1973. 165-178.

Crowther, Bosley, "Review." Casablanca : Script and Legend. Ed. Howard Koch. Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1973. 183-185.

Eidsvik, Charles. Cineliteracy: Film Among the Arts. New York: Random House, 1978.

Epstein, Julius J., Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch. Casablanca: Script and Legend. Ed. Howard Koch. Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1973. 19-161.

Giannetti, Louis, and Scott Eyman. Flashback: A Brief History of Film. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1986.

Griffith, Richard, and Arthur Mayer. The Movies. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.

Maltin, Leonard, ed. Leonard Maltin' s TV Movies and Video Guide . New York: New American Library, 1987.

Sennett, Ted. Warner Brothers Presents : The Most Exciting Years- from The Jazz Singer to White Heat. No city: Castle Books, Inc., 1971.

Wood, Michael. America in the Movies: or "Santa Maria, It Had Slipped My Mind. " New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1975.

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