Casablanca: Analysis and Review

by Len Hart

I am told that I am fascinated with a mediocre albeit legendary movie. That is how Casablanca, a 1942 classic starring Humphrey Bogart (Rick Blaine), Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa Lund), Paul Henreid,(Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (Captain Louis Renault), is sometimes described by snobby critics, the kind I suspect have forgotten how to enjoy a movie, surrender to it or to approach the movie on its own terms.

Great movies may never be held to pre-conceived standards or formulas. Great movies, rather, create the rules and define the paradigm. There is a famous scene in Casablanca in which Inspector Renault asks Rick Blaine how he came to be in Casablanca. 'For the waters,' Ric answers. 'Waters? Casablanca is in the desert' the inspector replies. Rick deadpans: 'I was misinformed!' Similarly, one does not see or appreciate a movie but on its own terms.

Great films don't follow the 'rules'; they make them!. An excellent example is 'Chinatown' often cited by script gurus, at least one of which compared it to a 'fine Belgian tapestry'. 'Casablanca' follows the rules it helped make. Like 'Chinatown, it is consistent and true to itself, true to a 'universe' of its creation.

There is a time and place for analysis. But there are times when one must simply tell the left brain critic within to just shut up and enjoy the movie. Casablanca is such a film, a film to which millions have surrendered, sacrificed their pretenses, and are enriched by doing so.

“Casablanca” is perhaps the most celebrated, beloved movie of all time. It is the greatest love story ever told, and yet it is a riveting, captivating work on so many levels. Chances are, you’re familiar with the story, it’s hundreds of accolades over the years, and at least one of its six famous lines of dialogue. So what more can I say about this movie that isn’t already well known? If nothing else, I can say that if you haven’t seen “Casablanca,” it is a marvelous film, one of the best ever made, and if you don’t enjoy this one, you probably don’t enjoy too many of the right movies to begin with.

--Weekend Watchers

Millions of fans had not been born when the film debuted. What does Casablanca have that many bigger, more expensive films do not? How does this deceptively simple story, where most of the action takes place in a single room, succeed where exploding asteroids, obese aliens and other computer generated improbabilities fail?

Casablanca has at least this much in common with Shakespeare: much of the dialog has become a part of the language. Phrases like: "...here's lookin' at you, kid" and "I stick my neck out for nobody" are now a part of our heritage. "Round up the usual suspects" inspired a movie of its own. The snappy lines would have made Oscar Wilde proud: "I don't mind a parasite; I object to a cut rate one." Also --Rick tells Renault that he came to Casablanca for the waters. Renault objects: Casablanca is in the desert. "I was misinformed", Rick deadpans. The most famous line of all --"Play it again, Sam" -- was never uttered in Casablanca: The actual exchange was:

SAM: Leave him alone, Miss Ilsa. You're bad luck to him.

ILSA: (softly) Play it once, Sam, for old time's sake

SAM: I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.

ILSA: Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By.”

And the music! As Time Goes By is not the only standard made timeless by its use in Casablanca. Sam is playing and singing It Had to be You as we enter Rick's Cafe Americain for the first time. It is the music --as much as the improbable cosmopolitan atmosphere, the smart white jackets and bow ties, the Nazi threat --that conjures up our nostalgia for a past we never knew and perhaps never was.

Ric's Cafe Americain is itself an important story element, if not a character. Dramatists often speak of the 'unity of opposites' that pit a protagonist and antagonist in dramatic conflict. Dramas only work when characters are locked into conflict in which one must prevail, stakes are raised and both sides stand to win or lose. Stories are not built around two sides which merely hate one another and walk away. Drama requires a fight --often to the death. Something of value is always at stake --love, truth or justice, perhaps. It is a hero's job to defend these virtues with his life if need be! In folk and fairy tales, these virtues are symbolized by a 'Holy Grail'. In modern drama by a defense of virtue itself against crooked gangsters, tyrants or corrupted society. In tragedies, life itself is on the line and the end is often marked by the death of the 'bad guy' as a result of his own evil designs or incompetence.

Even so, some critics will tell you that Casablanca is a mediocre movie. Humberto Eco both damns and elevates 'Casablanca'. He wrote: "It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects." [From: Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, eds. (Boston: Bedford Books, 1994) pp.260- 264] But Eco has a point to make. Having told us that Casablanca is a mediocre movie, he goes on to tell us why it is great:

It opens in a place already magical in itself -- Morocco, the Exotic -- and begins with a hint of Arab music that fades into La Marseillaise. Then as we enter Rick's Place we hear Gershwin. Africa, France, America. At once a tangle of Eternal Archetypes comes into play. These are situations that have presided over stories throughout the ages. But usually to make a good story a single archetypal situation is enough. More than enough. Unhappy Love, for example, or Flight. But Casablanca is not satisfied with that: It uses them all. The city is the setting for a Passage.... The passage from the waiting room to the Promised Land requires a Magic Key, the visa. ...But eventually we discover that the Key can be obtained only through a Gift -- the gift of the visa, but also the gift Rick makes of his Desire by sacrificing himself For this is also the story of a round of Desires, only two of which are satisfied: that of Victor Laszlo, the purest of heroes, and that of the Bulgarian couple. All those whose passions are impure fail.

Humberto Eco, Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers

What more do you want from mere celluloid? Eco's language is familiar to anyone who's read Joseph Campbell, anyone fortunate enough to have followed the great series of interviews of Campbell by Bill Moyers. These ideas, many traceable to Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp, psychologist Carl Jung and a generation of Hollywood script gurus like Christoper Vogler, have influenced a generation of film makers --notably George Lucas and Steven Speilberg.

Casablanca speaks to us with the same force and with the same authority as do the Arthurian Legends about which Winston Churchill wrote: "If they are not true, they ought to be." If Casablanca is not literally true, it might have been. If it is not literally true it is true of war in general, it is true of the disastrous effects on human life at every scale. We love Casablanca because love triumphs and rises above hate, atrocities, intrigue. As corny as it sounds, we not only want but need to believe that 'love conquers all'. It is in a cynical age that we need heroes more than ever.

Let's be honest: no one watches a movie, performs an analysis of it and, as a result, decides to either love it or hate it. Everything I've said about Casablanca is objectively true but one's own reactions to Casablanca are direct, visceral and hardly intellectual. I'm a sucker for As Time Goes By; I wanna take on Rommel whenever I hear the La Marseillaise; I can't look at Ingrid Bergman without falling in love.

Critics are often confounded by films like Casablanca. Insignificant errata mean nothing to a great story. What matters is whether or not the story affirms mankind's nobler aspirations, whether or not the goal that is sought and the 'hero' that seeks it is worthy. The greatest story arc in Casablanca is precisely that: Ric, cynical, hard boiled, disillusioned and embittered, rises above those limitations and achieves greatness in the act of sacrifice. Ric does not merely leave Casablanca. He escapes an entangling web of self-imposed limitations.

Someday you'll understand that. Not now. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and for the rest of your life! Here's looking at you, kid.

As Time Goes By

Trailer

---

Diana Damrau: Queen of the Night

by Len Hart


Diana Damrau studied with Carmen Hanganu at the Musikhochschule Würzburg. After graduating. she worked in Salzburg with Hanna Ludwig. She has sung in venues throughout the world --the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera New York, Covent Garden, the Bavarian State Opera, Munich and the Salzburg Festival. She was invited to sing the title role in Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta at the re-opening of La Scala, Milan in 2004, under the baton of Riccardo Muti.

The Magic Flute (German Die Zauberflöte, K. 620), composed in 1791, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto is by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue.

The opera premiered in Vienna September 30, 1791 at the suburban Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden with Mozart conducting. The role of the Queen of the Night was sung by Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer.

It was immediately evident that Mozart and Schikaneder had achieved a great success and contempory accounts report the opera drawing immense crowds during hundreds of performances during the 1790s.

"Queen of the Night" from "The Magic Flute", Mozart, Soprano: Diana Damrau

The story of a music video

The video is from various sources --video of Damraou's performance in 'The Magic Flute', video of the session in which she recorded the famous aria as the 'Queen of the Night', and a lower quality video transfer from the 80s motion picture hit: 'Amadeus' starring Tom Hulce as W. A. Mozart and F. Murray Abraham as Salieri.

Getting these disparate sources into the same video editor turned out not to be the simple task that it might appear to be. Most of these videos are available only as low quality FLV files which, notoriously, 'don't like' to be opened in a professional non-linear editing machine. Converting them was a matter of logistics. Secondly, the performance video was of lower quality and, worse, did not 'sync' with the recording video. Further complicating the process was the the fact that the video and audio did not sync on the only copy of the 'recording studio video'.

Since the 'recording studio' video is the spine, the story line which holds everything else together, I made a separate recording of the audio track and re-assembled video and audio, syncing them in the process.

That simplified the process somewhat. The performance video and the recording studio video are sufficiently 'in sync' to allow synced 'cut-aways'. Finding them was simply time consuming but, at least, possible. The 'cut aways' to 'Amadeus' clips were considerably simpler as no audio sync was required.

Roy Orbison: Black and White Night

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night television special was originally broadcast on January 3, 1988. It starred, of course, the legendary Hall of Fame singer/songwriter Roy Orbison. As one might suppose, A Black and White Night was filmed entirely in black and white.

Recorded at the Ambassador Hotel's Cocoanut Grove night club in Los Angeles September 30, 1987, the special highlighted many of Orbison's legendary hits. Orbison died about a year later. Some of the most famous songs included Pretty Woman, In Dreams, Only the Lonely and Blue Bayou. Some songs were not included in the view release due to time constraints.

Orbison's celebrity admirers made up much of the audience. They included Billy Idol, Sandra Bernhard, and Kris Kristofferson. The TCB Band which accompanied Elvis Presley from 1969 until his death in 1977 backed up the production. It consisted of Glen D. Hardin, James Burton on lead guitar, Jerry Scheff on bass, and Ronnie Tutt on drums. Male background vocalists, some of whom also joined in on guitar, were Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, and Steven Soles. The female background vocalists were K. D. Lang, Jennifer Warnes, and Bonnie Raitt. During the end credits, several of the band members are shown talking about how Orbison influenced them.

"Oh, Pretty Woman" may be the highlight of the program, featuring dueling guitar solos between Springsteen and Burton.

A Black and White Night was nominated for a Grammy Award for best live performance and re-released as part of a CD bearing the same title as the motion picture, the song won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The audio was released by Virgin Records in 1989, titled A Black & White Night Live.

Roy began his career in West Texas --Iraan, Wink, Odessa. Roy's group 'The Wink Westerners' often appeared on telecasts to raise funds for the local March of Dimes drives, primarily KOSA-TV in Odessa, TX. Eventually, Orbison's group would appear on KOSA-TV every Saturday afternoon. An audio CD of some of those broadcasts is, I believe, still available. With the possible exception of sessions at Norman Petty's studio in New Mexico, these KOSA recordings may very well be the earliest Orbison recordings.

A natural baritone, Orbison sang tenor notes easily and it was suggested that his range exceeded three octaves, perhaps four. Admired by artists from Elvis to Bono, he was described as 'Operatic', perhaps the 'Caruso of Rock'.

Male 'rockers' were notably masculine and/or defiant but Orbison's songs were often about 'vulnerability' and hurt. 'Only the Lonely' comes to mind while 'Pretty Woman' suggests that the 'hero' does get the girl in the end.

Unlike Elvis known for wiggles and hip thrusts, Orbison stood almost motionless, perfectly still in performance, an air of mystery enhanced by his dark sunglasses and 'man in black' outfit.

Orbison was initiated into the second class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 by longtime admirer Bruce Springsteen. The same year he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone listed Orbison as No. 37 in their list of The Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2002, Billboard magazine listed Orbison at No. 74 in the Top 600 recording artists. Rolling Stone rated Orbison at No. 13 in their list of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2008.

The following playlist includes Orbison's biggest hits from A Black and White Night:

Roy Orbison with Friends and Fans: A Black and White Night

More Orbison

Data:

Black & White Night
Live album by Roy Orbison
Released February 3, 1998
Recorded September 30, 1987
Producer T-Bone Burnett

Spread the word

Mary Shelley's Worst Nightmare

by Len Hart

The products of technological advance are, themselves, neutral. What we do with rocks, sharp sticks or nukes, however, is a moral issue. The emergence of 'artificial intelligence' carries implications for warfare --'automated nukes' and 'robotized warfare'. The word 'Frankenstein' has come to mean 'monsters of our own creation', monsters beyond our control.

Until Isaac Asimov's seminal "I, Robot", most robotic oriented sci-fi could be summed up in a sentence: Robots were created and destroyed their creator.

Some Sci-fi authors imagined an advanced race taming both its own destructive impulses as well as those of its robots. The fifties classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, is premised upon the use of robotic power to impose peace. [See: Sci-Noir: The Day the Earth Stood Still (Again!)]

Asimov attempted to 'create' a 'noble' robot that could not harm a human being. Thus was born in his 1942 short story "Runaround", Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics'

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The very word 'Frankenstein' has come to mean 'monsters of our own creation' but more generally, monsters beyond our control. 'Frankenstein' has come to symbolize the Faustian bargain made by man with his own technology. The '50's Sci-Fi classic, Forbidden Planet, echoed Shakespeare's The Tempest which, likewise, dealt with the same theme. [See: Monsters From the ID]

The film, Rowing with the Wind, is set near Geneva, Switzerland in the summer of 1816. It was then that Lord Byron challenged Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and her stepsister Claire to write the ultimate horror story. Mary Shelley's response to the challenge made literary history: Frankenstein.

It was a brilliant piece of work for someone so young. But it came out of a hotbed of post-industrial-revolution intellectuals, steeped in a rising concern over what science and industrialization were doing to the world.

Her young protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, tells us early on that

My reluctant steps led me to M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy, an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science.

And under Krempe's instruction, Frankenstein's Faustian quest for knowledge takes him to the terrifying secret of life. His product, the monster, is more articulate, more intelligent, and more able to feel pain than his human maker. The monster produced by Frankenstein's intelligence and creative drive had Frankenstein's intelligence and sensibilities, but in a kind of grotesque parody.

--Dr. John Lienhard, Frankenstein

In Rowing with the Wind, Mary Shelley fears that the 'monster' of her fertile imagination has become, in a sense, real as she witnesses a series of tragedies befalling the people around her.

The 'monster' of this film is not the one of her famous story --Frankenstein. The 'monster' of this film is seen throughout but never actively causing deaths. It is the vehicle with which the film explores the four disparate personalities, their intellects, their eccentricities, their fears and passions, their 'monsters from the Id'.

The film takes place near Geneva, where Byron had made his challenge, where Mary Shelley birthed her 'monster'. The photography is scenic and colorful; the costumes recall the era; the dialogue is witty and of the period.

Following is not 'Rowing with the Wind' but my video based upon Dr. Leinhard's excellent and incisive script for the Engines of Our Ingenuity.

Frankenstein

Unless there is a dramatic and universal change of attitudes, mankind will fall victim to its own robotic weapons of mass destruction. Already, sophisticated 'robots' have been built and tested. A 'second generation' will make Robocop look antique. Future generations may utilize exotic or nuclear power. They may fly, see through buildings, target victims with a panoply of high-tech detection technologies not dreamed of today. This is truly 'Frankenstein' beyond Mary Shelley's worst nightmares.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

--William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1950

Additional resources:

• Monsters from the Id
• The Mask of Wotan
• Bush Exports American Sleaze, Moral Rot, Perversity, and the Torture, Rape of Children!
• The Enemy Within

---

The Scarlet Pimpernel: The Complete Movie

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic tale of adventure, intrigue and espionage set against the French Revolution. Baroness Emmuska Orczy tells the tale from the point of the view of the 'Aristocrats' who had attacked displaced during the French revolution, specifically, the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The story has been said to have inspired generations of 'disguised superhero" tales like Superman, Zorro, Batman et al.

In this classic black and white film, London is home base for the fashionable fop Percy Blakeney (Leslie Howard) who is secretly the Scarlet Pimpernel. With many ingenious disguises, Blakeney repeatedly enters France to save aristocrats from the Guillotine. The plot is complicated and the stakes are raised when Blakeney's wife (Merle Oberon) who is French, learns that her brother (Walter Rilla) has been arrested by the 'Republic. An agent of the republic --Chauvelin --tries to exploit the 'leverage' that he hopes will prove the identity of the Pimpernel and lead to the capture of that 'damned elusive Pimpernel'.

Leslie Howard, the British actor best remembered for his role as Scarlett O'Hara's love interest in Gone with the Wind, was a secret agent who was killed when returning from a secret mission to keep Spain out of the Second World War, a Spanish author has claimed. Leslie Howard was nominated for an Oscar in The Scarlet Pimpernel

The actor, 50, was returning to Britain after a trip through Spain and Portugal when his passenger aircraft was shot down by the Luftwaffe in 1943.

A Spanish author has claimed that the actor had secretly met with General Franco to convey a message to the fascist dictator in a bid to prevent him from joining forces with Hitler and Mussolini.

José Rey-Ximena claims that Howard used a former lover to get close to the dictator after being given the special mission by Winston Churchill.

"Thanks to him, at least in theory, Spain was persuaded to stay out of the war," Mr Rey-Ximena claimed of the actor famous for his portrayal of Ashley Wilkes, in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.

The author, who has written a book on the subject, said he learnt of the British actor's wartime intervention after interviewing Spanish actress Conchita Montenegro before her death last year at the age of 96.

She claimed she had an affair with Howard after the pair starred together in the 1931 film Never the Twain Shall Meet.

She later married a senior member of the far-right Falangist party and, using his influence, was able to secure a meeting between the British actor and the Spanish dictator.

Howard, who won Oscar nominations for his roles in Berkeley Square, 1933, and as the Scarlet Pimpernel in 1934, was unable to report back on his meeting because his plane was intercepted by German bombers as he flew to London.

"He has never been recognised as either a spy or as a hero," said Mr Rey-Ximena.

--Actor Leslie Howard kept Spain out of WWII, claims author

Subscribe

Add to Google