Page 354 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes But now let us forget how the film was made and see what it has to show us. It opens in a place
already magical in itself -- Morocco, the Exotic -- and begins with a hint of Arab music that fades
into "La Marseillaise." Then as we enter Rick's Place we hear Gershwin. Africa France, America. At
once a tangle of Eternal Archetypes comes into play. These are situations that have presided over
stories throughout the ages. But usually to make a good story a single archetypal situation is
enough. More than enough. Unhappy Love, for example, or Flight. But Casablanca is not satisfied
with that: It uses them all. The city is the setting for a Passage, the passage to the Promised Land
(or a Northwest Passage if you like). But to make the passage one must submit to a test, the Wait
("they wait and wait and wait," says the off-screen voice at the beginning). The passage from the
waiting room to the Promised Land requires a Magic Key, the visa. It is around the winning of this
Key that passions are unleashed. Money (which appears at various points, usually in the form of
the Fatal Game, roulette) would seem to be the means for obtaining the Key. But eventually we
discover that the Key can be obtained only through a Gift -- the gift of the visa, but also the gift
Rick makes of his Desire by sacrificing himself For this is also the story of a round of Desires, only
two of which are satisfied: that of Victor Laszlo, the purest of heroes, and that of the Bulgarian
couple. All those whose passions are impure fail.
Thus, we have another archetype: the Triumph of Purity. The impure do not reach the Promised
Land; we lose sight of them before that. But they do achieve purity through sacrifice -- and this
means Redemption. Rick is redeemed and so is the French police captain. We come to realize that
underneath it all there are two Promised Lands: One is America (though for many it is a false
goal), and the other is the Resistance -- the Holy War. That is where Victor has come from, and that
is where Rick and the captain are going, to join de Gaulle. And if the recurring symbol of the
airplane seems every so often to emphasize the flight to America, the Cross of Lorraine, which
appears only once, anticipates the other symbolic gesture of the captain, when at the end he
throws away the bottle of Vichy water as the plane is leaving. On the other hand the myth of
sacrifice runs through the whole film: Ilse's sacrifice in Paris when she abandons the man she
loves to return to the wounded hero, the Bulgarian bride's sacrifice when she is ready to yield
herself to help her husband, Victor's sacrifice when he is prepared to let Ilse go with Rick so long
as she is saved.
Into this orgy of sacrificial archetypes (accompanied by the Faithful Servant theme in the relationship
of Bogey and the black man Dooley Wilson) is inserted the theme of Unhappy Love: unhappy for
Rick, who loves Ilse and cannot have her; unhappy for Ilse, who loves Rick and cannot leave with
him; unhappy for Victor, who understands that he has not really kept Ilse. The interplay of
unhappy loves produces various twists and turns: In the beginning Rick is unhappy because he
does not understand why Ilse leaves him; then Victor is unhappy because he does not understand
why Ilse is attracted to Rick; finally Ilse is unhappy because she does not understand why Rick
makes her leave with her husband. These three unhappy (or Impossible) loves take the form of a
Triangle. But in the archetypal love-triangle there is a Betrayed Husband and a Victorious Lover.
Here instead both men are betrayed and suffer a loss, but, in this defeat (and over and above it) an
additional element plays a part, so subtly that one is hardly aware of it. It is that, quite subliminally,
a hint of male or Socratic love is established. Rick admires Victor, Victor is ambiguously attracted
to Rick, and it almost seems at a certain point as if each of the two were playing out the duel of
sacrifice in order to please the other. In any case, as in Rousseau's Confessions, the woman places
herself as Intermediary between the two men. She herself is not a bearer of positive values; only
the men are.
Against the background of these intertwined ambiguities, the characters are stock figures, either
all good or all bad. Victor plays a double role, as an agent of ambiguity in the love story, and an
agent of clarity in the political intrigue -- he is Beauty against the Nazi Beast. This theme of
Civilization against Barbarism becomes entangled with the others, and to the melancholy of an
Odyssean Return is added the warlike daring of an Iliad on open ground.
Surrounding this dance of eternal myths, we see the historical myths, or rather the myths of the
movies, duly served up again. Bogart himself embodies at least three: the Ambiguous Adventurer,
compounded of cynicism and generosity; the Lovelorn Ascetic; and at the same time the Redeemed

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