“Casablanca”: Not Bogart’s Best

A freshly struck print of “Casablanca” hits theatres today. Writing about the rerelease earlier this week, David Denby noted that “in the entire history of American cinema only a few other movies—‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ‘The Godfather’—have been loved as much and as well as ‘Casablanca.’” Such adulation was not universal when the film was released, seventy years ago. The New Yorker’s David Lardner gave “Casablanca” a lukewarm review, declaring that Michael Curtiz’s film was “not quite up to ‘Across the Pacific,’ Bogart’s last spyfest.”

As Denby writes, “‘Casablanca’ was completed in 1942, but it’s set in December, 1941, the time of Pearl Harbor.” It is quite possible that Lardner’s perspective on the film’s timeless qualities may have been obscured by timely news from the North Africa campaign, then being fought in Morocco and Algeria. The title of Lardner’s review was “Pre-Eisenhower,” a reference to Casablanca being one of the targets of Operation Torch, an assault commanded by General Dwight Eisenhower in November of 1942:

The Casablanca on the screen is the old Casablanca of three or four weeks ago, and much of the heavy intrigue indulged in by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, and Paul Henreid has presumably been cleaned up by the army of occupation by now, but there is probably enough topical truth left in the picture to suit the topical-minded. Not to speak of the eternal truths always to be found in the better screenplays. _The entire article—and the complete archives of The New Yorker, back to 1925—is available to subscribers. Non-subscribers can purchase the individual issue.

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