Casablanca

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Kristi M. Wilson

According to critic Umberto Eco, writing in "Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage," Casablanca can also be seen as a cult object. As such, it possesses the following qualities: it provides its audience with a completed vision of the world which fans can incorporate into their own world; using quotes and trivia from the film as a form of shared expertise, the narrative can be dislocated so that one need only remember a part of it, regardless of its original relationship to the whole film; and the film displays a variety of ideas and does not contain a central philosophy of composition. The cult paradigm revolves around near worship of Bogart's masculinity and patriarchal discourse and the repitition of key moments in the film's narrative. Casablanca diehards, for example, have elevated the status of the song "As Time Goes By," a song which references the romantic relationship between Rick and Ilsa, at the expense of other important songs, like "La Marseillais." What Casablanca possesses, Eco argues, is a heavy amount of archetypal appeal which creates a feeling of déjà vu, drawing audiences to the film again and again.

Regardless of how the movie is interpreted, stories of the movie's making continue to enthrall fans. According to Ingrid Bergman, for example, the movie's narrative was invented at the same time the movie was shot. Not even Curtiz knew whether Ilsa would end up with Rick or with Victor until far into the shoot. Because of this continual state of improvisation on the set, the scriptwriters conjured up any number of archetypal tropes and threw them into the plot. Some claim that this almost baroque overabundance of stock formulas is the secret to Casablanca's timeless success. Ingrid Bergman, known for her cleanly appearance and objection to wearing makeup, was universally liked on the set of Casablanca, by hairdressers and wardrobe people alike. She was patient, easy to work with, and did not demand privileges, though she was not given to forming lasting friendships with any of the people on the set. By contrast, Humphrey Bogart is said to have been obsessive about everything from his love scenes, to the script, to his own personal life. He has been called every name in the book, from "troublemaker" to a "real guy"; Warner Brothers publicist Ezra Goodman once called him "sadistic." Bogart is said to have been good friends with Claude Rains and Peter Lorre. Lorre and Bogart lived a few blocks from each other in the Hollywood Hills and worked together on two other Bogart movies, The Maltese Falcon (1941) and All Through the Night (1942).

Popular for nearly six decades, Casablanca has reverberated throughout American culture. Aside from numerous songs, book titles, comedy routines, commercials, and magazine advertisements that have made reference to the film over the years, in 1972, Woody Allen made his own tribute to Casablanca, entitled Play it Again Sam, in which he wore a trenchcoat like Rick Blaine and repeated the famous "Here's looking at you, kid" speech in the context of a narrative about sexual difficulties and masculinity. In this scenario, Casablanca was recreated as a cult object which references Bogart and his style of masculinity. Bogart's character is said to have sparked an onslaught on trench coat sales, and the image of him in the coat in the original Warner Brothers poster purportedly launched the movie poster business. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Casablanca was an important film on college campuses as cinema began to be viewed as a serious art form. In the 1970s, a string of Rick Blaine-styled bars and cafes began to appear in a variety of cities in the United States with names like Play It Again Sam (Las Vegas), Rick's Café Americain (Chicago), and Rick's Place (Cambridge, Massachusetts).