By Farah Cheded
How the Golden Age classic bears remarkable similarity to a forgotten film about child refugees.
The 75 years that have passed since Casablanca‘s wide release have gilded Michael Curtiz‘s movie as a gleaming paradigm of Golden Age Hollywood in our memory, but re-watching it in the 21st century, we’re reminded of its unabashedly political heart: this is, above all, a film about refugees. Casablanca never shies away from its contemporary geopolitics; in fact, the political climate in which it was made informs every aspect of plot, setting, period, and characterization. Its core focus is on the ethical quandary of its protagonist, Rick (Humphrey Bogart), a man who initially proudly proclaims his self-interest — “I stick my neck out for nobody!” — before undergoing a moral metamorphosis that sees him stick everything out to help two refugees; a neat analogy of America’s own isolationist position towards refugees at the time.
Watching Casablanca now, it’s striking to be reminded of just how relevant its refugee focus remains to modern audiences. Its opening scene is particularly eerily familiar: as Lou Marcelle narrates the “torturous, roundabout refugee trail” the movie’s characters take — “Paris to Marseilles across the Mediterranean to Oran…” — we glimpse families making grim marches down barren roads, clutching their worldly belongings as they attempt the long journey to freedom. It’s an image we’re well-acquainted with: news broadcasts have been repeating variations of it for years and nearly everyday since the global refugee crisis of 2015. While it’s true that Casablanca’s characters are primarily Europeans making the reverse passage from contemporary routes, recent documentaries like Fire at Sea, Those Who Jump, the BBC’s Exodus series and Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow remind us of the persisting importance of Morocco and the Mediterranean in refugee routes, proving there isn’t much revision required for Marcelle’s opening narration to remain pertinent.
So many more moments in Casablanca bear uncanny resemblance to the stories we’ve grown accustomed to in the last few years, too. There are families selling jewelry and other valuables to try and pay for tickets to freedom; women being raped or pressured into sex for the same; and, above all, a pervading sense that vulnerable communities are unjustly being trapped in limbo in one transitional location, totally at the mercy of the whims of governments and black-market forgers and smugglers.
Released at a time when the plight of European refugees was relatively unknown to most people in the US — aptly, while the Casablanca Conference was taking place in January 1943 — the film is so applicable to the reality of refugees because it was conceived by someone who witnessed, first-hand, the plight of people fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. Originally written as a play by high school teacher Murray Burnett and his writing partner Joan Alison, Casablanca‘s story was devised after a trip Burnett made to Austria in the late 1930s. His wife had Jewish relatives in Vienna who were keen to leave the country as soon as possible; Austria had just been annexed into Nazi Germany, and persecution of the country’s Jews was already in full effect. Burnett helped his in-laws resolve the practical complications of leaving Austria (arranging for their belongings and money to be shipped out of the country), before returning to the US and writing a drama inspired by the dire conditions faced by would-be refugees in Europe.
Many members of Casablanca’s largely international cast and crew were, sadly, deeply familiar with the above. Working behind the scenes on the film was Polish-French technical consultant Robert Aisner, who had spent time in a concentration camp before taking the very route to escape Nazi persecution mapped out in the opening scene. Curtiz (originally Hungarian) had lost relatives at Auschwitz, and was a generous supporter of the European Film Fund, a non-profit that worked to help European actors fleeing from the Nazis find work in the US (several of the Fund’s recipients worked on Casablanca). And Curtiz personally cast each of the many refugee actors seen in the film. Peter Lorre (as the doomed visa dealer Ugarte) and S. Z. Sakall (the waiter Carl) were two such actors. Like the director, they were from Hungarian-Jewish backgrounds, and had both been forced to abandon healthy stage and screen careers when the Nazis came to power. Sakall is reported to have lost three sisters, one niece, and several in-laws in the concentration camps.
Conrad Veidt, who in real life was a passionate anti-Nazi protestor, ironically played the part of Major Strasser, the movie’s pompous Nazi villain. A staunch opponent of the Nazis throughout his life, Veidt voluntarily made the decision to abandon the security of a successful career in Germany for the uncertainty of exile. Unlike his wife, Veidt wasn’t Jewish, but when Hitler’s government required him to fill in a questionnaire stating his “race,” he declared himself Jewish in solidarity with her and Germany’s increasingly persecuted communities. Veidt then made a quick exit to the UK, where he appeared in several anti-Nazi films, and after war broke out he loaned his estate to the British government to be used in their efforts. After trying to drum up stateside support for a British anti-Nazi film titled Contraband (marketed as Blackout in the US), Veidt eventually made the move to the US, where his accent made him a prime candidate for the growing number of Nazi roles. Conscious of being typecast in this way, Veidt had a clause inserted into his contract to ensure that these parts were to be written as antagonists.
Throughout his wartime career, Veidt, as with Curtiz and Lorre, was a generous financial supporter of the European Film Fund. He even came to the aid of one of his co-stars, the Austrian actor Paul Henreid, who played Czechoslovakian Resistance leader (and husband to Ingrid Bergman‘s character) Victor Laszlo. Because of his nationality, Henreid was in danger of being interned as an enemy in Britain, but Veidt, well-known for his anti-Nazi efforts, apparently vouched for him. If the British government initially suspected Henreid of being a Nazi sympathizer, his part in Casablanca — and particularly his role in its famous Marseillaise scene — ought to have alleviated any niggling suspicions.
These actors enjoyed considerable roles in the film, but many of Casablanca’s most memorable small parts were also played by displaced actors. It’s worth expanding on their stories to fully appreciate the grim reality of their juxtaposed lives: eminent and thriving on stages and screens in Europe, but destitute, relatively unknown and relegated to small or un-credited roles in the US. Emblematic of this are the experiences of famous German-Jewish cabaret performer and actor Trude Berliner, who plays the woman who asks if Rick would drink with her, and successful German-Jewish silent film actors Ilka Grüning and Ludwig Stössel, who play the elderly couple who have a conversation about the time in broken English. A rising star of the stage in Germany, Lotte Palfi plays the woman forced to sell her diamonds; around the time of filming, Palfi’s own mother died in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. Her real-life husband, successful German-Jewish actor Wolfgang Zilzer, also fled Europe and secured himself a small role in the film (as the man with the expired papers). Curt Bois, who had enjoyed a long, fruitful career in Germany, had only a small role in Casablanca as the chatty pickpocket.
The article Here’s Looking at Casablanca’s Refugee Story, 75 Years On appeared first on Film School Rejects.
0 comments:
Post a Comment