Why write a blog about a movie? Because I believe there are aspects of this movie—what it is, how it came to be, what its impact has been—that merit notice.
I had seen Casablanca many times, but this last viewing, for a number of reasons, brought me to appreciate it as a work of art. There aren’t many movies I’d describe as a work of art. Schindler’s List is one. Shawshank Redemption another. Mrs. Miniver yet another. And, in its own way, North by Northwest.
What makes it a work of art for me? The story is galvanizing and memorable, for sure, combining romance, mystery, suspense and a generous dose of humor. But it is much more than that: its way of telling that story in simplest terms, betrays not one false note. In the script, in the acting, in the directing, in the production. It all came together.
I suppose everyone would have expected Casablanca to be a popular movie. It had to be with a cast of Bogart and Bergman and Peter Lorre and Claude Raines. But no one expected it to be a talked-about movie 70 years later.
In fact, it wasn’t all that big a deal in the beginning. Warner Brothers (and other studios) were producing 25-30 movies per year then. Everyone was going to the movies; it was the war years. Casablanca was only the fourth or fifth most popular film that year. There were 3-4 other Warner Brothers films that cost more to make. The play from which it was based was turned down for movie adaptation several times. Several esteemed screenwriters turned down the project, not feeling it was worthy of their effort.
Remarkably, the film was completed in only three months, from May to August 1942. The director, Michael Curtiz, couldn’t get all the actors in one place at the beginning; some were finishing up other movies, sweeping from one soundstage to another. That’s the way it was done.
Forget the details. You simply have to observe this movie carefully and watch every scene, the lighting, the interaction of the characters, to appreciate its art and its finesse.
It captured the right spirit there in 1942. If it had been made a few years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have been possible to show the Nazis in such a bad light. If it had been done two years later, it probably would have been showing the Nazis in a much more brutal light.
Every actor is key to the movie, but Bogart is the central key. He brings to life a character marked by skepticism and cynicism but at heart he is a sentimentalist, believing in values. That reality emerges slowly and totally authentically.
Casablanca won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1944. A surprise. It was starting to catch on, but it really caught on 15 years later when it became the introductory film for a theatre at Harvard dedicated to showing “cult” films, which Casablanca became.
There were attempts to extend its life, but none of them worked; sequels, plays, even a television show.
So it remains. One of the world’s great movies, qualifying, I believe, as a work of art.
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