#3 ‘Casablance’
War, Whiskey, and White Men’s Wistful Regret
Let’s dim the lights, cue the piano, and watch yet another emotionally unavailable man drink through his feelings while the world burns around him. Casablanca, the 1942 sacred cow of Golden Age Hollywood, is one of those films people insist is romantic—the kind of romantic that only makes sense if you think passive aggression, moral superiority, and sacrificing women for the greater good is the apex of love.
Here we have Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, the original Sad Suit With a Scotch. Rick owns a nightclub in Vichy-controlled Morocco—a fascist pitstop full of spies, cynics, and men who only know how to express emotion by lighting cigarettes. He’s brooding, bitter, and probably hasn’t slept since 1939. We’re told he “sticks his neck out for nobody,” which in male-coded cinema means he’s a hero. In real life, we’d call him emotionally stunted and in desperate need of therapy.
Enter Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman with the kind of luminous restraint reserved for female characters whose job is to look radiant while being railroaded by male decisions. She’s Rick’s old flame who vanished in Paris and now reappears with a resistance hero in tow. And what does Rick do? Does he talk about his feelings? No. He emotionally stonewalls her, takes petty swipes, and then finally decides that the best way to show his love is to shove her onto a plane like excess baggage and whisper something noble about “the problems of three little people.”
Translation: I love you, but not enough to give up my moral vanity project.
We’re supposed to believe Rick’s sacrifice is brave, selfless, iconic. But it’s not love. It’s martyrdom wrapped in trench coat chic. Rick doesn’t grow—he chooses to remain the world-weary martyr, forever haunted by what might’ve been, because that way he never has to do anything emotionally difficult, like forgive. Or stay. Or choose love over war games.
Let’s not forget that this entire narrative hinges on the idea that two men (Rick and Victor Laszlo) are the true arbiters of Ilsa’s future, trading her between them like she’s a symbol of moral clarity. The resistance leader needs her to humanize him. Rick needs her to hurt him. Nowhere in the film does anyone stop to ask what Ilsa actually wants. She’s just the emotional shuttle between two men’s ideological wrestling match.
Yes, the dialogue crackles. Yes, the lighting is sumptuous. Yes, Dooley Wilson’s “As Time Goes By” will melt even the hardest shell. But let’s not pretend Casablanca is a great romance. It’s a shrine to male ego dressed up as sacrifice. A story where love is less about connection and more about control, withholding, and the holy act of letting go… without ever asking.
2 out of 5 fog machines
(One for the piano. One for Claude Rains, the only character who seems to know he’s in a melodramatic fever dream. The rest? Round up the usual male self-pity.)
