Summary
- Casablanca’s an ultimate tale of romance and danger: with Germans hot on the tail of Laszlo, the rather dashing rebel, it’s up to Ilsa to help.
- Featuring strong themes of friendship and bravery, Casablanca unpicks the feelings of Rick Blaine as he tries to figure out how to get both Ilsa and Laszlo clear of the country and away from trouble.
- This black-and-white encourages the audience to think about responsibility, anxiety, and despair. It also looks at the importance of luck!
Is ‘Casablanca’ a True Story?
This generates a lot of curiosity – could Casablanca actually have happened? Would it have unfolded the same way? An incredible 81 years from its release, this famous and fabulous flick still enjoys widespread appeal – but a lot of people feel uncertain about its origins and how it came to be created. True story or total fiction?
Casablanca’s a fiction, certainly, but as is often the way with these things, it’s more complicated than that statement suggests. Casablanca may not be based on any real story that actually happened, but it ties in heavily with events of its time, and engages with the actual stories occurring then. It’s thought to have picked up some inspiration from a play by Joan Alison and Murray Bennett, and it deals with the challenges faced by refugees at the time, even though they aren’t very explicitly named.
So, no, not a true story where the characters actually existed and the events actually happened, but definitely threaded into the fabric of our reality, and certainly in conversation with it… and while it never actually happened, we can enjoy imagining that it did.
Is ‘Casablanca’ About Luck More Than Anything Else?
Casablanca has a whole bunch of different themes you could unpick if you spent time peering at the movie’s script – but there’s no question that luck is a big factor. Remember that famous scene where Laszlo is trying to get money for him and Ilsa so that they can leave, and it all depends on whether Lady Luck is looking their way?
It’s an intense scene, peppered with some lovely French and quiet tension that tells us just how much this matters. Laszlo had been sitting at the roulette table unrewarded for some time – but then Rick steps in and we see things turn in Laszlo’s favor, thanks to some savvy advice, given and taken at just the right moment.
Maybe the movie’s overarching theme isn’t luck or gambling, but it’s got unquestionable importance in the narrative – as we see in the way Isla throws her arms around Rick at the end of the scene. Without his input here, would the ending have the punch it offers? Not likely!
Is ‘Casablanca’ Still Relatable Today?
For a movie to make it over 80 years and still be relatable… well, we can’t say that happens a lot. And yet, as films like Oppenheimer show, our fascination with this period hasn’t gone, and the themes of the time are still very much present in media today.
Sure, when you watch Casablanca now, you might find there’s some distance created by the changes we’ve seen to how films are made and the way that acting now takes place… it doesn’t have Oppenheimer’s flash, but it unquestionably has staying power. Why? Well, because of its messages.
Casablanca is, at its core, about right and wrong in the most fundamental ways. It offers up characters who choose “the right thing,” even if it doesn’t feel right in the moment – and it gracefully examines the state of being where you love someone so much you’re willing to set them free. It’s a romance, sure, but at its heart, it’s so much more than that. Do we all feel the distress and longing and wistfulness and “what could have been” that this movie has so neatly tied into its exploration of the refugee experience and love? Yes, we do.
And do we see Casablanca parodied and – yes, to an extent – mocked by modern movies and other media? No doubt – it shows up in a ton of places and has done throughout time, but that’s because its themes are still turning and its narrative still matters to us.
My Review Of ‘Casablanca’
You’re not going to be surprised to hear that Casablanca has a special place in my heart. This flick dared so much, went so far, and rose up as a God of early film. Yes, some of it hasn’t translated well for the modern audience – what do you expect after 80 years – but there’s still so much we can get from its rich characters, the conundrums it poses, and that all-famous ending that is still going to be famous another 80 years from now. For a film to stand up this long, you know it has to have been truly great, and I wouldn’t dispute that for a second.
