15. Casablanca

There’s a Roger Ebert commentary track for this film that ranks among my absolute favorite commentary tracks and lessons on film. One part that sticks out was his encouragement to watch Ingrid Bergman’s eyes, and the way that she never just sets a point on Bogart’s face. Even if she looks perfectly still, her eyes are moving, mapping him, reacting and searching for something.

I’m slowly reading a book about the making of the film, and as much as I’m getting about the particulars of this film, it’s also saying a lot about the studio system at that time. Warner Brothers was an assembly line in many ways, including how directors were assigned their crew leads without consultation (based on who on the payroll was available to shoot).

But even out of that “we’re just making widgets” mentality, they produced something like this. It’s a little bit luck, and a little bit proof of the idea that you get a better creative product producing for quantity than aiming at perfection with everything.

Yet it was also a very different time, where a film was a discrete thing to be sold. You wanted to watch it, you had to buy a ticket, and only for a limited time. You couldn’t own it. You couldn’t watch it at home. You weren’t buying a season pass to a particular theater figuring that even if you don’t watch everything or go every week, your subscription will be worth it.

Film is art. Film is commerce. Both these things can be true. And there are occasions where a film succeeds in both ways. Here’s one of those moments. But it’s not just the artistry of any one person, but the impact of all these players brought together, just so.

The background players and supporting cast are a huge part of that, too. A lot of them were European refugees who fled from the Nazis. Marcel Dalio, a Jewish actor who fled Paris in 1940, was in The Rules of the Game. S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (a personal favorite character actor of mine growing up) had family who died in death camps.

Their lived experience brought something to this film that can only come from real flesh-and-blood people with their passions, their fears, and their history informing their moments in front of the camera. The plane that Ilsa and Lazlo get on may be made of cardboard, but the emotions and the people in Casablanca feel as real as it gets.