Casablanca is a triumphantly eloquent World War II romance-drama transcribing the facets of neutral regions such as French-controlled Casablanca, Morocco, at play. Following expatriate and Casablanca nightclub owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), Casablanca displays the club’s guests, ranging from German Nazi soldiers to American or other foreign spies. With corruption all around, arrests made merely at the whim of higher-ups despite previously (un)known knowledge and only whispers of tangible hope, Rick’s abandoned his past morals: “I stick my neck out for nobody!” he consistently exclaims. Amidst rising tensions from Nazi deaths or uninstigated arrests from Vichy French police Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Rick’s past enters in the form of former lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and her Czechoslovakian resistance leader husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). In acquainting and reacquainting with Victor and Ilsa, respectively, Rick’s humanity is ripped back to the surface as he faces a dilemma: love or progress in the war. With nothing but his past patriotic instincts, current caution, and the help or opinions of the few kept around him, Rick must choose what’s right in such personally, socially, politically, and nationalistically convoluted circumstances—before anyone who needn’t die dies.

Love hurts. That’s obvious. It’s one of humanity’s most distinctive and costly features, that ability to love and care. Whether we lose love or those whom we love through rejection, fallout, or death, it’s always painful in the end. Casablanca extrapolates on love’s benefits, using war as a centered backdrop to intensify the feeling’s effects. Rick and Ilsa loved each other once, but they chose to ask and learn little: “I thought we weren’t asking questions,” Ilsa suavely expresses during a flashback to their Parisian affair. Yet they dined, wined, walked, and talked many evenings away in each other’s arms. Ilsa still learns of Rick’s then-current and dangerous work as a resistance fighter himself alongside his traveling pianist friend and business partner Sam (Dooley Wilson), using his forced departure upon France’s Nazi occupation to split ways abruptly. Their reunion, loaded with resentment built from that emotional night, unfolds beyond their mere feelings—as she explains her marriage to Laszlo both before, during, and after her and Rick’s affair, which restricted her from getting anyone too complexly involved in her life out of fear. With Rick himself running away from his past beyond her as well, their externally shaped relations rock them to their cores because their love hasn’t faded despite the chaos around them.

Such socially noticeable chaos buds in the halls and tables of Rick’s nightclub. Led by the bubbly and self-proclaimed standardly poor corrupt police captain Renault, shady deals, too-casual arrests, and unused information stolen or used as blackmail run amock. For example, through most of the film’s runtime, Captain Renault knows Laszlo will come to the casino, and once he arrives, he waits hours and days to make his move. This is not because he schemed some devious plan; he played the political game, manipulating different parties into getting the arrests he desires. He waits on orders from the Nazis, and they only press when such arrests are necessary to push their gains forward. Though the film opens on France’s motto, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” in bold on a court’s exterior, justice is all but expunged. A similar kind of wit to which Rick possesses makes Renault a charismatic “will he, won’t he” foe, extrapolating not only on the personalities and methods necessary for Nazi diplomacy but on the larger socio-political ploys across neutral WWII territories. Alas, seeing all of these components collide, Rick chooses progress over love because “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Rick and Ilsa may have loved each other in the past, but merely by circumstance of their violent realities. To truly live and love, they must separate and fight in their ways.

Casablanca, unfortunately, doesn’t escape racist and sexist woes in its sidelining of all Black characters and portraying women as damsels or support beams for male visionaries. But suppose one can look past those dated qualms, instead gazing at the organic display of the then-real vicious norms. In that case, Casablanca reads as an informative, bittersweet, but ultimately virtuous flick about finding your humanity even in battle. For old film fans, romance/war fans, Ingrid Bergman or other cast member fans, and those looking for a nonformulaic approach, Casablanca is both a classic and metaphor-stuffed drama.

Screens Tuesday, 1/7 7:00 pm @ Landmark Kendall Square Cinema
Part of the ongoing repertory series: Retro Replay: And the Best Picture Goes To…