#2 Casablanca (1942)

There is something really magical about this project I’m embarking on. Who hasn’t seen Casablanca? It’s one of those movies you think you know. Humphrey Bogart. Rick’s Café. Here’s looking at you, kid. Watching this movie now, at this age, and at this time, blew my mind a bit. The goal of The Retirement Project is to take in the art and beauty and sheer joy of these mediums and something about going into it with that goal changes your perspective a bit.

Only a few weeks ago, I read a great novel about the French Resistance so it was on my mind how hard those citizens worked to resist the Nazis. Watching Casablanca this time around, it was like I had never seen the movie before or didn’t remember the most important parts about it. When something is so iconic, bits of it seep into your subconscious without you knowing how much is your lived experience and how much is just cultural references. I’ve always thought of it as a love story and, of course, it is. But that’s not what I took away from it this time. That’s a story line that is of no more weight than the rest of it. The immorality of complicity. And the desperation of citizens trapped in a war-torn world. Maybe that’s what makes the film so incredible – that they can marry these multiple story lines so seamlessly. After all, isn’t that what real life is like? Massive events happen globally or nationally (such as, say, a pandemic) but we are still living our individual lives, navigating this journey with our little cares and worries, love stories, family heartaches, that are in no way little to us.

When everyone in the bar broke into the French National Anthem, La Marseillaise, to drown out the singing Nazis, I got a little weepy with them. More tears at the end of the song when the Rick-obsessed drunk lady yells “Vive la democratie!” I played that part twice and just reveled in it with a loud, happy cry. I read afterwards that a lot of the supporting cast and the extras were themselves refugees and boy, you can feel all those emotions in that scene.

I’ve always especially liked historical fiction. Great works in this genre always get me googling for more information and to understand what that time was like, how people were living through it. What I surely knew at some point, but have since forgotten, is that when Roosevelt made his famous “live in infamy” speech, he only asked congress to declare war on Japan. That’s it. And Hitler, in narcissistic fashion, declared war on us.

The end of the movie is again, so iconic, as Ilsa/Bergman leaves Casablanca on the plane with Victor Laszlo. But the part I forgot is when Laszlo looks at Rick admiringly and says, “Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win.” Imagine that for a moment. When Americans and people all over the world saw this film, that was only a hope and certainly not a guarantee. Goosebumps.

We paid an awfully big price to defeat Nazism in WWII. Let's make sure, as it rises again, we stomp it out before it gets far enough to result in such a price again.

American WWII Cemetery, Normandy