THE SOURCE OF INSPIRATION

SENTIMENTALITY REVISITED – LOOKING AT A TIMELESS CLASSIC

The twin issues of entertainment and sentimentality have always been at the core of the best of films. Film-goers are always attracted to them for they are almost like basic instincts. Casablanca, released in 1942, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, is no exception.
The origin of this eternally popular film was quite different. A high school teacher named Murray Burnett co-authored a play named Everybody Comes to Rick’s with Joan Allison in 1940.The USA had not entered World War II when it was written but when director Michael Curtiz bought the rights at a measly figure, turned to the Epsteins to write the screenplay and direct film, the USA had sided with the Allies and had emerged as a key player in the Allies’ invasion of North Africa in 1942.
The stage had been set to release the film and on 26th November, 1942, Casablanca hit the theatres with ‘Bogey’ playing the suave Rick Blaine, owner of Rick’s Café Americain. The place: Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city with a strategic location. Rick was an American expatriate who ‘sticks his head out for nobody’ and appeared to be the cold, unemotional, distant and utterly neutral owner of the best gambling den in town. Beneath that veneer, there was a vulnerable, sentimental person who had been betrayed in love. Ilsa Lund, played to perfection by Ingrid Bergman, appeared on the scene, rather ‘walks into mine’, as Blaine put it, with her husband, Victor Lazlo, a patriotic Czech feared by the Nazis.
Casablanca had, by that time, fallen to the Germans, although a part of the city was still under French control. With Casablanca acting as the exit point, Lazlo needed that priceless permit to reach the safe shores of USA. Blaine was strife-torn. Here was a lady who had failed to accompany him from Paris, leaving behind a heart-breaking note on a rain-swept night and abruptly breaking off their affair. She had presumed that her husband had died when she had met and fallen in love with Rick in Paris only to discover him years later. And so, Lazlo was the winner, Blaine the loser in love.
As we have seen with films like From Here to Eternity and The Best Years of our Lives, the backdrop of WW II acts as the perfect setting for a romantic, sentimental drama. The action takes place in the minds of the protagonists. The beautiful Ilsa was loved by two men of totally different backgrounds. Rick was the only person capable of putting Lazlo on that flight to Europe on way to the USA. The ’silly sentimentalist’ in him was aroused. He managed to kill the German General Major Strasser and, at the same time, appreciate the presence of Lazlo in Ilsa’s life and vice-versa. He had a choice – of reuniting with Ilsa and sending Lazlo away to safety or sending both away. Heroically, Blaine chose the latter. As Major Strasser fell on the ground, lifeless, and a hunt was launched to ‘round up the usual suspects’, we were left teary-eyed and sympathetic to Rick. However, Casablanca would not have been half as memorable had the pain of parting with Rick saying ‘we will always have Paris’ not rankled us. A love story with a sad ending was the right recipe for a great movie. As we had seen throughout Gone With the wind, the Scarlett- Ashley- Rhett triangle had kept us enthralled, making us cry, Casablanca, too, was not about the reunion but about the invincibility of love.
A great many have failed to give director Michael Curtiz due credit for skillfully addressing complex issues with consummate ease. The war is one of them, Anti-Nazi spirit being the other. There are scenes arousing patriotism and the issue of people trapped in an alien land, behaving desperately, trying to flout the rules in order to escape has been nicely portrayed. The narrative is simple, the script stupendous. The one-liners are timeless. So are our memories of watching Casablanca over and over again. Love does not grow old ‘as time goes by.’

Partha Basu