Casablanca
Cinestudio
Hartford
Through Feb. 15, 2024
I’d heard about Casablanca so many times. I’ve seen all the references and parodies, but never the movie itself. When I saw that Cinestudio at Trinity College was showing it for a special three-day Valentine’s Day engagement, I figured this would be one of the few opportunities I’d have to see it on the big screen finally. But I thought to myself, “Why are they playing a World War II epic for Valentine’s Day?”
Suffice to say, I knew almost nothing about what the movie was actually about.
For those who have been living under the same cinematic rock as me, Casablanca tells the story of a love triangle among Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart) Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). In the film, set during World War II, Blaine must decide how deep his love for Ilsa goes, even as the world crashes around them.
I don’t want to say too much more than that, because this is a movie that must be seen. The 1940s and the Golden Age of films are usually cast as an era of manliness and strength that some people always look back to. “If only we could return to THOSE days,” they say. Yet Casablanca paints a picture of tenderness, longing and heartache that jump off the screen and grab the viewer by the throat.
In a movie that has more than its fair share of classic lines, none stood out to me more than when Blaine talks to his drink and says, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world … she walks into mine.” Watching Bogart’s eyes water as he recalls their last happy days together moved me in a way that I wasn’t prepared for.
And speaking of endings, I can’t say enough good things about Casablanca’s final scene between Ilsa and Rick. One of the greatest accomplishments of any story is to properly pull off a sad ending. The hero getting the girl in the end has been beaten into all of us so regularly that it seems like a forgone conclusion, especially as Casablanca winds through its plot. But that wouldn’t have been true to Rick Blaine or Ilsa Lund, two characters who have always placed devotion and duty above their own desires.
Yet sad endings can feel contrived, like a cheap way to elicit emotions from an audience, whether it’s shock, disappointment, or even anger. Where Casablanca triumphs is that it lets Bogart and Bergman carry those emotions for the entirety of the movie. When Rick tells Ilsa to get onto the plane, I felt sadness and regret for the love that was lost. But I also felt catharsis at the sacrifice they were both making to do the right thing. The ending was inevitable, but that didn’t make it any less gut-wrenching.
Casablanca is unfortunately a timely movie given our current political moment. While we’re not battling Nazis in the deserts of North Africa, we are dealing with a resurgence of white supremacist hatred across the United States, including here at home. To step outside of the love story for a moment, the courage that so many characters showed throughout the film, from lowly thieves to heroic resistance fighters, should stand as a clear example for how we should handle these dark forces trying to make their resurgence now. Casablanca is a timeless movie for multiple reasons, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you should.
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Casablanca runs at Cinestudios through Thursday, Feb. 15th.
Jamil hits the art galleries to take in some visual splendor.
