Casablanca at 80 Has Suddenly Become Very Contemporary

This evening I attended a screening of Casablanca with a near capacity crowd at The Brattle Theatre. 

It is not the first occasion that I have seen Casablanca at The Brattle. The last time was on December 31, 2016. I was with a co-worker who paid very little attention to the film and saw fit to answer a phone call on her cell during the movie. She took little note of my admonition. 

This is a shame because Casablanca has been shown at least once a year at The Brattle since the early 1960's. For many years, The Brattle shared space with a restaurant called Casablanca though that shut its doors nearly a decade ago. Frankly, the food there was overpriced, not very good and there was no piano player.

Later this year, Casablanca will commemorate its 80th anniversary. Yet the events of the past several days have made this movie feel a whole lot more contemporary. If this is the beginning of WWIII and Mr. Putin manages to conquer Ukraine and perhaps Europe and beyond then there will be a new class of refugees who must pay a stiff price for freedom. For the moment, the Russians are the Germans while the Ukrainians are the French and there is a very good chance that Kyiv will fall just as Paris did although it would appear the Ukrainians are offering a more gallant resistance. Will Casablanca assume its old role or will there be another city where people wait and wait and wait. It would appear that what is old is new again.

While the political themes in Casablanca have become more contemporary, the film is at heart a love story between Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund albeit with a different arc. Boy owns saloon in Casablanca. Girl walks into saloon. Boy and girl have met before and the piano player wants no part of it. Boy and girl meet in Paris. Boy and girl plan to leave Paris. Girl stands up boy. Boy is broken hearted. It turns out girl was married to another boy, a boy she thought dead. Boy and girl wish to rekindle romance but are confused. Girl asks boy to do the thinking for the both of them. Boy does and determines that girl is better off with other boy. 

I heard something that I had not heard during previous screenings - the tears of several women. In the real world one could not get away with saying the things Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman. But Bogart delivers the lines written by twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch with such conviction that women are moved to tears. 

The dialogue written by the Epstein twins and Koch is sharply economical but its meaning is clear even when full of ambiguity especially that uttered by Captain Renault as played by Claude Rains. Yet every line of Casablanca had a meaning and purpose. There were no wasted words. 

Aside from being a Cambridge tradition, the film has resonance on the other side of the Charles River. Philip Epstein's grandson is Theo Epstein. Yes, the Theo Epstein who was the architect of the Boston Red Sox winning their first World Series title in 86 years and the Chicago Cubs winning their first World Series title in 108 years. 

Since my return to this area nearly 9 months ago, I have been to The Brattle a half dozen times and plan to go as many times as possible as it is essentially my neighborhood movie house. Tonight was the closest to full house I've seen. The Brattle still requires masks and proof of vaccination. Yet tonight felt about as normal a public gathering that I've attended in nearly two years. Whether this is a sign of things to come remains to be seen. But everything remains to be seen whether it is here, in Kyiv or in Casablanca.