A pivotal moment in the
film Casablanca (1942) occurs when
Major Strasser and the other Nazis are drowned out in their singing of “Die
Wacht am Rhein” by everybody else in the café singing “La Marseillaise.” It is
a stirring scene, and one that never fails to bring some of us to tears. It has
been reported that the much of cast in that scene were brought to tears as
well. In one of those almost supernatural moments when art really does reflect
life, the desperate European refugees in the café were played by actors who actually were European refugees. It is a
spine-tingling moment of reality in an otherwise not very realistic film.
We revisit Rick’s Café Americain
with the bulk of this essay having been previously posted on this blog in 2007,
the first year of Another Old Movie Blog.
A great deal has changed in the world
since then, though the most comforting aspect of our love of classic films is
that the world we explore in them never changes. We can visit a place and time and it is ever
the same, and ever fresh.
Casablanca has become larger than
life for us, a film whose reputation has grown with the decades. It will likely
always be a favorite for its witty dialogue, its charismatic actors, and its
fast-paced plot. It has the irresistible veneer of glamour in an otherwise dark
and frightening time.
But, even those of us who love the film cannot overlook the fact that Victor Laszlo and Ilsa Lund would not have played a cat-and-mouse game of hidden threats over cocktails with Nazi officers in French-occupied Africa. The Nazis would have taken both of them into custody the moment they arrived in Casablanca, tortured them, and filmed their corpses with newsreel cameras. The movie would have been over in ten minutes. No cocktails, no white dinner jackets, no game of hide and seek with omnipotent “papers” that will set them free.
In this respect, Casablanca could be called an escapist film, because it gives us heroism and hope, redemption, a fairy tale of intrigue. The most fanciful scene in the movie, carrying this fairy tale along, is the scene with “La Marseillaise” trumping “Die Wacht am Rhein.”
And in that same scene, ironically, we see the real truth of the film, not always recognized, but there. S.Z. Sakall, who plays Carl, fled Hungary in 1939. His three sisters didn’t make it and died in a concentration camp, along with other relatives.
Madeleine LeBeau, pictured above, who played Yvonne, who pines for Rick and who is fought over by the Nazi soldier and the French soldier; and her then real-life husband Marcel Dalio, who played Emil, the gambling room croupier, both escaped from Nazi-occupied France through Lisbon, just as in the film. Reportedly, the visas they obtained for Chile were forgeries, but they managed to arrive in the U.S. through hastily arranged temporary Canadian passports.
Curt Bois, who played the pickpocket, fled Germany in the early 1930s. Helmut Dantine, who played the young Bulgarian man losing at the gambling tables, whose wife beseeches Rick to help them, fled Austria. Dantine was an Austrian who was put into a concentration camp after the Anschluss. He was arrested for leading an anti-Nazi youth movement. He was then nineteen years old.
Mr. Leuchtag, who practices his English by asking his wife the time, “What watch?” was played by Ludwig Stössel, another Austrian who fled after the Anschluss.
Ilka Grünig, who played Mrs. Leuchtag and replies “Ten watch,” escaped Germany in the early 1930s after the Nazis came to power.
Even the Nazis were played by actors who escaped real Nazis. Richard Ryen, who played Colonel Heinze, was a Hungarian-born actor who was actually expelled by the Nazis from Germany. Hans Twardowski, who played the Nazi officer who fights with the French soldier over Yvonne, fled Germany in the early 1930s.
Even Major Strasser, played by Conrad Veidt, escaped the SS, who pursued him for anti-Nazi activities, and he fled to England where he became a British citizen and supported Britain’s war effort with his salary.
There were actually very few American-born actors in the cast of Casablanca and not all of the rest were refugees, but a good many of them were. This gives the film a legitimacy that certain fanciful elements of the script did not.
When you watch the “La Marseillaise” scene, think of the refugee actors with genuine tears in their eyes, and remember that the Nazi regime had not yet been defeated at the time this film was made. It was not known then if they would be.
But, even those of us who love the film cannot overlook the fact that Victor Laszlo and Ilsa Lund would not have played a cat-and-mouse game of hidden threats over cocktails with Nazi officers in French-occupied Africa. The Nazis would have taken both of them into custody the moment they arrived in Casablanca, tortured them, and filmed their corpses with newsreel cameras. The movie would have been over in ten minutes. No cocktails, no white dinner jackets, no game of hide and seek with omnipotent “papers” that will set them free.
In this respect, Casablanca could be called an escapist film, because it gives us heroism and hope, redemption, a fairy tale of intrigue. The most fanciful scene in the movie, carrying this fairy tale along, is the scene with “La Marseillaise” trumping “Die Wacht am Rhein.”
And in that same scene, ironically, we see the real truth of the film, not always recognized, but there. S.Z. Sakall, who plays Carl, fled Hungary in 1939. His three sisters didn’t make it and died in a concentration camp, along with other relatives.
Madeleine LeBeau, pictured above, who played Yvonne, who pines for Rick and who is fought over by the Nazi soldier and the French soldier; and her then real-life husband Marcel Dalio, who played Emil, the gambling room croupier, both escaped from Nazi-occupied France through Lisbon, just as in the film. Reportedly, the visas they obtained for Chile were forgeries, but they managed to arrive in the U.S. through hastily arranged temporary Canadian passports.
Curt Bois, who played the pickpocket, fled Germany in the early 1930s. Helmut Dantine, who played the young Bulgarian man losing at the gambling tables, whose wife beseeches Rick to help them, fled Austria. Dantine was an Austrian who was put into a concentration camp after the Anschluss. He was arrested for leading an anti-Nazi youth movement. He was then nineteen years old.
Mr. Leuchtag, who practices his English by asking his wife the time, “What watch?” was played by Ludwig Stössel, another Austrian who fled after the Anschluss.
Ilka Grünig, who played Mrs. Leuchtag and replies “Ten watch,” escaped Germany in the early 1930s after the Nazis came to power.
Even the Nazis were played by actors who escaped real Nazis. Richard Ryen, who played Colonel Heinze, was a Hungarian-born actor who was actually expelled by the Nazis from Germany. Hans Twardowski, who played the Nazi officer who fights with the French soldier over Yvonne, fled Germany in the early 1930s.
Even Major Strasser, played by Conrad Veidt, escaped the SS, who pursued him for anti-Nazi activities, and he fled to England where he became a British citizen and supported Britain’s war effort with his salary.
There were actually very few American-born actors in the cast of Casablanca and not all of the rest were refugees, but a good many of them were. This gives the film a legitimacy that certain fanciful elements of the script did not.
When you watch the “La Marseillaise” scene, think of the refugee actors with genuine tears in their eyes, and remember that the Nazi regime had not yet been defeated at the time this film was made. It was not known then if they would be.
It was certainly never
imagined that we’d be fighting them in our own country in the next century. This is why we must vote on Tuesday. At the very end of the “La Marseillaise”
clip, Madeline LeBeau shouts, “Vive la démocratie,” and it is almost
drowned out by the jubilant crowd triumphing over the smug, cruel Nazis in a
nightclub songfest. But it’s there, and
it’s the whole point of the song.
Vote for every Democrat on the ballot next Tuesday, in all
local, county, and national categories. Voting is no longer an expression of political opinion in this country; it's a chess game. The politicians know that, and so do the pundits. The voter has yet to realize how we are being played, and we must use our vote -- while we still have it -- to block the machinations of our impending doom. Halting
the progress of a corrupt and vile administration that now controls the executive
branch, both legislative houses, and the Supreme Court can only be done now by
making the Republican Party, which has ceased to be the Republican Party, fear
more for their jobs than they fear the evidently powerful influence of a shameless
grifter, the NRA, and the Russians from whom they have accepted bribes, and indeed, several corrupt members of their party, whom they’ve
chosen to embrace and blindly support in the unholy name of holding power.
My father and his surviving comrades; and my mother, who was
Rosie the Riveter in a war plant making parts for PT boats, thought their job
was done on V-J Day.
I mourn as much for the memory and the inspiration of that
generation as I do for the future of this country if we do not remember the
lesson that was so easily absorbed in Hollywood films of the 1940s: The authoritarian fascists were the bad guys. Frank Capra explained that to us, if we didn’t
know already, in Prelude to War (1942).
How many Trump supporters and apologists would root for Bogart,
Henreid, and Bergman today? How many
would look at those refugees with loathing that filled the Café Americain? How many would turn Madeleine LeBeau away at
the border today?
We already know from surveys done that many Millennials cannot
even name who fought in that war and on which sides. Right and wrong has become lost, and history,
which should be a compass, has become a muddle.
Fans of classic films inevitably adore them for a world that is,
among other things, rife with moral clarity.
We have lost that in our society, probably for many reasons, but one of
the things I admire most about classic films is the courageous idealism. It seemed to stream from the directors. Frank Capra, a conservative Republican such
as they used to come in this country, gave us Meet John Doe. William
Wyler, who gave us Mrs. Miniver; and
the man who directed Casablanca, Michael
Curtiz, were refugees, as was Billy Wilder.
John Ford, like Wyler and Capra, served in the military during World War
II. They had no patience for Nazis. Ford would have punched them in the face.
Frank Capra & John Ford
The word Nazi is not bandied about carelessly when it is used
correctly. It is the word Republican that has lost its
meaning. The Grand Old Party surrendered
and became complicit to survive in a more vicious environment, like the capitulating French Vichy government.
When you vote on Tuesday, remember that Hitler was elected to
office, and that was the last election.
He killed democracy in Germany.
Putin is angling for the same result here by remote control and he has already lined the
pockets of several Republicans to that end.
Unlike the troubled conquered countries in World War II, we will have no
one to save us. We have to do it
ourselves. There have never been higher
stakes than this coming election.
Vote Democrat on Tuesday.
If the Republican Party regains its soul in having lost the election, that
will be for the benefit of all of us, because nobody, including intelligent
Liberals, want a one-party government, even one of Liberal Democrats. We need
the vibrancy of differing opinions and perspectives.
But first, we have to rid ourselves, democratically, of the
traitors to our democracy who gerrymander precincts; who scrub voters off the
registration lists; who cheat to deny the vote to African Americans, Mexicans,
and Hispanics and other minorities; who attack the free press and shout that truth
is not the truth, who praise Nazis and even become them. Vote Democrat.
Vive la démocratie. Long live democracy.
