Released in November, 1942, Casablanca stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick, a disillusioned cafe owner in wartime Morocco, who meets his lost love, Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman. They were lovers in Paris, but she left abruptly after learning that the husband she believed had died was in fact alive.
"As Time Goes By" was their song. Take a moment to enjoy one of the most memorable scenes from this film. Yes, you must remember this.... Watch below or click on this link.
Now Ilsa is in Casablanca with her husband, Victor, an important fighter in the Resistance to the Nazis. I try to remember what my teenage self might have absorbed from this movie. Less about the war and more about gender roles and adult life, perhaps. Actresses were beautiful, actors not necessarily; that somewhere there is or was an adult world where important things happened, where people were complex beings who could change over time, where love was public but sex private, where sometimes people had to make sacrifices for the greater good of their country and the world. In later viewings, I could see other things, such as the dynamics of race relations in the 1940s.
(Spoiler Alert for the film Allied.) I was thinking about Casablanca last Saturday when I saw a new movie that has been compared with it: Allied. This film, which also opens in wartime Casablanca, stars Brad Pitt as Max, a Canadian intelligence agent whose first task is to meet the woman who will pose as his wife, Marianne, a French Resistance fighter played by Marion Cotillard. This film also invokes more of another Pitt film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, leaving just a superficial resemblance to Casablanca, which was filmed well before the feminist revolution of the late 20th century. Pitt is a trained assassin, sent to kill a German official, and Cotillard is every bit his equal handling a machine gun. This film also has explicit sex, and a sudden change in location mid-film. Pitt and Cotillard escape Morocco and marry in London, where we suddenly see Cotillard giving birth to a daughter in the middle of the Blitz. Then the plot turns: Is Cotillard who everyone thinks she is? Evidence has been found that she is really German, a woman who took over a French woman's identity and is now funneling secrets to the Nazis. A test is set, and if failed, Pitt will be ordered to kill her.
Clearly, Allied is a plot-driven movie. The suspense had me on the edge of my seat, and only later did I question whether any of the characters made sense. They didn't, I concluded. Character development was definitely sacrificed to action, and secondary characters are stereotyped. What went on in the Cotillard character's mind, other than seeing what a good-looking hunk the Pitt character was? Was she ever a committed Nazi? What changed her mind? How did she learn to speak French so flawlessly? How did this trained assassin fail to find a solution to the intimidation of German agents in England? I wondered what my adolescent self would have made of this movie, had I seen it then. The gender roles would not have been inspiring. It was discouraging enough to realize that I would never look as beautiful as Ingrid Bergman; knowing that I had neither Cotillard's looks or bravado with a gun would have probably done me in. I would have also learned that sacrifice has more to do with saving someone you love than anything about patriotism or the common good.
What the first viewers of Casablanca had that we don't is a context: World War II. The movie was rushed into release to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942. In the US, the war was less than a year old, and people knew that sacrifices had been made and would be required for some time. It resonated with audiences of the time in ways that Allied cannot, and would not, even if set in present-day Syria, for example. There may be national unity about defeating ISIS, but no consensus on what role, if any, we should have in that.
Casablanca opened to good reviews, Wikipedia reports, but it did not get best picture at the 1942 Academy Awards, losing out to In Which We Serve. Its real success came later, thanks to new generations finding their own meanings in it. More than 70 years later, it's considered one of the greatest films of all time. The late movie critic Roger Ebert believed it is so well loved because the "people in it are all so good" and "it's a wonderful gem". Umberto Eco said it was really a mediocre film, but because it touches on so many archetypes, including the theme of sacrifice, it reaches "Homeric depths." In 2006 the Writer's Guild of America selected it as "best ever" in its list of 100 great screenplays.
Allied has gotten decent reviews (61% on rotten tomatoes). Its computer graphics are light years from what was available in 1942. Costumes, music and strong performances by the actors all contribute to a film that's well worth seeing. Still, I don't expect to watch it again, certainly not on New Year's Eve. I wouldn't mind another viewing of Casablanca. As time goes by, it seems, the fundamental things really do apply.
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