Casablanca
Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé. Throw that Vichy water in the trash where it belongs. Even a propagandist is correct once in while.
Hold up 80 years later. If anything it’s even more topical, there are so many Nazis walking around freely, wearing their uniforms, and singing their songs. Play “La Marseillaise”, play it!
Technically, it’s a film of its time, with minor chiaroscuro lighting trickery, and a lot of greased lenses. Endlessly ripped off, but mostly on comedic pastiches. It is extremely hard to reference this in a serious way without falling flat.
The story is eternally retold:
- man is a mysterious guy with a nebulous past of gun-running in Ethiopia against fascist Italy, and defending the elected government of Spain against foreign-backed rebels
- man and girl meet cute in Paris, the city of love
- girl fails to mention his husband was murdered by Nazi scum, their relationship was secret and he was some resistance big wig
- Nazi scum is about to take over Paris, so man and girl plan to get away in the last train
- girl disappears and man’s will is broken, is carried to the train by his stereotypical manservant/virtuoso pianist
- man has other nebulous adventures and ends up in Casablanca running a big bar/gambling den with his name in large neon lights
- weird dude shoots two german couriers and gets two letters of transit, deposit in man’s possession for safekeeping
- weird dude gets shot by Nazi-adjacent scum, right in front of Pétain’s big poster
- girl escapes Nazi scum with her original husband, and ends up in Casablanca without visas to escape to America via Lisbon
- man is still heartbroken the girl stood him up, so pouts for a while
- Nazi-scum notice they don’t like their kind there and want to bust the girl’s husband for political gains
- Nazi scum or weak willed slimeballs control the underworld and won’t help the couple, not even for 300 thousand francs in cash
- man talks with girl a bit more and accepts her story, even thought they both still have the hots for each other
- man gives the letters of transit to the couple in the nick of time, tricking the girl into thinking the man is the one on the plane
- Nazi scum gets there in the nick of time, but man shoots the Gestapo bigshot in the chest, fuck da police!
- chief of police keeps his mouth shut and ships man into some other location
The café has motley crew of employees: a Russian bartender, a German maître d’, a French girl taking men to drink there (who hangs out with the boss even). The main pianist is African American and the solo guitar player is Spanish.
Rick has a soft spot for the underdog: the roulette is fixed and the croupier apologises very much for some guy winning 20 thousand francs.
This also allows for his best underhand dig at Renault, with the young Bulgarian couple. The couple appears in the background throughout the film, trying to get out of Casablanca. They don’t have much money for bribes, but Renault has an indecent proposal for the nubile girl, and she goes to Rick to ask if he keeps his word. She won’t betray her husband for nothing. But Rick arranges for the husband to bet all their money on the roulette on 22, twice, so they have enough money for the bribe. Renault is pissed his rape opportunity is denied, but takes it in stride.
Ironically, the Bulgarian girl is played by Jack Warner’s niece of something, talk about nepo babies.
There is still time for jokes. A elderly German couple emigrating to the US will only speak English, so they say:
- Liebchen, what watch?
- 10 watch
- such much!
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.