On which hit list does Casablanca belong?

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 2005)

The world's Number One movie, shown almost nightly on US cable TV, stands wildly at odds with current US policy.
Casablanca was greeted by fanfares and eulogies when it was launched in 1942, and it has been praised to the skies ever since, with all the fat movie encyclopedias rating it either Number One, or in the top five movies of all time.
How are we to view this picture now, as it gets played almost nightly on the US/Canada cable TV channels, and as the US war machine goes pointlessly berserk in Iraq, commanded by a man of no known military worth? Firstly, Casablanca was about the absurdity of standing aside in World War Two, which is exactly what the USA was doing when the film was prepared and made. The film's schizophrenic hero, Rick/Richard, is profoundly corrupted by his offshore, semi-detached posture (read: American neutrality), which contrasts sharply with his previous committed left-wing adventures (read: the New Deal).
His bitter non-involvement has been induced during the panic of the invasion of France, when instead of joining the resistance he had a rash fling with an emigree half his age. He was happy to stick his neck into her, but after the coitus getting interruptus, he is holed up in a huff in Morocco, no longer willing to stick his neck into politics.
Our heroine is no less corrupted by detachment, because it was her husband's absence, locked up in some concentration camp, that led to the affair, his instruction to keep the marriage a secret for her own security that led to the consummation, and his being holed up outside Paris after escaping, that led her to go to his side, thereby abandoning "Richard".
In addition to the unhitched position of the two leading characters, the ending of Casablanca further drives home the message that Rick/Richard is not willing to commit, either to Ilsa or the war, as he slips away with the cock-hatted Casablanca police chief to a safe hole in Brazzaville where they can drink themselves to death. Even Ilsa and Viktor are heading into exile in brightly-lit New York.
So, America's favourite film is all about neutrality and not sticking your neck into other peoples' wars, although you are willing to give a leg up to the good guys as long as it does not cost you. This is bizarrely at odds with the USA's current imperialistic posture of pre-emptive war and proactive engagement overseas. Why does Casablanca still play so big on all channels? The only positive character fully engaged in the war, Viktor Laszlo, is a loving husband and practising idealist, but he is also an insurgent leader bent on bringing down the occupying authorities across Europe. Today, Laszlo's face would be on one of the USA's notorious hit-list playing-cards. He would probably have $25m on his head, offering the Ricks of this world a fabulous opportunity for sour treachery.
Second, Casablanca has at its heart a major investment in wild and fulfilling extramarital sex. This is hardly a topic that promises to bewitch Jesusland and the Monica baiters.
With many marriages broken by war, such overwrought romances were reportedly widespread, but the scriptwriters carefully contrived Ilsa's position so that she was as guilt-free as possible while parting her legs and allowing intro-mission. Mitigating circumstance: the husband had been removed by force majeure for the best part of a year, time enough for the loinal urges awakened by a happy wedding night to make their legitimate physical demands on the wife.
Furthermore, Paris was about to fall, an in-extremis situation tailor-made for frantic fornicating all round. Plus Richard, dressed by matrimonially-inclined wardrobe for a wedding, is another idealist who has smuggled arms to Ethiopia (against the Mussoliniites there) and fought with the Loyalists in Spain. Why, he probably drinks with Picasso in Pigalle, where the lovebirds are shown swilling bubbly. Above all, Richard's subservient comrade is an African American jazz musician in whom Ilsa has a fall-back position that hints at yet darker urges.
Interracial sex, seduction, fornication, pornography ("Here's looking at ya, babe!"), the only sins overtly missing here are buggery and abortion but we feel that, with his underground contacts, Richard/Rick would have no problem procuring either.
Does this seething id-nest at the heart of the film prevent it from being family entertainment? Of course not, because Rick heartily endorses marriage in the denouement, when he tricks the police at gunpoint into allowing that marriage of political and sexual ideals, Viktor and Ilsa, on to a plane to Lisbon.
But this sudden lapse into huge decency has a hidden motive. With the marrieds out of the picture, Rick is free to head off into a Buddy-bonding road movie with the chief of police, far from all wars, preemptive or otherwise. Instead of imposing freedom, these two rogues would rather practise it.
It's high time the pundits of America's corporate media removed Casablanca from the Top Five and put it on the hit list instead.