In Casablanca, people are beautiful!

«People are beautiful,» a friend of mine sometimes likes to say. That was my first impression of Michael Curtiz's film. Men and women of character, suits, coats, long dresses and beautiful blouses, traditional clothes and old cars bring back the charm of a world that no longer exists. And perhaps never did...

Typically perfect

Unsurprisingly, we're in Casablanca, Morocco, during the Second World War. The city, under Vichy control, is an obligatory passage for European refugees trying to reach the United States, and as a result, it is the scene of a great intermingling of populations. Soldiers, Nazi officers, French forces of order, local populations, colonial populations, emigrants, Resistance fighters, refugees, etc. are all to be found there. Almost the entire story takes place in the Rick's Café Américain - a bar popular with paper smugglers, where Rick Blaine, the main character, is the owner.

One day, Ugarte, a low-level delinquent, arrives at the Rick's Café in possession of stolen safe-conducts which he is to sell to Victor Laszlo - a member of the resistance - and his wife, Ilsa Lund. The police, having been alerted, manage to arrest him, but do not find the documents that Ugarte, sensing his arrest, had given to Rick. What's more, we learn that Rick and Ilsa know each other. They met and fell in love in Paris some time ago. A love triangle against a backdrop of moral dilemma: all the elements of a romantic drama.

As Umberto Eco rightly said about CasablancaWhen all the archetypes are unleashed with no sense of decency, the depths are Homeric. Two clichés make you laugh. A hundred clichés move.« The Italian writer has put his finger on one of the major strengths of Curtiz's film: its masterful play on clichés. The screenplay proceeds by typification: each character embodies his or her role to the very end, with all the characteristics that go with it. Not to mention the great actors behind these masterful characters. Alongside the charismatic Humphrey Bogart as Rick and Paul Henreid as Laszlo, the bewitching Ingrid Bergman will leave no one indifferent.

Love versus virtue

While the film is obviously «romantic», it's not so much feelings as such that are at the heart of the plot, as Rick's moral dilemma. Will he decide in favor of his feelings, jeopardizing the cause of the resistance, or will he renounce his love for Ilsa, allowing Laszlo to escape with his wife? The question is a delicate one. In the film, it's a matter of Rick's choice, but it's one that the screenwriters had to decide for themselves.. The latter dithered long and hard between the two possibilities. Aljean Harmetz explains in his book The making of Casablanca,that the question was finally decided by the Hays code - American film production code - which forbade adultery to be shown on screen. So Rick sacrifices himself and Laszlo leaves with Ilsa.

Casablanca, far from being «a long story of female humiliation» - as Abnousse Shalmani writes - will speak to the most nostalgic among us, to those who know how to let themselves be touched by what is «beautiful», by what lives, instead of sticking to it with a sad moralizing judgment tinged with self-righteousness. And finally, Casablanca will join those who still dare to love beautiful women, men in suits and ties, the trench coats, For those who know how to revel in magnificent black-and-white images. From another time... but eternal.

Write to the author: antoine.bernhard@leregardlibre.com

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