Freud and Lacan Vindicated

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2005)

Superb movie. There is no question about it. But why?
Little in the way of violence, sex, sfx.
Why so very, very famous? So quintessential, so replayed, again and again and again (Sam)?
This is a myth, an archetype, a riddle.
For my money this is Oedipus Rex. I like Freud, hell. Indeed it is better than Freud or Sophocles, but it is dealing with the same issue.
Dad: Lazlo
Mum: Ilsa
Son: Rick
The love triangle that repeats in our culture forever is played out perfectly in this movie.
Rick and Ilsa had the perfect relationship, before them Nazi's arrived.
Man and woman before the arrival of oppression, rules, the crunch. They lived, in the permanent idyllic past of Paris. A Paris always in spring. No need for anything there except love. Champagne every day. No promises.
But we, viewers, live in a real world. We need ideals. We may reject the signs, we may live in a Morocco of our dreams, but that only leads to an alcoholic, moratorium. Victor Lazlo bit the bullet. He is the man. The man that Rick has not, at the beginning of the movie, become.
Were it not for the ultimate hard boiled machismo of Humphrey Bogart, this film would have been unbearable. A drunken sop, hoping to take someone's, a hero's, wife? Yuck. But Humphrey does show us the dilemma. The unachievableness of bliss. Of going out with a yes saying, "okay anything goes", woman, other, mother.
So much for Freud. But what about Lacan? Jacques Lacan tells us another Oedipal story via Edgar Allen Poe's "purloined letter."
Personally I don't understand Lacan at all. But Casablanca is the story that makes me want to. Why does this drama center upon a stolen letter? Why does the letter have to reach is destination?
Where is the letter in my, our, life? What letter am I preventing from reaching its destination?
Watch this movie many times! The answer is here!