University of Cape Town – FAM2004F

Classical Hollywood Essay

‘Rounding Up The Unusual Suspects’:
How Casablanca just about firewalks over Classical Hollywood cliché

“The lesson [of Casablanca] is that- in classical cinema, at least- doubts can be rendered feeble in the face of the certainty of the medium.”
– David Thomson (149)

Why does everybody keep coming back to Rick’s? That is here to say, is it enough just to carry on stating the (admittedly solid) Bazinian point that the 1942 Best Picture winner is simply the best-case synecdoche for ‘the Genius of the System’, the inhuman result of an unabashedly commercial algorithm of populist fantasy? Yes,Casablanca indubitably was ‘just another Warner release’ in a seams-bursting era of flag-heaving Hollywood War pictures, but what does it say about such an assembly- line paradigm if, every once in a blue movie, a 100-minuter as casually distinctive and miraculously timeless (as the film has almost always been appraised to be) can emerge to remind cinephiles everywhere since how serendipitous the concoction of a motion picture really can be given all the right elements and people in just the right place at the perfect time? It says, to answer breezily, that the movie business is both a gamble and a craft: a creative space where, to paraphrase Godard, definitive entertainments are seemingly made by chance.
Casablanca’s aforementioned signature ‘myth of astonishment’ can, in my opinion, only be affectionately deconstructed through a clarification of the Classical Hollywood mode of production. This basically means accepting the founding paradox of American Cinema: the steady creation of films that exist simultaneously as commodities and art works, and therefore, as in “any art, even [one] operating within a mass-production system, the art work can achieve value by modifying or skillfully obeying the premises of a dominant style.” (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 6) This is ostensibly what the ‘screenwriting guru’ Robert Mckee proclaims in his trademark dictum on the nature of (Cinematic) storytelling: that it is governed by “forms, not formulas.” (1997: 3) That construction of screen content is never just a connect-the-dots exercise of necessary genre elements but an open, innovative medium unto itself. I would just quibble that in Hollywood’s grandest moments this imposed dialectic (also further implying Art vs. Commerce) instead becomes a synthesis of mutual awareness: the audience’s of the expectations of the film genre they’re watching and the filmmakers’ of their characters’ underlying psychological diegesis. What these theoretical excursions amount to is the unavoidable bottom-line point that Casablancais exactly not a ‘transcendent’ movie. It is still too much the offspring of a contingently standardized mode of Cinema to be viewed completely independently of its contemporaries, but the subtle technical and content variations it employs to convince us of its distinction over and above the inevitable dross of its production’s environment succeeds in conveying “the lustrous, phenomenal “rightness” of the picture.” (Thomson, 2008: 149) It is this essay’s forthcoming job to provide just a few of these instances of such beautiful deviation amidst the full scope of the drama.1

The two scenes in question for this analysis (besides just being personal favourites) are overtly connected by the film’s presiding ethical narrative: the individual renunciation of ‘the problems of little people’ for the greater good of politicized fidelity to the fate of the world. Other than that, they make fascinating fragmentary studies of their own:

1. The reader will hopefully excuse the absence of a plot-synopsis or general contextual key to the film, the inference being that such distractions would simply function as word wasters considering how memorable even the slighter plot details are to a first-time viewer let alone a seasoned Classical Hollywood Essay marker. You must remember this… etc.

The ‘La Marseillaise’ Crescendo

About seventy-five minutes into Casablanca comes its second true rupture; the second overt moment in which ‘business as usual’ for both Rick’s Café Americain and the Classical Hollywood story structure is temporarily disintegrated. The first of course occurred as Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa first tentatively walked into the “gin joint” setting, locked eyes and souls with Rick again and left him to drink the night away with just the bad company of ‘As Time Goes By’ and an extended Parisian flashback sequence. One might justifiably say that- as in the classic film noirs Humphrey Bogart himself was already busy headlining- the introduction of a femme fatale with the conspicuous function of screwing up the apparently settled life of a well-dressed sardonic guy-hero was an ordinary- practically inevitable- plot development; the difference here being that the change this particular woman incites in Rick Blaine’s life as we have so far seen it is to set him on a path not of destruction but of a kind of reawakening to the memory of love and the imminent requirement of patriotism. Thus, we have an almost unheard of expositional flashback sequence inserted further than half an hour into the story, sparked by what surely must once have just been a throwaway romantic ditty…
Likewise, in the scene in question (functioning as the Second Act’s climax just as Ilsa’s entrance signaled the First’s), the imposition of a mutually meaningful song and the stirring of long-suppressed emotion lends an almost symphonic aura to the conspiring of events amongst the tables. We are first with Rick and Laszlo in the former’s office enduring a terse negotiation for the fate of the film’s hot-potato MacGuffin, the Letters of Transit bestowed on Rick’s safekeeping. A stuffy two-shot segues to POV dialogue just as Rick brings up Ilsa as the underlying reason for his reticence of charity with regards to Laszlo’s struggle (so far, so normal). Then the chords of an unauthorized drinking song interrupt the beginning of their potential argument. The Nazis have occupied the café’s ambience (as they are wont to do) with some kind of guttural anthem, and their bellicosity is established in four entirely separate shots/perspectives: first, neutrally at floor-level; second, from Rick’s overhead high-angle; third, back on the ground panning to Captain Renault’s bemused vantage; lastly, looking up to Laszlo’s steely reserve beside Rick before he marches downstairs to rouse the house band. Like Europe in the late-thirties the café remains restlessly neutral in long shot awaiting a call to arms against the German loudmouths. Then it arrives under Rick’s nodded approval, as, in a small tidal wave of immediate fraternity, almost the whole clientele joins in for the chorus of the (Free) French anthem ‘La Marseillaise’, with all its revolutionary connotations arriving in tow. For what remains of the song we cut from two or three standard long shots of the newly formed choir to a reaction shot of the drowned-out Germans’ annoyance and a succession of tear-soaked close-ups of Laszlo, Ilsa (only listening), Yvonne (louder than anyone despite her earlier romantic disloyalty to the Allied cause) and the overjoyed Flamenco singer. A briefly applauded multi-shot celebration of this modest musical triumph is momentarily brought back to Earth by Strasser’s post-haste confrontation with Captain Renault over Laszlo’s fate in Casablanca, picking up both narratively and stylistically from where Rick and Laszlo had left very near the same conversation upstairs just two minutes or so earlier.

What is not unusual about this scene in the story-telling schema of Classical Hollywood? It does fit the plot’s requirement of a reason for the intensification of Major Strasser’s interest in removing Laszlo from Casablanca (both city and film), and it unambiguously signals to the audience that Rick is indeed tipping away from the meaninglessness of his usual unswayed veneer, but then why do I want to jump up to sing the death of tyrants myself whenever I happen to watch it? Unlike the full- blown sing-along departures in many even non-musical studio productions of the 30’s and 40’s (The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not are just the Bogart pictures that spring to mind) this scene exists not as a break from proceedings or a feminine spectacle presented just for the hero’s gaze but as a kind of politicized catharsis meant to rhyme with the romantic ones incited by Sam’s playing of ‘As Time Goes By’ and, just a little while to come, Rick’s “We’ll always have Paris” line as the plane to Lisbon readies. The scene also- to concretely return to the essay quote- displays a singular fidelity to a ‘system of cinematic time’ that does not appear elsewhere in the film and hardly appears anywhere in commercial cinema: the duration of didactic performance. ‘La Marseillaise’ unavoidably means something important, and not just to the characters but the audience as well.2 Thus, we hear it sung in full, and we watch most of the leads and a few supporting characters in held close-ups (though never Rick, unsurprisingly) singing and listening to the patriotic ballad of resistance because it couldn’t be more relevant for the sake of Western Civilisation in any other gin joint in any other town in the world. Every one of their faces is almost bleached by the key-

2. Especially so, considering the film’s first audience was hearing it not long after the “December, 1941” in which the film transpires. No movie is an island, you could say, and certainly not in wartime.

lighting of their glistening tears and every non-German face in the mise-en-scene is looking towards Laszlo as their leader. Yet we still await Rick’s personal turn. Like Captain Renault we suspect him of sentimentalist leanings, but what his true colours are will remain unguessed until his time-worn dilemma of ‘love or country’ is forcibly and uniquely resolved.

The Airport Crossroads

If parody is the surest sign of success then homage must be the trademark of pop- cultural immortality. Considering the ubiquity of Casablanca’s final scene in other self-consciously knowledgeable movies, from Play It Again, Sam to Top Secret to The Good German, it currently ranks just behind Psycho’s Shower Scene in the list of cinematic moments that could potentially outlast humanity. What makes it so atypical of any narrative era, let alone Classical Hollywood, is its sheer wealth of potential parallel climaxes and denouements. Industry legend has it- and the naked surprise of the leads’ reactions at the last confirms- that no-one involved in the film knew better than anyone else on set, until the final days of shooting, which combination of heroes would be left stranded at the airport and which would most probably make it to America.

It is an extended scene, with endless quotables, and begins like a play does, with a desolate stage-set preparing itself for its actors. A clerk is heard logging the Lisbon plane’s imminent departure. We track with him in one fluid shot to our iconically-

attired company – Rick, Ilsa, Laszlo and Renault – pulling up and getting out into the haze. With no time to waste, both narratively and in regards to how efficient his dialogue needs be, Rick plays his hand to Ilsa while Laszlo is busy readying the plane. It is, of course, she and Laszlo who will make their escape, in the name of history instead of a long-past love affair. The camera makes a swift track-in as their extended farewells begin and in an intimate two-shot Rick recants all his previous ambivalences and selfish motives. We know that Ilsa still loves him but he gives her every rational reason we might have overlooked for her to have to accompany Laszlo instead of him. After a quick cut-away to an affirmative quip from Captain Renault, the camera quietly repeats it’s earlier fluid track-in, now to a series of separating over- the-shoulder dialogue shots, and the music swells as if to hammer home just how overtly romantic Classical Hollywood climaxes could be. Now Laszlo returns so that Rick has just enough time to reassure him of his wife’s fidelity and to send him on his way with a long-delayed benediction. A paralyzed three-shot alternates with luminescent portraits of each member of the former love-triangle before Ilsa and Laszlo finally walk out arm-in-arm into the gloaming, vacating the left side of Rick’s frame, leaving him watching on quite alone. The rest of the scene returns to the usual flair of action-adventure: Major Strasser arrives to very nearly spoil the show, Captain Renault orders a round-up of the usual suspects, the plane ascends, a beautiful friendship begins in earnest, La Marseillaise returns to play us out with a last freedom-loving wail…

The primary paradox of the scene (historically and in itself) is that its conclusion is diametrically opposed to the Classical Hollywood formula of the climactic consecration of the couple, and yet its signature romantic heft is somehow exponentially intensified. The ideology of Hollywood has always maintained that the sacrifice of the love of individuals for the sake of Duty (to anything) should only be treated as the harshest of bourgeois tragedies3, but at this poky airport in Casablanca- with much the same three-point lighting set-ups, immaculate costumes and earnest-as- heck dialogue as belong in any other black & white romance- we are shown that the

3 Think of every war-adjacent film in which a son or husband breaks his family’s heart by needlessly perishing in battle or every great-man biopic where the hero’s love-interest finally sets out his defining dilemma between the infinite immersion of his work and the unquestionable steadiness of the affection she affords him.

subsuming of a failed love in a reborn passion for humanity can not only win out but can also crystallize the formerly-tainted memory of a romance as a keepsake inspiration for the present and tougher times to come (“We’ll always have Paris.”). One could explain this extraordinary deviation as a once-off confluence of historical forces on the movie-business: America had only just entered the war in Europe and itself needed to finally favour politics over domestic business. But this is not enough to explicate the scene and the film’s enduring appeal. Like the famously over- extended final shot of the The Third Man (1948), what we watch in Casablanca’s ending is a film ‘breaking the rules’ of conventional Hollywood storytelling so as to affect its audience with an ending they require in place of the ending they’ve been conditioned to want. It is only when the newly cemented partnerships of Ilsa & Laszlo and Rick & Renault fall into settled place in the final shot that we realize how delightfully inevitable such an ending actually is. It is one of the most romantic moments in the history of cinema because in it Rick and Ilsa finally realize that they love each other enough to let each other go and then actually do, and thus our admiration for their mutual sacrifice wins out over our predilection for insubstantial entertainment.

As we have seen, Casablanca exists most explicitly as an utterly anomalous success story. Besides its recognized status as- in just uncountable ways- the apogee of the Classical Hollywood house style it does not at first seem to amend, let alone revolutionise, the presiding grammar of its presentational conventions. Yet neither is it simply the cream of the 40’s Hollywood crop.4 What this essay has aimed to convey is that in certain (almost literally) unforgettable moments, the film quite self- consciously goes above and beyond the storytelling call of duty so that as an audience we don’t just forget we’re watching a movie, we even forget that the cathartic moments of the movie are actually occurring to other people. A series of ever-so- slight instances of indulgence in the respective systems of cinematic time and space at the minimal expense of story (the lingering of close-ups in the La Marseillaise scene,

4. I now just regret that I could not take the space in this essay to rhapsodize among a hallowed litany of film critics of the last 73 years over the particular never-repeated joys that Casablanca affords on every rewatch: from Bogie’s ever-more-accurate wit, to the timeless cool of almost every costume, to the inconspicuous professionalism of the technical backdrop as a whole.

the continued company of Rick and Renault at the airport finale) do just enough to attach us to the ‘cinematic reality’ of the film in its entirety. We keep coming back to Rick’s because there’s simply never been a more entertaining hangout in the history of Cinema.

Word Count: 2612

Reference List:

Bordwell, David & Staiger, Janet & Thompson, Kristin. 1985. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge.

Mckee, Robert. 1997. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting. New York: HarperCollins.

Thomson, David. 2008. ‘Have You Seen…?’: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films. Great Britain: Allen Lane.