For the people watching this in 1942, it might have felt like a coming attraction. Not only does this footage of a genuine Panzer division ripping through the French countryside lend psychological weight and menace to Conrad Veidt’s sinister Major Strasser, but it’s also the scariest shot in the film, for my money, because it reaches beyond the diegesis to frighten us. How brave was it, in 1942, to include a shot like this? Raw, grainy, obviously the real deal, and totally terrifying. It adds to the shock, tension, and pathos of Rick’s noble switcheroo as Ilsa copes with the fact that she’s going, not staying. We all know the famous two-shot of Rick and Ilsa saying goodbye, but there’s a marvelous swooping crane-in movement on the pair which we would also do well to recall with fondness. That ugliness needs to lurk in him to counterbalance the sentimentality. This film only works if we believe that Bogie (who, leading up to Casablanca, had played some pretty vicious guys) might actually let Victor Lazlo die because of a grudge against Ilsa. However, I think this moody shadow silhouette of Rick serves a key function of insisting on his dark side… the dark side that we’re about to see when he coldly watches the Nazis nab Ugarte. It occurs very early in the film when Captain Renault warns Rick not to help Lazlo. Now, this isn’t a shot that slaps you across the face with its importance. This noirish quality, largely thanks to expressionist-influenced director Michael Curtiz and director of photography Arthur Edeson (also the DoP for Frankenstein and The Maltese Falcon) consistently add a palpable ominousness to what could’ve been a frothy, unbelievable quip-fest. The image clearly plays with our genre-recognition abilities. The low-key lighting, the venetian blinds, and the obscured face all scream NOIR.
Here, Ilsa is watching Victor as he risks his life by going out to the Free France meeting after curfew.
If you were to show me this shot and say, “What’s it from?” it would take me more than a minute to realize that it’s from The Greatest Hollywood Movie of All Time (according to some people, though I don’t like those kinds of judgements).
So here’s my collection of its most meaningful, mythical, and tantalizing shots. This movie invites you into it-and invites you to take souvenirs from it: favorite lines, cherished scenes, fragments of tunes and soundtrack music, and, of course, images.Ĭasablanca encourages you to turn it into your own personal collection of memories and does so more successfully than any other Hollywood film. So many people have written mind-blowing thematic analyses of Casablanca that I decided to go another route.