CASABLANCA IS THE GREATEST ROMCOM EVER MADE
Casablanca a romcom? What are you outta your mind? It wasn’t written by Nora Ephron. Where’s Meg Ryan? At least give us Cary Grant. What kind of title is Casablanca for a romcom anyway? It should have been called Sleepless in Casablanca, When Rick Met Ilsa, Pretty Refugee or You’ve Got Letters of Transit.
You can make a case for Casablanca being the best of any kind of movie: action, adventure, thriller, espionage or war movie, but it has an undeniably romantic heart (Inspector Renault’s least vulnerable spot). It is a love story. A love story so noble the lovers part for the greater good. Rick and Ilsa, played by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, are also widely acknowledged as iconic celluloid lovers. Their story is one of the great screen romances.
Casablanca works as a comedy, there are so many funny lines and gags, and it’s a love story. Hence, it’s a romantic comedy. And, as it’s in the top three movies of all time (and because Gone With the Wind doesn’t work as a comedy), it is the best romcom ever made. The film also inspired so many romantic comedies, from Play It Again Sam to Goodbye Girl.
Don’t take my word for it, Billy Crystal, as Harry in When Harry Met Sally asks “You’re telling me that you’d rather be the first lady of Czechoslovakia than end up with the man you’ve had the greatest sex of your life with, just because he owns a bar and that is all he does?” Sally, played by Meg Ryan, explains “Yes. Women are very practical. Which is why Ingrid Bergman gets on the plane at the end of the movie.”
If it’s good enough for When Harry Met Sally, the quintessential romantic comedy, it should be good enough for the rest of the romantic comedy-loving world. The film is obviously a romantic classic, with Bergman and Bogart being voted the second greatest on-screen couple of all time, but Casablanca is also funny. It’s got as many one-liners, double takes, innuendoes, even physical comedy as many films that are considered comic classics.
Those gag lines were written by twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, along with Howard Koch and an uncredited Casey Robinson. The producer, Hal Wallis wrote the final line, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” after the cast thought the movie wrapped. Bogart dubbed it in post-production.
Besides the hundreds of great lines by the comically gifted backing ensemble, the main cast are no slouches in the humor department. Rick has a barrelful of great rejoinders: Where were you last night? “That’s so long ago I don’t remember.” Where will you be tonight? “I don’t make plans that far in advance.” “Are my eyes really brown?” And he explains it all away like he was a regular W.C. Fields, “I’m a drunkard.”
Here’s Looking At You Kid
Comedy and tragedy all play out in the eyes. Bogart’s eyes get a silent punchline in my favorite gag in the picture. Inspector Renault is ordered to close Rick’s Café Americain by Major Strauser after the French National Anthem brings tears to the eyes of the occupied and rage to the underground. Renault parries with “but everyone is having such a good time.”
Renault has no excuse to close the place down. Ordered to find one, Renault instructs Rick that he is “Shocked. Shocked to find gambling” on the premises. You might think the punchline is when Renault is given his casino winnings, but watch Bogart’s eyes. The look he gives the croupier is all menace. He could take his head off with two fingers right there. It’s murder. That joke kills.
When Victor Laszlo hears the Nazis singing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” he conducts “La Marseillaise” with his eyes. Henreid does a lot with his eyes, but also his whole physical presence. He puts his shoulders, neck and jaw into it. When he’s asking Ilsa about Paris, he doesn’t want to know the truth. He loves her, really doesn’t judge her and is just looking for any excuse not to be destroyed. He knows, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. He would rather escape from Nazi concentration camps three more times. Oh and Bogart rubs it in Laszlo’s face too. “She pretended and I let her pretend,” heh heh. Rick is kind of the asshole rival romcom stereotype. While Laszlo says he loves Ilsa throughout the film, all Bogart can conjure is “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
Claude Rains and Dooley Wilson’s eyes perform comic ballet. Dooley, on the piano, is asked to play it yet again. Sam rolls his eyes, not as a friend who knows he’s milking heartache. But as a musician who is sick of a song. He’d replace the tip jar with a No Requests sign if Rick’s Place wasn’t too classy for tip jars.
Claude Rains’ eyes scream bonhomie. He’s got mischief in those eyes. They are always searching for the punchline. It doesn’t matter if he’s trying to get laid or giving the bad news of someone’s untimely demise (“We haven’t decided whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape”), his eyes are heat seeking humor missiles. You should see them in The Invisible Man.
Peter Lorre’s eyes go from sad sack to imp in a blink. I have always puzzled over exactly what Rick is telling Ugarte when he says he is “more impressed” with him. Bogart shoots darts, but he’s no friend of the couriers’. What does he care who gets General De Gaulle’s autograph? Before Bogart breaks down while drinking his troubles away to Sam’s piano, he equates Ugarte’s exit with Ilsa’s entrance. He was impressed with the cut rate parasite. Speaking of that scene, Bogart’s wordless scramble for an unasked question on his way to his drunken haze is one split second of acting genius. Genius I tells ya.
Ingrid Bergman’s eyes glisten and shine. It is through Ilsa Lund’s eyes that Humphrey Bogart became a romantic idol. For someone that beautiful to look at him with such longing was simply infectious. The world fell in love with him. Bergman plays it straight throughout, giving a confused and artistically ambiguous performance with just a touch of imp. Her prodding of the tune, the romantic icon “As Time Goes By,” starts all the mischief. Bergman’s eyes also give away, in the scene where the Germans are on their way into Paris, that she knows her husband is alive. When Rick says “we” must get away from the invading forces, Ilsa’s eyelids flutter subliminally, but it’s all the audience needs to see.
Peter Lorre and S.Z. Sakall are renowned for bugging the shit out of their fellow actors with improvisation. Vincent Price bemoaned Lorre’s on-the-spot rewrites of every script Roger Corman handed him. James Cagney came close to knocking Sakall’s teeth down his throat when the comic actor’s riffs left him two too many times behind the eight ball in Yankee Doodle Dandy. In Casablanca the actors both come out riffing eyes first.
S.Z. Sakall isn’t given a line after Rick is unmasked as a rank sentimentalist and whacks the waiter on the ass to get him to stop kissing him. Carl, the head waiter, is only supposed to stand there with the bar rag cleaning the same glass he’s been cleaning since the cameras started rolling. But no. He and Bogie continue the joke with their eyes. They don’t need lines. Two fine comic actors never do and never underestimate Humphrey Bogart as a comic actor.
The Usual Suspects
Anyone who doubts for one second that Casablanca is a comedy should watch Dooley Wilson’s hands when he’s at the piano. Here’s a guy who was widely acknowledged as a musician. Wilson was a singer who came up playing drums. He’s playing a guy who’s supposed to know his way around the ivories but he’s pounding that keyboard like he’s wearing oven mitts. The guy can lip-sync to the songs but his hands are playing bongos with catchers mitts and not even in rhythm. The whole band behind him is singing along on “Who’s Got Trouble.” They’re knocking that wood, in rhythm. But Dooley’s puppet fingers are wrapped tight and pulled by an unseen and hopefully unheard hand.
Maybe this only bothers me because I’m a musician. Maybe this is because no one making the movie thought people watching would pay that much attention. It can be explained away by saying that was the style back then, but if you watch John Garfield playing fiddle in Humoresque, you’d think he’d had Isaac Stern’s fingers grafted to his knuckles. Elliot Carpenter was the actual guy playing piano in Casablanca. Studio lore says Carpenter set up his piano stool off-camera but where Wilson could see him and mimic the playing. Either Carpenter was jiving Wilson or Wilson was giving a comic performance. Or maybe he was pissed he was just getting paid about $350 a week. Wallis considered changing the character Sam to a woman and thought about casting Hazel Scott or Ella Fitzgerald in the role.
There are also running gags, like the feud between Italian Captain Borelli and Inspector Renault’s aide or the forever horny Russian Sascha, played by Leonid Kinskey, cast because he drank with Bogart. Marcel Dalio as Emil the croupier is an understated comic gem of nervous energy. The pickpocket is quick on the witty draw, the vulture. Blue Parrot owner and head “of all illegal activities in Casablanca” Sydney Greenstreet is Lou Costello in search of an Abbott, constantly wanting to buy Rick’s Café Americain. He gives Rick the chance to make social commentary, like how the buying and selling of human beings doesn’t make for good business.
Conrad Veidt, who had been something of a sex symbol in early German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Desire, doesn’t play too much into comedy besides the “one sided” conversation line. But he gets a bit of physical comedy after he’s shot and falls with the never-ending telephone cord that never physically breaks.
I Stick My Neck Out For Nobody
Joseph Breen, from Hollywood’s Production Code Administration, had a vicarious hand in the screenplay. He streamlined the script of all sorts of nastiness. Hollywood’s prime censor didn’t like the parts where it was obvious that Captain Renault exchanged sex for exit visas or that Rick and Ilsa got down in Paris. Breen made the writers take out all direct references to sex. It also looks like the Hays Office cut a curse word from the screenplay. In the original shooting script, the first time Rick hears Sam playing “As Time Goes By,” Rick says “What the —— are you playing?”
Ilsa Lund never kisses her husband, only her lover. This might make sense to married couples, but most audience members going to a date movie are only there for the body heat. Victor Laszlo looks like he could be Ilsa’s father sometimes. Paul Henreid is actually about eight years younger than Humphrey Bogart. Henreid is just too much of an old country, missionary position European against Bogie’s yearning American. Rick looks like he’d nail Ilsa up against the wall.
All The Gin Joints
No actor other than Humphrey Bogart was ever seriously considered for the role of Rick Blaine. On Producer Hal Wallis’ advice, Warner Brothers bought the rights to the unproduced play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison on Dec. 27, 1941 for $20,000. On Valentine’s Day 1942, Wallis advised the brothers Warner to “please figure on Humphrey Bogart for Casablanca,” and on April 3, 1942, Jack Warner wrote a memo saying “Bogart is ideal for [Casablanca], and it is being written for him.”
There is a long-standing rumor that Bogart got the role of Richard Blaine after it was turned down by George Raft. It’s become stuff of Hollywood legend. Even Humphrey Bogart played into it, often thanking Raft for turning it down and making way for the former Maude Humphrey baby to make his ascension to the A-list. This, sadly, is simply not true. Raft has a reputation, as far as I can see, as having been one of the nicest guys in Tinseltown. Coming out of Hell’s Kitchen, driving stolen cars, he made friends with “friends of friends” and took care of his pals when they went out to the left coast. Actors, dancers, dames, gangsters and molls, Raft never had a bad word to say about anybody. Bogart, like Cagney, Robinson and a score of other New York actors, never forgot a true pal, so why wouldn’t he add to Raft’s legend by perpetuating the myth.
According to the book, Casablanca: Behind the Scenes by Harlan Lebo, Raft was never really up for the part. He lobbied for it. He called in Jack Warner’s help. Raft was a big star at the studio, just slipping from his peak. With his smoldering dark looks and tango-ready body, Casablanca would have put him back on top. Hal Wallis not only rejected Raft, who had been rejecting parts left and right waiting for the right role, he also told Warner that maybe the actor shouldn’t have that much power. Raft did indeed turn down roles in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, both taken with glee by Bogart.
There was also a rumor that Ronald Reagan was once cast as Rick. Also untrue, Reagan was never considered for any role in Casablanca, none. Not even as an extra in the cantina. None. It was all a stunt that Warner Brothers publicity people pulled on The Hollywood Reporter on Jan. 5, 1942, that Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan would co-star in Casablanca with Dennis Morgan. The story got picked up by newspapers across the country. It was only promotion for the Reagan/Sheridan movie King’s Row. Reagan couldn’t have done it anyway: Warner Brothers had been getting deferments for the Army Reserve second lieutenant for months and had to let him get called up to active duty when World War II broke out.
The Beginning of A Beautiful Friendship
Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains had to wear lifts so they wouldn’t look short next to Bergman, who was five foot 10 inches. While Ann Sheridan was only considered for the role of Ilsa for the purpose of the fake story, Wallis did think about using Hedy Lamarr for the role of the torn lover. Lamarr was under contract to MGM, who wouldn’t let her go, but she also reportedly said she didn’t want to work with an unfinished script.
It is the unfinished script that makes the film such a romantic masterpiece. The actors didn’t know how the movie was going to end. Bergman said that’s the reason her character seems to be in a kind of emotional free-fall. The actress had to keep her emotions in check, she couldn’t give out whether she was going with either Laszlo or Blaine. She simply didn’t know.
But Ilsa knows. She always loved and loves Victor. Sure, she slept with Rick while Laszlo was locked up, possibly dead, but that was one of those things. Look at Bergman’s mouth the second after Henreid tells her that Rick said “ask your wife,” that tiny little apologetic smile that plays across her face before she answers. It was a dirty little secret, but we also see in that moment that she decides to use Rick to save her husband. It is love. What’s a little lust on the side in the face of that? A hill of beans. Look at Bergman’s face while Laszlo leads the band through the French national anthem, the most rousing of any country’s song, she more than admires him. She loves him.
When Ilsa asks Victor whether he’ll believe her, no matter the excuse, he says of course he will. This isn’t Robert Redford asking to sleep with Demi Moore for money. Ilsa is screwing for his life. She may have expected only to have to kill for it, but Laszlo is giving tacit approval. As in Pretty Woman, considered by many critics to be the most successful romcom ever made, Laszlo pimps out his wife for Letters of Transit. Ilsa sets out to play Rick, he’s happy to go along for a ride.
The movie opens with the news that German couriers with important papers have been killed on their way to Casablanca. Twice the amount of usual suspects are rounded up and one is killed in full view of the Bulgarian refugee with the Rocky The Flying Squirrel voice and her husband, the other loving couple in the film. In so many ways is Annina Brandel, played by Jack Warner’s step-daughter Joy Page, older than her uncredited actor husband. But in so many ways do they play out Laszlo and Ilsa’s love story. The things Ilsa had to do that she didn’t want her husband to know about. The men she slept with, before Ingrid Bergman herself would be the gossip of Tinseltown. They are saved by the hopeless romantic Rick. It is because of them, the first recognizable faces we see, that the romance is saved.
Rick realizes what an asshole he’s been and probably also realizes that sticking to what should have been a one night stand would get in the way of other nights’ stands. He won’t stand in the way of true love like Princess Bride’s Prince Humperdinck. He sees himself not in the lovers’ plight, but alongside Inspector Renault, standing in their way. It is his sacrifice that gives for the happy ending. The noble couple is set free by the bullying interloper reformed by love.
So I submit Casablanca is the best romcom specifically because it breaks from the form of such contemporaries as the screwball Bringing Up Baby or the ratatat turnaround of Philadelphia Story. Rick and Ilsa are in love, but Ilsa and Laszlo love each other. Ultimately their love and the world are saved. They have a lot of laughs along the way, but in the end, the joke is on Rick, walking away with a comical look on his face because his insides have been kicked out, on his way to a never made sequel, Brazzaville.
by Tony Sokol