Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) Of all the films in all the film-houses in all the world...I've never written a review of Casablanca.

At least, I've seen it (only about a million times). A recent story on NPR's "Weekend Edition" had host Scott Simon interviewing a fellow who'd just gotten around to seeing the 1942 film for the first time (evidently that's what constitutes "news" these days). It reminded me of the time, my buddy-in-Bond, Frank, proudly announced that he had finally watched Casablanca (was it at the premiere of Skyfall or Spectre?) I think I asked him what he thought of it after congratulating him and I recall he said "Great!" (or something like that). 

It did, after all, win The Best Picture Oscar of 1944.

I've never written a review of Casablanca—not here or on any previous movie blog. Oh, there was the five-part series of "Don't Make a Scene" entries centered around what other character's think of Humphrey Bogart's character (under the collective title of "Deconstructing Rick") and that said a lot. There's no formal review of the film Casablanca, however, anywhere. It doesn't even show up as one of my "Anytime Movies"—those that I can watch anytime and have the power to keep me to the end, fascinated, over and over. Again, that series is most interesting to me for what's NOT on it than for what's on it.

And Casablanca isn't there.

Casablanca is legendary, because it should NOT have "worked." Production was a mess. Bogart got the role because George Raft and Ronald Reagan didn't play it. Ingrid Bergman was an unknown. Paul Heinreid had more audience appeal. The actors frequently didn't know "why" they were playing the scenes they were playing and were not sure how it would "end" (it's a rather brilliant strategy to not have the actors betray any fore-knowledge lest the audience catch on, but...really, they were still working on the script). It is not a movie of strong "auteur" sensibilities—but its Hungarian director, Michael Curtiz, manages to fill every frame to bursting and his filming strategies have been copied in the decades since, probably as much for nostalgic recognition factor as for the fact that the strategies are so...apt. It was based on a play that flopped, but it was cobbled together by two twin-brother writers and the estimable Howard Koch into a crazy quilt of conflicts and various sides.

Director Michael Curtiz told Bogart to nod, but didn't tell him what he was nodding for or at.
It's to cue the band to play "La Marsellies," an emotional high-point in the film,
and the first instance of Bogart resisting his urge to "stick my neck out for nobody."

And great lines. Quotable lines. Lines so memorable that they're mis-remembered:  "Play it, Sam." (NOT "play it again, Sam") "Here's looking at you, kid." "I am shocked, SHOCKED to find out that GAMBLING is going on in this facility." "I don't mind a parasite, I object to a cut-rate one." "I was misinformed." "Be careful! There are vultures, VULTURES everywhere." "I remember every detail—the Germans wore gray. You wore blue." "I'm going to die in Casablanca, it's a good spot for it." "We mustn't underestimate 'American blundering.' I was with them when they 'blundered' into Berlin in 1918." "I stick my neck out for nobody." "It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles." "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." "Go ahead and shoot. You'll be doing me a favor." "Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try and invade." "And remember this gun is pointed right at your heart"--"That's my least vulnerable spot." "You'll get along beautifully in America." "Well, that's the way it goes—one in and one out." "Of all the gin-joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." "I'm no good at being noble." "The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." "We'll always have Paris." And the line that the Epstein brothers realized simultaneously in the middle of L.A. traffic would solve all their script problems: "Round up the usual suspects."

It's a film that exudes the exotic even though it was filmed in Burbank, on Warner stages combined with matte shots (like the one above--see any waves in that ocean?) filling in the details. Other legerdemain done on the cheap complete the picture; the scene below has the actors performing in front of a screen back-projected with model airplanes to improve the scope. It's something they did in the finale at an airport, where to give the proper distance they had model planes attended to by "little people," and lots of fog to increase the illusion.

They could get away with it because Curtiz directed and edited fast and the audience was concentrating on a convoluted plot with equal parts conflicted romance and cloak-and-luger politics played out by a terrific cast of Warner contract players and a new fresh-faced import from Sweden named Ingrid Bergman. Everything resonated. Women liked it...even though Bogart was hardly considered a romantic lead...until then. Men liked it...even if things didn't turn out by the dictates of billing.

And, it's hardly a glamorous story: an ex-pat American, Richard Blaine, is running a saloon in Casablanca where booze flows freely, the gambling is questionable and all the authorities are paid off; Rick's Cafe Americain is a going concern because it is a black market hide-out in a desperate city and its owner, Richard—call him "Rick" (but everybody calls him something different*)—keeps a surly dispassionate view on things. But, don't approach him unless you're working for him. He doesn't drink with the guests, he doesn't fraternize, he sits in lordly isolation at a table against the wall playing chess against himself and keeping an eye out for the glance directed his way by an employee looking for direction. Then, he simply nods and that's the last word. He doesn't get involved in the deals, in the tables, nothing. He keeps things orderly, but for the under-the-table dealings going on in the saloon he has one comeback: "I stick my neck out for nobody." 

On this particular day, there are rumors and desperation flying around: two German couriers who have "letters of transit" out of Morocco to Lisbon, gateway "to the Americas," have been found murdered, their much-sought-after documents missing. They mean freedom for anyone seeking asylum, but the police are stymied, doing what they normally do when they have no other option—"round up the usual suspects." Roust some people to intimidate and see what you can scare out of them. Under pressure from the Nazi's, their interest is in both the murderer and in the papers; but, the letters are in safe-keeping in the one place they don't suspect—hidden in the piano at the Cafe American, hiding in plain sight, Rick's non-commitment being their best camouflage.

But, even a Rick Blaine has his limits. As the original play-title says "Everybody Comes to Rick's" and that includes one particularly prominent (too prominent) Czech partisan named Victor Laszlo (Heinreid). Rick would only have a dispassionate on-looker's interest in Laszlo's struggles to evade Nazi capture, if not for one key element, one a burden that he will not neglect: he has a wife Ilsa Lund (a radiant Bergman).

Both Laszlo and Lund are unfamiliar travelers to Casablanca, but it is Ilsa who arrives at Rick's with extra baggage. She recognizes Sam (Dooley Wilson)—whom she refers to as as "the boy," the only hint of racial inequity in the film—the piano player, and where Sam is, Rick can't be too far away. It's obvious that Ilsa and Rick (and Sam) have a shared past, and he is determined to keep Rick from Ilsa. But, a song request brings on Rick, charging on Sam like a bull, with an accusation of...well, betrayal. But, that protest is cut short when a larger betrayal is brought to mind when he notices Ilsa, and he realizes he was pulled by a siren song, whose first line ("You must remember this...") is both a promise and a curse.

For probably his first time in Casablanca, things get personal for him, and he is pulled into a series of complex triangulations that he is uncomfortable with—triangulations of loyalty and partisanship that he has avoided since coming to the Moroccan city at the edge of freedom and despair. He finds himself just another fish in a small pond.

Rick recovers well, but he spends that eventful evening in an indulgent, sodden reverie (which we see, conveniently, in flashback) over a bottle (or five) in which he reaches the depths of his own personal despair, and for the rest of the movie, he conducts an inner battle with himself and his character, walking the maze of morality while trying to betray...nothing.

The character of Rick is a cypher—to the audience as well as the characters surrounding him in the movie, whether strangers or intimates. He is the big mystery in Casablanca, a man with no past (and professing no future), who must deal when confronted with it, and whose best weapon is his own veneer of inscrutability, walking among the powerful and the weak, with equal contempt showing for both. He is the puzzle at the center of Casablanca, the mystery that cannot be solved...except by himself.

So, why has Casablanca lasted so long? It has been 75 years.

Perhaps it has survived because it lays out a  landscape familiar to us as we shuffle through life—a morally indifferent cesspool where "life is cheap" and everything is expensively out of reach. The only thing worth less is one's word—loyalties are betrayed, women are not only not respected but treated like disposable playthings, authority is corrupt (quite happily and never apologetically), and where even a high-roller like Richard Blaine can stare at the business end of a gun and come to say "Go ahead and shoot, you'll be doing me a favor," but it's the best that one can do when one has been pushed to the water's edge by the Nazi's, and who do all of these things and worse, and have all the charm of a rubber stamp...and all of the conscience.

In such an atmosphere, an air of nihilism abides, irony substitutes for humor, sarcasm for philosophy, cynicism instead of the naive impulse of positivism or faith. All of that abounds in the film, which exudes sophistication and entertainment value with vast displays of all of it in witty, pointed  rejoinders...but no one laughs. No one dares to. It's a comedy for people with withered hearts.

So, that takes care of the sophisticates (poor, wretched souls!). But, where does that leave the rest of us? Why does Casablanca survive in our minds...and in our hearts?

I would contend that it presents us a fable, a choice that we can live with and hope with. It is because, despite desperation, despite the hopelessness, it shows us, in the most romantic of terms, that—even in that landscape—an instance of nobility—of conscience—is a candle in the darkness and that is heartening (whether it's in the middle of WWII or the Trump Administration). Cities may crumble, all may seem lost, but one act by one lone angel of mercy can dissipate the fog and make it clear again. It may take generosity, it may take courage, it may take inspiration or love, but, whatever it takes, the noble effort is still the best way to fight the ordinary tendency of sloth or indifference. March on. You must remember this.

 

So, it has been 75 years. We will always have Casablanca. The fundamental things still do apply...as time has gone by.

The last of the Casablanca principles to pass on:
Madelein Lebeau, who played Yvonne ("Because, 'Ewonne'...I luff you")
the saloon girl of divided loyalties, who also has her own reckoning.
I've always loved the sauciness of Captain Renault's rude
remark of her: "In her own way, she may constitute a third front!"
She died May of last year at the age of 92. Vive la France!

Casablanca through the years

*That's a telling little detail hidden in the screenplay's infrastructure (and part of the point I was making in "Deconstructing Rick") everybody sees him differently and so all call him something different. He owns, and is central to, "Cafe Rick" so mostly people call him "Rick." But, to Renault, he's "Ricky." To the staff, and most importantly, to Sam, he's "Boss." To the Nazi's, he's "Monsieur Rick" but to Victor Laszlo, he's "Monsieur Blaine." Ilsa calls him something nobody else in the movie does. To her, he's "Richard."

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974) There's a new version of Agatha Christie's "bottle mystery"* coming at the end of the year (directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh). I'm not sure why it's necessary as it was remade in an excellent version of the British television series featuring David Suchet in his long-running portrayal (24 years) of Christie's eccentric Belgian detective with the extremely effective "little grey cells." 

We'll discuss that very interesting version a little later. For now, we'll turn our attention to the all-star version produced by EMI and distributed in the U.S. by Paramount, with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot. Producers John Brabourne and Richard B. Goodwin wanted to "pull out all the stops" on the production just to get the film rights from Dame Christie, who was still alive at the time and had expressed that, after the Miss Marple movies of the 1960's starring Margaret Rutherford, she was "allergic" to filmed adaptations and clutched her film-rights to her like a precious jade statue. The two producers enlisted Brabourne's father-in-law, Lord Mountbatten, to reassure Christie of the producers' elevated intentions and she gave her guarded approval.**

Sidney Lumet was hired to direct—he was acknowledged to be a "tasteful" director, one who could supervise good performances out of most actors, and he'd recently had success with Serpico—and he began the process of casting, first hiring Sean Connery (with whom he'd worked often and whom Connery had hand-picked for movies he had some creative control over) in order to attract other A-listers, who, with Connery's presence, flocked like seagulls. Lumet had fond memories of making Orient—he centers most of the anecdotes in his book "Making Movies" around that production and how smooth it was. Lumet focused on "elegance" hiring cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, production and costume designer Tony Walton, and to touch up Paul Dehn's script, playwright Anthony Schaffer—who went uncredited. 

There are some movies that can only be described as a "souffle" and Murder on the Orient Express is one of those. Hercule Poirot (Finney) must catch the Orient Express at the last minute, but his conductor-friend Bianchi (Martin Balsam) manages to find a room for him in coach when a Mr. Harris fails to appear. Because the Express is unusually crowded for the time of year, Poirot is grateful for the consideration and settles in for a pleasant trip. The passengers are a mix of the rich—the Princess Dragomiroff (Wendy Hiller), the Count and Countess Andrenyi (Michael York and Jacqueline Bisset)—the nouveu riche—actress Harriett Belinda Hubbard (Lauren Bacall) and Col. John Arbuthnot (Connery)—and the humble—missionary Greta Ohlsson (Ingrid Bergman), governess Mary Debenham (Vanessa Redgrave) and servants McQueen (Anthony Perkins) and Beddoes (John Gielgud),*** in the employ of an uncouth American businessman Samuel Rathcett (Richard Widmark).

Ratchett strong-arms Poirot into dinner to ask for his protection—he believes his life to be in danger and that he might be murdered on the train. As Poirot happenstantially is in the room next to his, the detective thinks it highly unlikely, and retires to his cabin, where he has a restless night punctuated by a scream, Mrs. Hubbard complaining about a stranger in her room, and a mysterious woman in a red kimono. Oh yeah, and the train has come to a stop due to an impassable snow-drift. 

It turns out Ratchett is not only uncouth, but rather psychic, as well. In the morning, he is discovered in his locked and chained compartment—the window open—dead from multiple stab-wounds, by his servant Beddoes and secretary McQueen. Now, I'm no detective, but I've seen lots of movies, so seeing as how the secretary is played by Anthony Perkins and the victim died of multiple stab-rooms, it makes him the most likely cinematic culprit—especially given the mysterious woman in the red kimono.

Clues start to appear that Poirot tracks like a pig hunting truffles. He interviews all the passengers on the train, who react in varying degrees between timidity and righteous indignation and the train's kitchen seems to be having a run of red herring. What's an Agatha Christie detective to do?

Why, pull everybody into the dining car and start a spirited game of musical murder motives that touches on every single passenger sweating in the dining car, intercut with highlights from the interviews that Lumet now has in one of his more obvious tropes—the flash-backs now occur in his trademark wide-angle lens close-up's distorting the faces into disturbing emphasis****—as if the cut-aways themselves weren't enough to make us pay attention to them. If you watch enough Lumet, you can tell when he wants you to really notice something—by bending the world into unfamiliarity. It's as subtle as being hit with a hammer.

Murder on the Orient Express is unique in the Christie mysteries—the detective comes up with two possible solutions to the murder and must decide which of the alternatives to present to the authorities. It is a case of literally choosing the lesser of two evils—now, that would have been a hell of a title—and Poirot must weigh the consequences of the morality of his choice—one of the few instances where Poirot feels himself morally compromised and must live with his conscience for his choices. The only other time that happened was his last case, "Curtain."

But, not so much here. Lumet and Dehn and Schaffer are having such a grand ol' time, such moral ambiguity never comes up, only a sense of self-satisfaction in an extended curtain call of sorts (Vanessa Redgrave even winks sassily!) all to a frothy, jaunty Richard Rodney Bennett score that sound like it would be a good accompaniment to a Victorian ferris wheel.

And that's the problem. Lumet's first choice as a composer was one of the great film-music masters, Bernard Herrmann. Lumet expressed interest in him creating something fun and opulent after Herrmann screened the film and Herrmann became apoplectic. "That train," he roared "is a train of DEATH!" 

And just so. It doesn't matter how much you gussy up a corpse, it's still rotten. Herrmann, who had scored many a murder—and much passion—in his career (and who would close out his career, and life, scoring Taxi Driver) could not and would not put music celebrating getting away with murder. But, Lumet, who excelled at details but could miscalculate spectacularly in The Big Picture, just didn't see it. He—and the producers—wanted an all-star romp. And that's just wrong. Evil, even under the guise of self-righteousness, even when practiced in the most opulent of board-rooms and Presidential Suites, is not a parlour game. It is what makes Christie's work—emanating from such a source as she—is so perverse.

I much prefer the 2010 ITV production starring David Suchet as Poirot, which is darker, grittier, and less concerned with glitz and star power—despite a meticulous production design and a cast that includes Eileen Atkins, Barbara Hershey, Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Chastain, David Morrissey and Toby Jones. In a darkened Orient Express—power has gone out on the snow-trapped train—the suspects huddle in the dark and tensions are high. It is also mentioned (with Christie's inherent class-prejudice) that such a polyglot of like-minded people could only emanate in the melting pot of America. Suchet's Poirot is far more conflicted, and the last shot is of the detective walking away from the scene of the crime, his eyes tearing from the cold, maybe, but probably for the same reason he clutches a rosary in the fervent hope of forgiveness.

So, again...Kenneth Branagh is doing a new version to be released in November of this year, and one can only speculate where it falls on the morality question, as it is written by Michael Green who's had a hand in the scripts for Green Lantern, Logan, Alien: Covenant and Blade Runner 2049. It's hard to say, but it will probably depend on whether it's written by one hand...or by committee.

* "Bottle mystery" because the setting is restricted to the train—the many suspects contained in a single space from which they cannot escape, the fabled Orient Express. Christie's story was published in the U.S. under the title "Murder in the Calais Coach" to avoid confusion with a Graham Greene book that, itself, had its title changed for the American market.

** She quite enjoyed the film with one caveat—as much as she enjoyed Finney as Poirot, she didn't like his mustache.

*** There are also character actors Colin Blakely, Rachel Roberts, Denis Quilley, and George Coulouris (of The Mercury Theater). As the jokes goes: "Any names?"

**** Examples of Lumet's technique—initial and flashback: Wendy Hiller and Sean Connery.