Movie Review: Casablanca
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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that kids may need some of the
political and historical context explained to them, especially
the meaning of the shot at the end, of the Vichy water in the
garbage.
Families can talk about how some of the best-remembered lines of this movie indicate the casual corruption of Casablanca. What does it mean to say "We haven't quite decided if he committed suicide or died trying to escape" or "I'm shocked to find gambling going on in Casablanca" or "Round up the usual suspects"? What does Rick mean when he says "We'll always have Paris" and that they didn't have it until Ilsa came to Casablanca? How does knowing that she really loved him change the way he looks at the world? Was Ilsa right to stay with Laszlo in Paris? Was she right to leave with him to go to Lisbon? Why? What do you think Rick and Renault will do next?
Common Sense Media Review
Rick (
Humphrey
Bogart) owns a popular nightclub in Casablanca, in the
early days of WWII. France is under the control of the Vichy
government, which has close ties to the Nazis, but Casablanca
still has an uneasy independence. As a result, people come from
all over to try to get exit visas to countries that are still
free, and corruption and chaos are pervasive. As the movie
opens, the police shoot a man who does not have the proper
papers, and refugees negotiate with smugglers for passage to
Lisbon, from which one can get to America.
Captain Renault ( Claude Rains) of the local police arrives at Rick's with Major Strasser, a Nazi. Strasser is searching for the person who killed two German couriers. Whoever killed them took their papers, including two "letters of transit," which enable the bearer to leave the country without question. Ugarte (Peter Lorre) has the letters and gives them to Rick to hide for him. He is then captured by the police. Rick makes no effort to protect him, saying, "I stick my neck out for nobody." Strasser is also looking for an escaped Czech named Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Laszlo arrives at Rick's with Ilsa ( Ingrid Bergman), planning to meet Ugarte.
Rick and Ilsa knew each other before, in Paris. They had planned to leave together, before the city fell to the Germans, but at the last minute, Ilsa did not come, and sent a note saying that she could never see Rick again. He is angry and bitter, and still so deeply hurt that he drinks heavily. When she returns to talk to him, he is drunk and lashes out at her, and she leaves.
The next night, they speak again, and she tells him that she is married to Laszlo, and thought he had been killed when she met Rick. She found he was still alive the day they were supposed to leave Paris. She loved him then, and still loves him. Rick and Renault plan to trap Laszlo by giving him the letters of transit. Then Renault will arrest Laszlo, and Rick and Ilsa will leave together. But at the airport, Rick tells Laszlo that he must go and Ilsa must go with him. In one of the movies' most famous moments, he tells her, "We'll always have Paris." Rick and Renault leave together to join the fight against the Nazis.
