Classics on Trial: Debating the Timelessness of Cultural Icons

Ingrid Bergman arrived on the set of Casablanca with no idea if her character, Ilsa, would end up with Humphrey Bogart or Paul Henreid. The writers were literally making it up as they went. Which is just insane to think about. Last week on Classics on Trial we talked about how some masterpieces feel inevitable, but this one was pure, high-wire chaos. And somehow, it became perfect. See, "perfect" is the word I want to challenge. I rewatched it this week, and while it's obviously a landmark film, I don't think it's timeless. I think it's a magnificent relic. A relic? What part of "Here's looking at you, kid" is a relic? The central theme—cynicism giving way to idealism, sacrificing what you want for what's right—that's not a 1942 theme.

That's a human theme. I'll grant you the theme of sacrifice is powerful. But who gets to do the sacrificing? The men. Ilsa Lund is a passenger in her own story. She's defined entirely by her relationship to Rick and to Victor Laszlo. I think that's a very 21st-century reading of a film that isn't about her agency. It's about Rick's moral awakening. She is the catalyst for his change. But that's my point! She's not a character, she's a plot device. A beautiful, luminous plot device, but her only function is to make the man feel something and then make a noble choice for her. It feels… paternalistic. Okay, but consider the context. This was a wartime propaganda film, and a brilliant one.

It was designed to convince Americans that isolationism was a dead end. Rick is America in that equation. And that's fair, as a historical document, it's incredible. But we're not asking if it was important then. We're asking if it holds up now. And that melodrama, the swelling music as she begs him to "think for both of us"... it feels heavy-handed. You call it melodrama, I call it high romance. The dialogue is so sharp, so witty, it earns those emotional peaks. "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." That's not melodrama, that's poetry. The dialogue is untouchable, I'll give you that. It’s probably the most quotable movie ever made.

But the story architecture relies on a woman who is fundamentally passive. Okay, but what's the alternative? Let's play it out. Ilsa makes the choice. She tells Rick, "I'm staying with my husband because the Resistance is more important." Does that have the same power as Rick forcing the choice on her? I think it might have more. I completely disagree. The tragedy, the power, comes from Rick making the choice. He gives up the one thing he wants for the greater good. He becomes a hero. If she just leaves, he's just a guy who got dumped. Again. Alright, I see the argument for why his arc requires it. But it still leaves her character feeling thin. We see the world through his eyes, his pain, his sacrifice.

We never really know what she wants, separate from those men. Maybe that's the point. In the face of Nazism, in the face of a world on fire, what one person wants doesn't amount to a hill of beans. That's the line, right? It's about subordinating the individual will to a collective cause. And that message is noble. Truly. But it's also the justification for why her will is never consulted. The men decide the cause, and they decide her place in it. So you're saying its politics get in the way of its romance. I'm saying its gender politics are so dated that they undermine the timelessness everyone claims for it. It's a masterfully crafted film that I deeply admire.

But I don't think it's a story that speaks to us now without some serious, serious asterisks. I suppose I can live with an asterisk. For me, the film's profound sense of moral duty transcends all of that. It’s a perfect film about imperfect people trying to do the right thing in an impossible situation. That never gets old. So maybe that’s the real tension. Can a film be a perfect artifact of its moment, and a timeless piece of art for all moments? Or does being so perfectly of its time, eventually stop it from being for ours?