This past December over Christmas break, my sister and I sneaked in a mall day. We navigated the crowds, perused the sales, and devoured pizza in the food court. Then she insisted that the movie we saw to cap off the day would be the season’s raving success, La La Land. I went along with the suggestion, intrigued by seeing a potential Best Picture winner in the theater before it had been crowned. If you recall from my first post, I’m often the last person to see these big blockbusters (For instance, I finally saw the live action Beauty and the Beast yesterday!). Anyhow, La La Land it was.

I was a little surprised (and then confused), though, during our time with Damien Chazelle’s smash hit. For one, the film begins with several large ensemble dance/choreography numbers, but then the cast seems to disappear. My second puzzlement was with the “supernatural” elements in the film, such as dancing through starry skies. Hmmm…almost as unrealistic as Californians bursting into joyous song over their clogged freeways (I’ve driven them. No temptations whatsoever to get out and jive all over my car.). Lastly, the third (and main) aspect of the film I took issue with was its ending (spoiler alert!). I personally had a difficult time believing there was any actual chemistry between Ryan Gosling’s and Emma Stone’s characters. So, to have their characters not end up together after two hours of the movie working to convince me that they did belong together was frustrating, to say the least. As I pondered the film later that evening and in the following days (I admit I’m a brooder) and discussed it with various friends and family, a lightbulb went off in my head. It was an explanation of sorts for La La Land’s conclusion: Casablanca (1942, Warner Bros.).

Relatively early on in La La Land, viewers catch a not-too-subtle glimpse of a huge image of Ingrid Bergman, one of the stars of Casablanca, on the wall of Mia’s bedroom. Bergman later appears again on a billboard the characters walk past. While these innocuous nods to Casablanca might be just part of La La Land’s tribute to past Hollywood glory, the kicker occurs when Mia points out to Sebastian that across the street from the coffee shop where she works is “the window that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman looked out in Casablanca.” There we have it: a blatant hint as to how to explain La La Land’s ending.

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the climactic scene of Casablanca.

Of course, the most famous scene of Casablanca is its conclusion, more specifically the couple of shots when Rick and Ilsa’s heads turn toward each other on the airport tarmac (My favorite spoof of this is when Billy Crystal employed the scene in his opening montage for the 2000 Academy Awards: “Hello-o! Will somebody get on the plane PLEASE! C’mon! They just strip-searched Diana Ross! Let’s go!”). In a very similar set-up at the end of La La Land, Mia and Sebastian encounter each other again after five years of separation. They both turn to look at each other before Mia leaves with her husband and Sebastian is left behind (incidentally, wife-less). Sounds a whole lot like Casablanca, minus a “beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

The question about La La Land’s ending morphs from why Mia and Sebastian can’t be together to why the film mimics Casablanca. While in the past Casablanca has been lauded as one of the greatest films of all time and finds its name included in lists with Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music, and Titanic, more recent reviews and studies have found that the popularity of the film is in a pretty dramatic decline (For an interesting article about this fact, check out this link: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/02/noah_isenberg_s_we_ll_always_have_casablanca_reviewed.html). In fact, at the time of its original release in 1943 (limited release in 1942), Casablanca was just one of several successful films to grace the silver screen that year. For the 1944 Academy Awards, Casablanca netted 8 nominations, a respectable amount that was still eclipsed by the 9 nominations of For Whom the Bell Tolls and the 12 of The Song of Bernadette. Casablanca took home Oscars only for Writing (Screenplay), Directing, and Outstanding Motion Picture, sustaining losses in categories that seem surprising today given the film’s iconic status (Cinematography [Black-and-White], Actor in a Supporting Role for Claude Rains as Captain Renault, Actor for Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, Music [Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture], and Film Editing). The legendary Ingrid Bergman failed to even receive a nomination for her role in the film, although, ironically, she was nominated for her part in For Whom the Bell Tolls for the same year.

What, then, has been (and for many still is) the draw of Casablanca? Why the success, the notoriety? How can it remain in the conversation about all-time greatest films when its charm is losing its hold on audiences in certain circles nowadays? In my mind, there are a couple of things that make this a great film: casting/acting, dialogue/writing, and historical timing. Few could argue that Bogart and Bergman are not brilliant in Casablanca. Their chemistry (unlike that of Gosling and Stone, in my opinion) is undoubtable. One can read their characters’ emotions in the tiniest flinching of their facial muscles—they have become Rick and Ilsa. And the film’s script has got to be one of the most quoted in the history of movies. “Here’s looking at you, kid.” “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” “We’ll always have Paris.” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Sigh. Brilliant.

But let’s look briefly at the timing of the film’s release. 1943, the height of World War II. It hadn’t been going too swell for the Allied forces. Thousands of refugees had made it as far as Casablanca, a city on the coast of Morocco in Africa—certainly these folks felt they were going backward in their attempt to traverse the Atlantic—where they waited and waited to acquire permission and means to reach freedom in America. Casablanca, the film, focuses on these people and their desperation. But what really put Casablanca, the city, on the map and Casablanca, the film, at the top of the box office was the fact that in late 1942, the Allied forces landed 65,000 troops under the command of Dwight D. Eisenhower at Casablanca and two other North African ports under the control of the French (who had surrendered to Germany in 1940). Casablanca had become a militarily strategic name at the same time that it became a culturally popular one. Bolstering the conspicuousness of Casablanca, in early 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in the port city to plan Allied strategy for the next phase of the war. Nothing could have been better for Casablanca, the film.

Gorgeous photo of the real city of Casablanca (Photo credit: http://www.accorhotels.com/6572)

La La Land‘s usurping the basic romantic storyline of Casablanca and transporting it to another time and place is a nod to the timelessness of a film whose claim to greatness began because of its own time period and subject matter. Both are films about love and self-sacrifice (we’ll get to that idea more this weekend); and in my opinion, both end in slightly unsatisfactory manners. Yet the appeal of films with not-so-happy endings will continue because their scenarios are often realistic. Casablanca may slide up and down the rankings of the world’s greatest films, but its place in history is assured.

For an interesting read, check out this original review of Casablanca from 1942 (http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C06E1DF1039E33BBC4F51DFB7678389659EDE ).For more thoughts on Casablanca and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!