THE WRITER’S EYE

THE WRITER’S EYE with Dean James

Watching The Classics From A Different Point View

Recipe for a classic wartime romance

1 laconic bar owner with a troubled past

1 beautiful woman who broke his heart

1 crusader against the Nazis with a wife

who loves another man

The seasoning: Humphrey Bogart as the owner of Rick’s Café Américain in wartime Morocco; Ingrid Bergman as the enigmatic woman loved by two men; and Paul Henried as the Czech patriot on a crusade against the Nazis

Casablanca premiered in November 1942 with a stellar cast but low expectations by Warner Brothers. It went on to win three Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Rick’s café is a fixture in Casablanca where all sorts of people mix, gambling and plotting. Many are desperate to get out of Morocco and head to safe places away from war. When Rick’s former lover, Ingrid Bergman, comes in, Rick is confronted by the woman who deserted him in Paris years before to return to her husband. Two German couriers have been murdered. They had letters of transit that would allow the bearers to travel around German-occupied Europe and free Portugal. Rick comes into possession of the letters. People are desperate to buy them. Rick must ultimately decide what to do with them. Will he use them to escape with Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and abandon her husband to his fate?

The movie abounds with fascinating characters played by actors like Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Claude Rains. The latter is the openly, but charmingly, corrupt prefect of police. The screenplay combines suspense, romance, and considerable pathos in the complicated lives, hopes, and dreams of people trapped by circumstance and desperate to escape.

What can a writer learn from this?

By watching the actors carefully, a writer can learn how to reveal character by behavior. In other words, how to show rather than tell. Bogart, Bergman, and Henried are at the top of their game here. Casablanca established Bergman as a star. The screenplay is a model of pacing for suspense with its slow build of tension until the perhaps unexpected, but pitch perfect, ending. The movie also included a song that became a classic, the timeless “As Time Goes By”. Watching first-rate cinema can yield as much writing advice as reading great books.