The Movie "Casablanca" As A Work of Art

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.

 

 

Dealing with the Root Cause of Our Immigration Crisis--It's Staring Us in The Face

An editorial in the Toronto Globe & Mail on July 3rd captured the root cause of the immigration crisis on our southern border and what to do about it. It was brought to light by the words of Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, one of the three Central American countries from which the immigrants are fleeing. 

Earlier in the week,  President Bukele was asked about the reason for the tragedy.

“People don’t flee their homes because they want to,” he said in English. “People flee their homes because they feel they have to. Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health.

"We can spit blame to any other country but what about our blame? I mean, what country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador. They fled our country. It is our fault.”

And also: “If people have an opportunity of a decent job, a decent education, a decent health-care system and security, I know forced migration will be reduced to zero.”

That’s the issue, in a nutshell. Problem and solution.

If President Donald Trump was serious about fixing the crisis on his country’s southern border, instead of playing it for political advantage, he’d be listening to Mr. Bukele.

The people of El Salvador are hardly to blame for what has happened to their homeland. The Central American country and neighbouring Honduras and Guatemala are corrupt, economically depressed and violent. In 2016, El Salvador had the world’s highest murder rate. Honduras was second. It’s why so many feel they have no choice but to leave.

The flow of migrants entering the United States in May was roughly three times as high as it was during the Obama administration. The surge is driven by people from the so-called Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. As Mr. Bukele correctly described it, misery spurs migration.

But El Salvador is not doomed to forever be a land of misery. Consider that nearby Costa Rica has long been peaceful, democratic and relatively prosperous. And Panama, a dictatorship just a generation ago, has made big strides and is now level with Costa Rica. The United Nations Human Development Index ranks both countries ahead of Brazil, Mexico, China and nearly all of Latin America and the Caribbean. El Salvador is far behind. But change is always possible.

In 2018, Mr. Trump famously said he wanted fewer immigrants from “shithole countries.” To put it in words Mr. Trump can understand, the way to stop people from fleeing crappy countries is to make them less, you know, crappy.

Mr. Bukele, the son of Palestinian immigrants, has a dream of turning El Salvador into a place that draws investment and people, rather than chasing them away. It’s part of the reason why he said what he said about his country’s responsibility for migration. He wants and needs Washington’s help.

If the United States were serious about stemming the flow of migrants, it would be crafting a Marshall Plan for Central America. It would be helping the Northern Triangle achieve better government and more development and investment.

Instead, Mr. Trump earlier this year announced that, as punishment for sending so many migrants, he would cut aid to the Northern Triangle. His administration quietly backed away from the pledge, but the message has been sent. Enlightened self-interest is not on this President’s menu, the Editorial concluded--and I agree.

Thinking what a "Marshall Plan for Central America" might require in terms of resources, I examined how much aid El Salvador is getting today from the United States compared to other countries. It is some, but far less than other countries and far less than the solution to the immigrant challenge appears to call for and justify.

 For perspective, annual aid to El Salvador is a little more than $100 million per year. The aid to Honduras and Guatamala is in the same range. That compares to aid of almost $6 billion to Afghanistan and almost $4 billion to Iraq and over $3 billion to Israel. It is less than a third of the aid for Egypt,  half of the aid for Mali, and a seventh of that for Nigeria. 

Obviously a successful "Marshall Plan" requires more than U.S. money; it requires commitment, investment  and strategic planning anchored in the host countries. And it will require patience and collaboration. But there is no doubt that dealing with the root cause of the immigration challenge does not rest with walls, or more guards. It deals with improving conditions in other countries and overhauling our own immigration policy which has been far too long deferred by political gridlock. 

Chilling Perspective on Today--George Orwell's "1984"

Almost 70 years after he wrote it in 1950, I finally got around to reading George Orwell’s acclaimed 1984.  I’ve read about how the story mirrors what we have seen happen in totalitarian regimes throughout history, including today, enabled as it is by enhanced forms of technology and social media.  

 

The story presents the specter of a totalitarian state being able to control the recording of history and individual thought and, from this, gain control. 

 

It introduces the concept of double-think, described as the “power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.”  It equates to truth becoming what you choose to make it.

 

All past oligarchies have fallen from power, Orwell writes, “either because they ossified or because they grew soft.  Either they became stupid and arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances, they were overthrown or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force and, once again, were overthrown.  If one is to rule, and continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality, for the secret of ruler-ship is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes.”

 

“The mutability of the past is the central tenet” of the state.  Why?  For one thing, it is vital that everyone be cut off from the past so there is no risk of comparing current-day conditions to those that have come before.

 

Orwell describes a world made up of three opposing regions, one seemingly liberal (but not really), another called Neo-Bolshevism (clearly mirroring Orwell’s disaffection which grew over time for Communism) and a region comprised mainly of China, which Orwell describes as best “rendered as Obliteration of the Self.”  In their essence, they are the same.

 

It’s eerie to recognize that today, through technology, everyone is being watched in a way that Orwell in 1950 previewed.  It’s also eerie to see from all reports that China is doing with the Muslims exactly what the state was doing in this book:  indoctrinating people to the point where they no longer feel under pressure but rather willingly accept the tenets of the state.

 

There are other elements of the book which eerily pre-date what has happened in history.  It describes each state through a combination of “fighting, bargaining and well-timed strokes of treachery, acquiring a ring of bases completely encircling one or another of the rival states.”   Doesn’t that sound like what Russia feels may feel with the expansion of NATO to its borders?  Or as we see China doing now in Asia and Africa, not through military war but through expanding economic influence.

 

Orwell describes a long-standing tendency to build up the military, using the threat of war as a way to generate patriotism.  “The search for new weapons continues unceasingly and is one of the very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any outlet.”  That, happily, does not describe fully the far broader focus on innovation today.  But the search for new weapons certainly continues, citing the threat of an other country as the rationale. 

 

It was in this book that the catch-phrase “Big Brother is watching you” was spawned.  Technology has certainly enabled that reality today in a way not possible 70 years ago.  

 

The end of the book offers no hope.  Winston, the protagonist, eventually succumbs to the indoctrination of the Party, under excruciating torture, to finally say, without a hint of dissemblance, that he loves Big Brother.  The book carries a stark warning.  We must resist like the plague anything that prevents individual thought and that denies the foundational importance of the search for the truth and the recognition that there is indeed a truth.  

 

The book reminds us that, throughout history, there have been totalitarian rulers (though few would have described themselves as such) who felt it vital that there be uniformity of thought among its people and were prepared to wreak great harm on those that didn’t fall in line.  It further reminds us that there are human instincts, above all the search for security and belongingness, that can lead a people to accept this control.  To a degree that I would not want to suggest is equivalent to what is described in 1984, that is going on in China today.

 

At the same time, I take hope and heart from the giant protests occurring in Hong Kong as I write this to thwart the government from changing its policy to prevent extradition to Mainland China for trial.  I also take heart from the brave protests also underway in Sudan to remove military rule.  People are dying as I write this. 

 The flame of freedom lives on, as challenged as it is, thanks to heroic individual effort. 

 

 

Is There Such A Thing As Truth?

 

This seems like such a silly question.  Why would one bother to ask it?

 

I authored a blog addressing this question 10 months ago motivated by the well-deserved ridicule of former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani's almost comic assertion on Meet the Press as to whom to believe on the Russian investigation:  “Truth isn’t truth,” Giuliani blurted.   

 

Or, as Nietzsche wrote, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

 

It reminds me of a talk I gave decades ago.  Its subject was a seemingly unarguable statement which should need no inquiry:  “Does Character Count?” 

 

 When I was first asked to address this in a talk at Miami University, I asked, “Are you serious?  The answer is obvious.”  The person I was talking to disagreed.  She said it wasn’t obvious and she wanted her students to know why I felt it did count.

 

Today, in the Trump Presidency, this question—“Does Character Count?”—demands an affirmative explanation, given its flagrant absence in so many of Trump's actions and statements. 

 

However, the question I return to here is this: "Is there such a thing as truth?"

 

More than I ever can recall, I see the very existence of such a thing as "truth" being questioned. Entire books are being published addressing it. 

 

I will begin by citing this from Steven Pinker in his book Enlightenment Now:  The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress.

 

“Reason is non-negotiable.  As soon as you show up to discuss the question of what we should live for, as long as you insist that your answers, whatever they are, are reasonable or justifiable or true and that, therefore, other people ought to believe them, too, then you have committed yourself to reason, and to holding your beliefs accountable to objective standards."

 

"Holding our beliefs accountable to objective standards”—that says it all. 

 

Our critical mandate is to hold ourselves accountable for assessing what we believe is truth in light of the latest emerging evidence.

 

Viewed in this manner, there are different categories of truth.

 

There are facts that we can be certain will not change in their truthfulness.  Examples would be:

 

·       Two plus two equals four.

·       All human beings will eventually die.

·       Lincoln was the 16^th President of the United States.

·       The Cincinnati Reds play baseball in Cincinnati.

 

Then there are truths which we assert based on the evidence in hand, recognizing the possibility that new evidence could change that view.  For centuries most people felt the earth was flat.  New evidence showed it was round.  A personal example of this is lodged in an essay I wrote during my junior year (1959) at Yale on Reconstruction.

 

I shake my head today as I read how I criticized, even castigated, newly-elected African-American congressmen for their naiveté and ignorance.  I concluded that it had been a mistake to allow these men to occupy political office.  I failed to recognize and appreciate what historians have come to correctly see as the courageous effort of newly-freed African-Americans to assume a leadership role in political life despite continued discrimination.  For me, this will always be a humbling reminder to keep my mind open to the possibility of a different interpretation compared to the one I hold now—informed by new facts and appreciation of the context and environment in which people lived.

 

There is a potential danger in this recognition of the vagaries and unintended consequences of historical events.

 

As historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out almost 50 years ago, “The great fear that animates the most feverishly committed historians is that the continual rediscovery of the complexity of social interests, the variety of roles and motives of political leaders, the unintended consequences of political actions, and the valid interests that have so often been sacrificed in the pursuit of other equally valid interests, may give us not only a keener sense of the structural complexity of our society in the past, but also a sense of the moral complexity of social action that will lead us toward political immobility.”

 

A sense of history, the eminent scholar Richard F. Neustadt warned, can be “an enemy of vision” or, I would add, “an enemy of making a considered judgment.”

 

We must be willing to render a judgment when we have compiled a body of compelling evidence and the importance of the issue requires us to.  But we must always be open to what Pinker describes as “reason" to reconsider our judgment in light of new evidence. 

 

What is most dangerous in the Trump administration is a lack of respect for truth.  A willingness to continue to propound positions which the available body of evidence says are wrong.   Like Trump’s claiming more people attended his inauguration than any other, despite the photographic evidence showing the crowd for Obama’s inauguration was larger.  Or Trump’s supporting the allegation that Obama was born outside the United States, long after his birth certificate and other evidence indicated this was untrue.

 

All this takes me back, chillingly, to what Goebbels said during the Nazi era.  In so many words, "If you keep telling people a lie, again and again, many will come to believe it." 

 

The respect for truth—for the objective determination of what is true based on all available evidence—is a foundation for all interpersonal relationships as well as the life of any organization. One of the indelible values I took from my four years at Yale was the imperative of pursing truth. What impressed me so deeply in joining P&G over 55 years ago was finding the same commitment to pursue the truth to the best of our ability, no matter where it led. 

 

Today in this nation, in this world, we must honor, we must insist on the pursuit of truth   Its denial must be resisted like the plague.

 

 

Some Surprising and Interesting Vagaries in the Life of President John Tyler

How many people have ever heard of John Tyler?  How many could place him correctly in the order of the Presidents of the United States?  Very, very few, I’m sure.

He was our ninth President and the first of eight “accidental” presidents, having assumed the Presidency as a result of the death of General William Henry Harrison after only 30 days in office. 

As Jared Cohen writes in his excellent book, “Accidental Presidents:  Eight Men Who Changed America,” Tyler was brought on to the Whig party's ticket with the expectation (unfulfilled) that he would help the party win the state of Virginia where Tyler was from. 

Immediately after the inauguration, Tyler returned to his home in Virginia, fully expecting to play out a quiet four years. That was not to be. 

I never thought I would read about Tyler let alone write about him.  Yet his Presidency provides some interesting and unexpected revelations:

1. At first, there was heated debate whether he should be called the “President” or rather “Vice President and Acting President.”  Daniel Webster and others who were aspiring to assume the next Presidency argued for the weakened position.  Tyler stood his ground.  They had not expected much strength of character from Tyler.  They were fooled.

2. To the dismay of the Whig party, Tyler turned out to be more of a Jacksonian Democrat than a Whig, especially in his opposition to the National Bank.  He vetoed two bills passed by large majorities to establish the bank.  The reaction in Congress to these vetoes makes the congressional mayhem that we see today seem almost tame by comparison.  

As described by Cohen and the newspaper accounts he cites, “The House floor degenerated into a street fight with most of the members rushing to the scene of action and crowding around the combatants, some jumping from desk to desk over the heads of other members.  People were thrown on their backs against desks.  The House Clerk seized the Sergeant-At-Arms mace and ran about the House with a ponderous instrument on his shoulder like a Roman battle axe screaming, order, gentlemen order.” 

In protest, five of Tyler’s Cabinet members resigned. Their objective was to get Tyler to resign, but he had no intention of doing so.  Later, he wrote, “My resignation would amount to a declaration to the world that our system of government had failed.”

3. The rancor went on.  In 1842, for the first time in history, impeachment proceedings were launched.  They did not reach a guilty verdict.  

4. As I’ve seen in other leaders, Tyler proved to be his own worst enemy.  He assumed, incorrectly, that the harsh critiques were a Washington phenomenon and did not permeate the masses.  He was out of touch; he never really spent time with the people.  He didn’t know the voters and made no attempts to correct the negative image painted by the anti-Tyler press.  

By now, the Whigs had become so focused on denigrating Tyler, they missed the path that would ultimately result in their falling on their sword.  It was over the annexation of Texas.  

Hoping to duck the debate between southern anti-abolitionists and northern abolitionists, which was dividing both the Whigs and the Democrats, the leading candidates for the 1844 Presidency from both parties opposed the annexation of Texas.  They were Henry Clay (Whig) and Martin Van Buren (Democrat).  However, Tyler saw Texas as not only a political way to split the parties, hoping to assume a third party victory (a long shot from the start), but he saw this as the right thing for the nation.

5. The Republic of Texas, now independent from Mexico, was very concerned that an attack from Mexico would follow annexation.  Without any authority from the President, the envoy from Texas to the U.S. assured the Texan government that the U.S. would put forces in place to resist any Mexican attack.

Both Clay and Van Buren lost their leading position as candidates by opposing the annexation of Texas. A dark horse, James Polk from Tennessee ran as a Democrat, supporting the annexation of Texas, and decisively won the election.  Texas quickly became part of the United States.

The annexation of Texas undoubtedly would have occurred at some point even without Tyler’s maneuvering, but it happened sooner because he pursued it to combat both the Whigs and Democrats who disavowed him. He hoped, mistakenly as it turned out, that it would be the foundation for a winning third party movement.

There are a number of events in this story that I find to be humbling reminders.

Daniel Webster’s unbounded attacks on Tyler, for his own interest, ended up serving him poorly. 

Stories of many individuals, seemingly large and important at the time, are now totally forgotten, reminding us of the transient nature of our lives and the hope that there will be value in it in the values and confidence we pass on to others.  

The importance of character: which Tyler displayed, as people tried to take away his power, and as he stood up courageously to disagree with his party on the issue (the National Bank) they felt most important.

The role of pure chance: Tyler was almost killed in the explosion of a gun on the ship, “Princeton,” on a short cruise to display the nation’s growing naval power.  His Secretary of State, Abel Ushur, was killed; so were dozens of others, including the father of Julia Gardner, whom he was pursuing.  It is said the only reason he was not close to where his Secretary of State was killed was that he was lingering behind to try to woo Julia in the ship's salon.  Tyler went on to marry Julia. His first wife had died a few years earlier.  Julia was in her mid-20s; thirty years his junior, the youngest First Lady in history.  They went on to have seven children. Tyler had already had seven children with his first wife, making a total of fourteen, the largest number of children a President fathered in history.  

These are just a few of the unknown vagaries of the life of the ninth President of the United States.

Living In The Moment

Several years ago, I had a very meaningful lunch with a close friend, a P&G leader.   She had had a very challenging year.  Her husband had recently had a stroke and her 2-year-old baby girl had been sick as well.  Blessedly, both her husband and little girl have fully recovered.  What made this a most memorable encounter was what my friend told me had changed in her life from before her husband's stroke to after it.  Before she said, they were constantly thinking "more, more, more."  More work, more activity, more is better.  Now, they are thinking differently.  They are living in the moment; taking each moment as it comes.  Treasuring it for what it is. 

I told my P&G friend I could resonate to that, particularly as I reflected on my going through chemotherapy for five months leading up to my bladder operation in May 2005.  Interestingly, I found I was then not only or even so much treasuring my own moments as the moments I saw other people experiencing.  For example, I vividly recall looking at people walking by as my wife, Francie, and I looked out the window of a restaurant on Lexington Avenue in New York. Seeing a couple walking hand-in-hand, I felt very, very good for them.  I found myself hoping they were treasuring that moment as I was treasuring mine with Francie. 

I then had to ask myself a tough question: eight years after that operation, was I still experiencing life in that same way? The answer was disappointing: "somewhat but not nearly what it was".  

There is still a lot of that "more, more, more" in my life, too much, probably in part, just to demonstrate to myself that I am still fully alive and capable and that I still matter.  Yet, I continue to realize that I must pull back and live in the moment. To do otherwise is arrogant.  It risks not doing what I do as well as I should and failing to enjoy each moment for all it offers. 

This is a challenge I continue to face. At my age, I realize even more that each moment is a gift and I must appreciate it in its fullness and its own right. 

My good friend, Howard Wells, shared a passage from Herzen which calls for living in the moment as eloquently as anything I have ever read:

"How rich is the human heart in the capacity for happiness, for joy, if only people know how to give themselves up to it without being distracted by trifles. As a rule the present is spoilt by external worries, empty cares, irritable fussiness, all the rubbish which is brought upon us in the midday of life by the vanity of vanities, and the stupid ordering of our everyday life. We waste our best minutes, we let them slip through our fingers as though we had an endless store of them. We are usually thinking of tomorrow, of next year, when we ought with both hands to be clasping the brimming cup which life itself, unbidden, with her customary lavishness, holds out to us, and to drink and drink of it until the cup passes into other hands. Nature does not care to waste time offering it and pressing us."