A Film Canon

 

 

Casablanca completes Only Angels Have Wings' reinvention of the imperial fringe as a site of stagnation, rather than swashbuckling; that is, as merely capable of reflecting, rather than remedying, the centre to which it is ostensibly attached, and from which it has grown increasingly autonomous. In turn, this centre becomes multiple and amorphous, variously figured as Vichy France, Nazi Germany and a United States compromised by its recent non- interventionism ("I bet they're asleep all over America") - as distinct from local saloonkeeper Rick's (Humphrey Bogart) isolationism, which is as directed at his 'homeland' as at any of the other foreign powers, and encapsulates the transitory, indeterminate character of the town. From this perspective, his 'Cafe Americain' simply reiterates that character, rather than providing an respite from it; or, more accurately, mourns that reiteration, gathering the drifting smoke, fog and murmurs into the presence of "As Time Goes By", which tends to recur as a fragment, rather than a complete song. If any kind of homeland still exists, it is in the form of romance, as evinced in Curtiz's tendency to shoot the (few) critical expressions of love in extreme close-up, transforming the face - and, in particular, that of Rick's old flame Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) - into the topography elided by Casablanca's complications and heterogeneities. Yet even this remains suspect, both providing Bogart with the pretext for his trademark deflection of sentimentality into clipped, functional speech, and generalising it to a deflection of social conscience (sufficient to take part in the Abyssinian and Spanish Civil Wars) into a rejection of all causes: "I stick my neck out for nobody." "A wise foreign policy." It's also worth mentioning the stunning ensemble cast (Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid) - a charismatic panorama that textures and nuances the flame between Bogart and Bergman.