Movie Analysis: “Casablanca” — Themes

Another in our bi-weekly series in which we analyze movies currently in release. Why? To quote the writing mantra I coined over 5 years ago: Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages. You will note which one comes first. Here are my reflections from that post about the importance of watching movies:

To be a good screenwriter, you need to have a broad exposure to the world of film. Every movie you see is a potential reference point for your writing, everything from story concepts you generate to characters you develop to scenes you construct. Moreover people who work in the movie business constantly reference existing movies when discussing stories you write; it’s a shorthand way of getting across what they mean or envision.

But most importantly, you need to watch movies in order to ‘get’ how movie stories work. If you immerse yourself in the world of film, it’s like a Gestalt experience where you begin to grasp intuitively scene composition, story structure, character functions, dialogue and subtext, transitions and pacing, and so on.

Let me add this: It’s important to see movies as they get released so that you stay on top of the business. Decisions get made in Hollywood in large part depending upon how movies perform, so watching movies as they come out puts you in the same head space as reps, producers, execs, and buyers.

This week’s movie: Casablanca, screenplay by Julius J. Epstein & Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch.

IMDb plot summary: Set in Casablanca, Morocco during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

Our schedule for discussion this week:

Monday: General Comments
Tuesday: Plot
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Takeaways

For those of you who have not seen the movie, do not click MORE as we will be trafficking in major spoilers. But seriously, if you haven’t seen Casablanca, stop whatever you’re doing and watch it! If you have seen Casablanca, I invite you to join me in breaking down and analyzing the movie.

As a way of introducing the subject of themes in Casablanca, let’s consider the lyrics of the song so famously associated with the movie “As Time Goes By”:

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
And when two lovers woo
They still say I love you
On that you can rely
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by

Moonlight and love songs never out of date
Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate
Woman needs man
And man must have his mate
That no one can deny

It’s still the same old story
The fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by

Time. It’s a major theme in the movie. After being jilted by Ilsa in Paris, Rick winds his way to Casablanca and starts a nightclub “Rick’s American Cafe”. Here he tries to live in a perpetual state of the Present. Night after night in his club, interfacing with the club’s staff, but very little with its patrons. Fill his time as best he can. Forget the Past. Avoid the Future.

We see this dynamic at play in this exchange between Rick and Yvonne, a woman with whom he apparently has been having some sort of affair:

Yvonne: Where were you last night?
Rick: That’s so long ago, I don’t remember.
Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?
Rick: I never make plans that far ahead.

Rick has gotten so good — apparently — at forgetting the Past, he can’t even remember the previous evening. And he has managed to push away the Future so well that he doesn’t make plans even a few hours ahead of time.

However as the song says, “You must remember this.” When Ilsa shows up, this forces Rick to remember the Past, even to relive it — the extended Paris montage during his drunken stupor. Rick cannot exist in any full sense of the word in the Present as long as he comes to grips with the bitterness and pain associated with his Past. It may seem a coincidence Ilsa shows up at Rick’s — “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine” — but from a meta view of Rick’s world, where his destiny requires him to confront the Past, it’s a necessary event in the plot of his life.

Moreover once he has the letters of transit, that pushes the story forward into the Future because of the question they pose: Who will use the letters? Rick explores a possible Future with Ilsa — and in fact, we get the sense a big part of her desires that as she has rediscovered her love for Rick. However ultimately Rick’s choice to give the letters to Ilsa and Victor thrusts him out of his eternal Present and into a new Future.

Which dovetails into another theme: Neutrality. Early on in the movie, Rick asserts this: “I stick my neck out for nobody!” In the past, he may have fought on the side of the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, but no longer. He avoids making any commitments to anyone or any cause. Indeed, it’s how he can manage to run a club frequented by civilians from all over Europe as well as German soldiers and members of the underground. Indeed Renault tells Major Strasser: “Rick is completely neutral about everything.”

Once Ilsa shows up on the scene, there are a few steps Rick takes moving him out of his neutral stance:

* When a young bride Annina pleads the troubling circumstances of she and her husband, currently gambling away nearly all of their savings, Rick sees to it the young man wins at the roulette table.

* When the German soldiers start singing “Wacha am Rhein” and Laszlo commands the band to play the Marseillaise, they turn to Rick, and what does he do? He nods his head, then band strikes the famous French anthem.

Then there’s this key exchange between Rick and Victor, the latter functioning very much as a Mentor when he says the following:

You know how you sound, Monsieur Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart. Each of us has a destiny, for good or for evil… I wonder if you know that you’re trying to escape from yourself and that you’ll never succeed.

Victor sees right through Rick’s cynical veneer… and of course in the end, Laszlo is proven right when Rick commits to the cause by engineering the escape at the end. No longer neutral, embracing his destiny on the side of good.

What themes do you see at work in Casablanca? 

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