The Darkness at the Heart of Casablanca
Casablanca is the ultimate in American classic cinema. It is undisputedly the most American of American films. Ever. Someone distilled this movie into a liquid and injected it into Chris Evans and that’s how Captain America was created. As with any lasting cultural monument, it has insinuated itself into your life even if you have never seen the movie. Ever heard someone say, “Play it again, Sam”? Casablanca. Ever heard any variant of the phrase, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”? Casablanca. How did the The Usual Suspects come by that title? It’s a line in Casablanca. That black and white Shocked, shocked! gif that has been getting a constant workout in all the comment threads since 2016? Straight out of Casablanca.
I own it on DVD, of course. I have watched it a million times since I was a teenager. But when the opportunity arose in February 2016 to go watch it on the big screen at the Lucas Theatre, I did not hesitate. It was a Valentine’s Day screening. I remember because I took my 80-something year old grandmother out to see it. We went to Leopold’s Ice Cream first, right around the corner, and shared a sundae. I remember saying to her, “Hey, I think this is our Valentine’s date, grandma!” and that made her laugh. We even had a good parking spot, if I remember correctly. My grandmother has been dead several months now, but I am glad of every good day and good night I created for her. Casablanca was a good night.
Now, you might think there is no need to leave your house and go to a theater when you could just as easily watch a film at home. It’s the same movie either way and the experience can’t really be that different. This makes intuitive sense, but is nonetheless wrong. Watching Casablanca in a 1921 movie palace alongside 1,000 other people was in no way similar to watching it alone on my couch. First of all, I had forgotten, or perhaps had never fully appreciated, how funny the movie is. I knew, and yet I didn’t really know. Not until hundreds of people were all roaring together at the jokes. The Epstein brothers’ dialogue just snaps, crackles, and pops like Rice Krispies and the entire cast are experts at delivering it.
The cast member who portrays the drollest character and notches the most laughs is Claude Rains in the role of Capt. Louis Renault. That’s him wearing black in the picture up top and it’s him in the Shocked, shocked! gif. He’s a favorite of mine and I am tickled by his newly established meme-fame. Claude Rains was basically a “Hey, it’s that guy!” of golden age Hollywood. He took leading roles on occasion, but really found his niche as a supporting actor. You’ll be seeing a lot of him on this blog because I have so many of his movies. Obsessing over his résumé is what originally led me to watch Casablanca and, of course, Louis Renault was always my favorite character. So, aside from realizing on that Valentine’s night how funny Casablanca is, imagine my silent shock when I suddenly thought to myself, “Holy shit. Louis Renault is a serial rapist.”
It had been a few years since I last watched the movie. Nothing had changed about Casablanca since then, but oh boy, my perspective on the world certainly had been altered. The Me Too movement was in the air, I’d been in two different productions of The Vagina Monologues, I’d met new people and found new communities. Whatever year it was I had last seen Casablanca before watching it again at the Lucas, I had not even had the right vocabulary then to encompass Louis Renault’s behavior. Clearly, no one in 1942 did either. Does this revelation ruin the movie for me or wreck the character? Not at all. It just makes everything interesting in a whole new way. I became even more fascinated with a movie I thought I knew. Casablanca has a completely different narrative for me now, one that is neither comedy nor romance.
Capt. Louis Renault is written as a scamp, a lovable rascal, an indomitable playboy. I can still perceive him that way, but now I can also see him as a remarkably well-written villain. Renault isn’t a Nazi, but he’s no less a monster than Major Strasser. The film is alarmingly explicit in depicting how Louis Renault abuses his authority in exchange for sexual favors. It’s a little more subtle in implying that he might also be a murderer.
We first get a hint that Capt. Renault is a shameless hound dog in the scene pictured below, where he says this to Rick:
“How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Someday they may be scarce. I think now I shall pay call on Yvonne. Maybe get her on the rebound.”
Hm. Well, so far, he only sounds like a playful philanderer. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not a good man, but not a demon. The implications start to darken, though, in the scene where Victor Laszlo has a tense chit chat with Renault and the Nazi Heinrich Strasser at the police station. After asking to talk to Ugarte, whom Renault had arrested the previous night, Strasser informs him Ugarte has died in custody. Renault follows up off-handedly:
“I’m making out the report now. We haven’t quite decided whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape.”
I’m not certain if this line’s ambiguity is in the script or if it’s entirely Rains’ delivery. Just two sentences, yet they imply a number of possible scenarios. Was Ugarte’s death truly something that happened when no one was looking and Capt. Renault honestly doesn’t know how to classify it? Did he know escape or suicide were both things Ugarte would try and choose not to take any measures to prevent the outcome? Did Renault know the Nazis would find a way to get to Ugarte, but the murder was done in a way that gives him plausible deniability? Did Renault watch the Nazis kill his prisoner and choose not to act? Or did he actively participate in the murder and, now, cover-up? His use of the word “decide” is extremely cunning. It may mean they are uncertain how Ugarte died, but it’s more likely to mean they have not yet chosen which lie they will tell about his death. All of these scenarios seem plausible because Rains’ character is revealed in all of his previous scenes to be devious, self-interested, cynical, indifferent about his job, corrupt, and perfectly willing to do whatever the Nazis say.
The dark nature of Capt. Louis Renault’s character comes into even starker view right at the end of this scene. Earlier dialogue had revealed that refugees only needed his signature on their papers to leave Casablanca and flee to safety in America. One of his subordinates enters the room to tell him:
“Excuse me, Captain, another visa problem has come up.”
“Show her in.”
Again, just two lines tell us SO MUCH and all of it is bleak. Renault grins impishly at news of the “problem” and delivers his line while adjusting his tie. So, he already knows the person with the problem who needs solving is female and attractive, which means his subordinate officer already knew not to bother him with “problems” that didn’t involve attractive women. So, not only is it made clear within a few seconds that Renault is selling his official signature for sex, we cannot deny he has instituted protocol for it within his department. He has done this so frequently for so long, everyone he commands knows the routine and adheres to it.
I knew, I always knew from the first time I watched the movie what was going on there. But I knew it in sort of a disinterested way. Mostly I thought, “Wow. How was that ok with the Hays office?” How was it ok with the Hays office? Because things don’t stop there. The script just keeps on waving red flags with furious intensity.
“How’s Lady Luck treating you? Aw, too bad. You’ll find him over there.”
That sweet, sad looking woman is named Aninna and the audience has already seen her and her husband twice before: right after the opening credits when they gaze wistfully at an airplane carrying other people to safety, then again for a moment in Renault’s office as Lazslo enters. We already know they are refugees who have made it as far as North Africa and are looking for a way to complete their journey. Renault’s brief inquiry above makes it clear he knows their story too. The “him” he directs her to is Rick Blane.
Aninna has quite a long and agonizing scene with Rick. It’s too long for me to transcribe the dialogue here, so have a clip from YouTube.
We learn a lot in those 2 minutes. First, Aninna and her husband are the “problem” from the earlier scene. Second, Renault is trying to extort sex from her in exchange for an exit visa and has sent her to Rick to basically vet the reliability of his promise. Third, she desperately wants Rick’s reassurance that she is not a bad person for having sex with a strange man in order to save both herself and her husband.
The actress portrays her dilemma with painful sincerity. She really gives a face to Renault’s countless unseen victims. The exploitation of refugees, especially refugee women, is a human rights violation that goes on to this day. It’s one of the most hideous violations a person can commit. I kind of feel like the Epstein brothers and Michael Curtiz (the director) deserve some kudos for acknowledging the problem at all and making so much space for it in their movie. But then Rick saves the day and averts the crisis and the movie goes right back to playing Renault’s transgressions for laughs.
“I’ll be in tomorrow night with a breathtaking blonde. And it will make me very happy if she loses.”
Renault chides Rick for interfering with his “little romances” and cheerfully asks him to refrain from coming to anyone’s rescue the next night. Louis, you’ve only really got one friend and you expect him to keep on enabling your depravity after he’s gotten a close-up look at it? Gross, dude. Louis Renault: Nazi collaborator, serial rapist, and shitty friend. Also, boo on the filmmakers for introducing the whole sexual exploitation storyline and then refusing to truly examine it. No kudos for you after all.
So, Louis Renault is clearly a bad man in-universe. And yet, he was not presented to audiences as one of the bad guys. He’s not intended to be the villain of the film or a villain at all. He gets the cinematic good guy treatment, as a matter of fact. Renault has a redemption arc and he even walks away with the prize every other character was after: Rick. Renault is basically the winner of the movie. He walks off into the fog with 10,000 francs and Richard Blane. Oh, and if you’ve ever uttered the phrase “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” guess what: that is also from Casablanca! It’s the last line of the film.
So, how was all this ok with the Hays office? I’m pretty sure Louis Renault’s subplot violates several provisions of the Motion Picture Production Code. Section 3 says of seduction and rape:
They should never be introduced as subject matter unless absolutely essential to the plot
They should never be treated as comedy
And farther down, the Code declares:
Criminals should not be made heroes, even if they are historical criminals.
There the rules are, printed in black and white; yet Casablanca definitely breaks them, also in black and white. This says a lot about morals and perception in 1942. No one making the film or censoring it recognized Renault’s scam for the truly monstrous act it was. It seems to have never dawned on them, as it still does not for many people, that coercing sex from people under your authority is a type of rape. And so the Epstein brothers never included any kind of comeuppance for Louis Renault in their script. The Nazi collaborator is redeemed by the heroic action of his American friend and he simply walks away from the scene of all his crimes.
So, what kind of movie is Casablanca to me now? It’s still a great American classic and I still love watching it. It’s still an inspiring work of patriotic art. But there’s a second movie for me now inside the first one. It’s a gritty, cynical, and depressingly realistic tale about a predator who corrupts nearly everyone he interacts with. He is abetted by a society that does not recognize his crimes as crimes at all, written by people in a real-world society who also did not recognize his crimes for what they were. I watched Casablanca for years, unable to see what was right in front of me until I had gained more perspective on the world.
As my knowledge has broadened, my emotions have deepened. I don’t mind feeling many different ways about this movie at the same time. I hope you, too, learn to be at ease feeling uneasy as you revisit your old favorites.