From a Stage Play

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2004)

"Casablanca" is everyone's favorite film when they say 'Of course, it's not a great work of cinema, but...' No, it is not, but it is a great textbook on how to make a film that is successful from one medium to another: stage to screen.
The camera is so fluid that we do not realize that for most of the action we are in one set. The cutting is good and unobtrusive. We are watching a play with two cafes, an airport tarmac and some flashbacks. At no time do we feel claustrophobic.
This film, this movie is not really about WWII or its love story or even North Africa but it is definitely about Hollywood and the refugees who came to act and live there from Europe, along with the Americans who were already there and how the studio system worked. Some of the actors played major roles in great works of film abroad by major cinema artists and now are reduced to medium featured or small but telling supporting roles, and others, like Bogart, fought their way up through a series of type casting roles to become major actors and icons of American culture: the commentator on American life. Ingrid Bergman is enigmatic and opaque; we know no more about her at the end than at the beginning but we do know considerably more about Humphrey Bogart. She is Continental Europe and he is America. Claude Rains, as the Englishman,playing a Frenchman, is the mediator between the two countries and has some of the best movie lines of his career. Paul Henried, as the almost unbelievably understanding and detached underground resistance hero is not so much a person but an emotion, the voice of the oppressed and is also enigmatic. Many, many actors of the period can be seen in quick flashes; the film is great fun to watch.
And is also very well written with some memorable dialogue. Howard Koch was to write a book with a similar theme, the clash of cultures and getting out of a tight place on the verge of exploding that was made into an excellent film in 1984, "The Year of Living Dangerously",by Peter Wier, about journalists waiting it out in the Far East.
For a picture of Hollywood and the United States during WWII as filtered through for the running time of the film, a part of America stands still for its portrait in "Casablanca."