A Love Story Connected with War in Casablanca - Movie Review Example

Casablanca The of Institute/College Released in 1942, Casablanca is a movie set in, as the points out clearly, Casablanca, Morocco during the WWII era. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, it is a love story between Rick and Ilsa, with the war going on in the backdrop. With a host of characters ranging from a representative of the Vichy government and a Nazi officer, the film has caught the imagination of many people and is considered to be a classic today. Hailed as “the year’s most exciting and trenchant films” (Crowther), it still produces nostalgic value to many a viewer (Eco). However, interestingly enough, it is also a propaganda film against fascism, which uses symbolism to represent the stance of the United States Vis-à-vis the Second World War. To understand just how the movie is a propaganda film, one has to look at the timeline in which it was produced. This was after the United States had entered into the Second World War after staying on the sidelines for the first few years. The movie is set before that time, when everyone tries to escape to America to escape the war. Through the invasion of France by Germany and the subservience of the occupying French Vichy government to the Nazis in Casablanca, the movie sought to show the audience just how oppressive life under fascism was. Nazism was still a living reality then, and fascist regimes sought to take over the world, something that the Allied Forces and the United States were fighting against. War brings a lot of uncertainty with it; loved ones go away and one never knows if they are coming back or not. This was true during those times, but it was further exacerbated by the presence of Concentration Camps. Many a people entered these dreaded concentration camps, never to be heard from again. There was no communication between the prisoners and their families and mostly gossip and hearsay was used to get information about the prisoners. The effect it had on families was quite devastating. In Casablanca, Ilsa, who fell in love with Rick in Paris, was already married, but had wrongly presumed herself to be a widow upon a report she got from a friend. It was this presumption that led her to be with Rick and to fall in love. This complicated matters for her as well as the two men in her life. What it further presented to the audience was the harsh reality of war profiteering, whereby people with vested interests, criminals, racketeers, bootleggers, forgers, smugglers etc. make a lot of profit just due to the advent of the war. Because a lot of people were desperate to flee Europe, many a forger and smuggler used that desperation to make profit. At Rick’s Café Americain, the audience is shown many such people engaged in their nefarious activities. The head of the police, a French man named Louis, has the power to issue visas, which he abuses by either asking for a bribe, or getting beautiful women to sleep with him in exchange thereof. This was quite effective propaganda against Nazis and living under fascism, and it gave the American audience a very good reason to feel good about the war efforts being carried out by their government as the alternative, as show in Casablanca, was very bleak. What is more, it depicted the moral ambiguity that creeps in during wartime. When people, especially those in authority or with power, can get away with a lot of crimes and an innocent person can be hanged on really small charges. This, though not true in America as much, was quite true of Europe. By showing this side of Europe, the producers wanted to make a point about how horrible the condition of law and order is when the “wrong” side has taken over. It is interesting to note that while Casablanca under the Vichy government was depicted as a place where even a murder of a high Nazi official can go unpunished if the local authorities so will it (when Louis tells his constables to “round up the usual suspects” after Rick kills Strasser), the United States is seen as a utopia where everyone wants to escape to find justice and peace. This, again, strokes the patriotism of the audience, all the while decrying the Nazis and their allies. However, it should be noted that the atmosphere of the country was such during that time (Pearl Harbor had been attacked and America had entered the war just a few months before) that patriotism was sky high, metaphorically, and Americans believed that their fight was just. So it was not only the movie that propagated this notion, it was actually just a furtherance of an already felt sentiment. Since it was produced in Hollywood in a pre-segregation America, there are racist undertones to the movie as well. Rick has an African American piano player called Sam at his café. While Rick is shown to treat him well, even going on to say how he does not sell or buy human beings when asked to hand Sam over to another bar for a price, there is a bit of a white savior complex involved. A black person needs a white man to stand up for him and tell the others that he is worthy because he is befriended by that white man. The movie does try to depict that Sam and Rick are friends, however, it is clear that Sam is a modern day slave of sorts, as he is always “yes, sirring” Rick and complying with his orders. Hollywood had still not come out of the racist mindset, and neither had America, so that is perhaps why Sam is also the only one in the movie who speaks with bad grammar and diction and with a Southern drawl (Davies). However, despite these undertones of racism and stereotyping, the producers casted a black man in a prominent role in an “A-list” movie. What is more, the role cast him in a positive light, albeit in a stereotypical way. Another noteworthy use of symbolism is the character of Rick himself (Gabbard). Just like the United States, Rick did not get involved in the war raging around him. He does not want to get involved in any way with it. However, he has shown to have taken part in some heroic activity before, just like the United States did in World War I, and then, finally, when he discovers that a lot is at stake, he plunges into the war completely. This is a good description of how the United States made its entry into the war arena reluctantly, after its own shores had been bombed. Through Rick, the film sought to justify the entry of the United States into WWII. The film, despite its flaws and propaganda still stands out as one of the favorites of the public. Even critics seem to count it amongst their favorite movies (Ebert). This movie seems to have caught the imagination of many and even though it is a “mediocre film” (Eco). Perhaps one of the biggest reasons is that though it did rely heavily on propaganda, it used symbolism and the “lone hero” motif so well, that people not only identified with it, but also seemed to agree to the propaganda presented. References Crowther, B. (1942, November 27). Casablanca. The New York Times. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C06E1DF1039E33BBC4F51DFB7678389659EDE Davies, K. (2009, July 20). Casablanca and the Reinforcement of America Ideologies.Yahoo Contributor Network. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://voices.yahoo.com/casablanca-reinforcement-america-ideologies-3841964.html?cat=37 Ebert, R. (1992, April 5). As time goes by, its the still the same old glorious `Casablanca.Roger Eberts Journal. Retrieved April 22, 2014, from http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/as-time-goes-by-its-the-still-the-same-old-glorious-casablanca Eco, U. (1994). Casablanca or The clichés are having a ball. In S. Maasik & J. Solomon (Eds.). Signs of life in the U.S.A.: Readings on popular culture for writers (260-264). Boston, MA: Bedford Books.. Gabbard, K., & Gabbard, G. O. (1990). Play it again, Sigmund: Psychoanalysis and the classical Hollywood text. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 18(1), 6-17. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01956051.1990.9943650 Read More