Big shot
Here’s looking at Casablanca’s closer.
Filmed in 1942, Casablanca was rushed into production to capitalise on interest in the WW2 campaigns in North Africa and, as such, didn’t have a completed script when filming started. Stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman weren’t especially thrilled with the project and had no idea of how their on-screen romance would end as they began shooting (sequentially) the tale of a gin joint owner, Rick (Bogart), in the Vichy-controlled titular Moroccan town, who awakens his patriotism and heroism when his ex, Ilsa (Bergman), walks through his door.
As it happens, the final scene in which Rick nobly sacrifices his own happy ending in favour of saving Ilsa’s Czech resistance fighter husband by putting both him and her on a plane bound for Lisbon has become an all-time classic, with now iconic quotes.
Noir in lensing and desperately romantic, it sees Ilsa gazing lovingly at Rick – eyes brimming – as he tells her their problems do not amount to a hill of beans amid enigmatic swirling fog. Not geographically correct of course (Casablanca isn’t known for its pea-soupers), but with Pearl Harbor having recently happened and filming at physical airfields prohibited for security reasons, the production was forced to complete this key scene on sound stages. A full-size plane wouldn’t fit on set so the crew devised a small-scale cardboard cut-out of a Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior aeroplane and created a forced perspective to make it look like the bird was waiting on the tarmac. The billowing fake fog was a necessity to veil this trick
– as well as the small people brought in to look like distant mechanics tinkering with the plane.
Not that romantic? Neither was the box that Bogart, 5cm shorter than Bergman, was standing on during their airside clinch. Or the insistence of cinematographer Arthur Edeson on shooting Bergman from her preferential left side, using a gauze filter and catch lights, to give her an “ineffably sad and tender and nostalgic” look.
The result of all this cinematic subterfuge is a scene of timeless romanticism and aching longing, made all the more devastating by the fact that Rick and Ilsa cannot embrace, their love is transmitted only through those immortal lines, the duo’s yearning eye contact and sorrowful cross-cut close-ups. An evocative, emotional feast for the eyes and heart. As Bogey says, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” JC