Observations on second pass through Casablanca / Citizen Kane

this is a casablanca appreciation account!

You might know that I really like classic American movies! It started with Godfather trilogy in 2022, before I’d stepped foot in America, and I’ve just kept on watching them to try and understand this country better. I’ve talked about Sullivan and Merrily and Gattaca on this blog. Each post is unrelatable if you haven’t seen the film. But the day you happen to finish one of these shows, you’re glad for a fun review to read. Slow-burn posts.

Casablanca (1942) I first watched in Dec. ‘24. Citizen Kane (1940) I first tried to watch on a United flight earlier this 2026, but to be honest, my P100 mask was under the headphones, and there weren’t any subtitles. I’ve started putting P100 over the headphones, and finally got blown away by this film :)

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Conviction

Citizen Kane is pretty clichéd / stereotypical in its preoccupation over whether spineless Kane has any morals. It’s Burr from Hamilton and Burr — the consequences of “standing for nothing”. We get these sorts of reports:

“He had a generous mind; I don’t suppose anyone had so many opinions. But he never believed in anything except Charlie Kane; he never had a conviction except Charlie Kane and his life. I suppose he died without one. Of course, a lot of us check out without any special convictions about death, but we do know what we’re leaving; we do believe in something.”

In Casablanca, having no convictions is a point of pride. 🤭

“I have no conviction, you see. I blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy.”

Rick’s coworkers, shocked and ecstatic: — “Boss, you’ve done a beautiful thing!”; Rick, stony-faced: “Get outta here, you crazy Russian!”

“I’m not fighting for anything anymore except myself. I’m the only cause I’m interested in.”

In Casablanca, convictions and sentimentalities are to be disavowed — IMO because their ambient presence is greater; it can be assumed. I’d rather live where people have convictions but disavow them than the converse.

Good People

Casablanca > Citizen Kane because it has better characters. Conviction is so present, so assumed that it has to be repressed, disavowed — counter-signaling of the highest degree. Unlike in Kane, characters are not jealous. Laszlo begs Rick to go with Ilsa so she might live. You see, Casablanca is a movie filled with good people, and Citizen Kane is filled with shitty people, and I want to watch movies about good people at the end of the day.

Everyone self-sacrificing. So fucking transcendental

Casablanca

Internal Systems / Duopoly of Self

Rick Blaine: Who did you bribe for your visa? Renault or yourself?

Ugarte: Myself. I found myself much more reasonable.

Renault: “It would never do for the Chief of Police to be caught drinking after hours and have to fine himself.”

Rick Blaine: Well, so long. Don't forget you owe Rick's 100 cartons of American cigarettes.

Ferrari: I shall remember to pay it to myself.

Some Croatian Mikulec also notices this. Blogs make me feel more connected to my fellow audience members :)

Questions

• Rick actually does sell his bar, Rick’s, to Ferrari. So he actually seriously intended to leave on the plane? Or just knew he’d have to leave for good after assisting Laszlo & Ilsa? Where did he plan to go next, if not on the plane to Lisbon? Brazzaville was Renault’s suggestion.

• This badass activist gathering — “the Underground meeting” — it sounds so adolescent. Like the Animal Liberation Front in Okja. Cool, and edgy, but ineffectual. What could really have happened of such importance at Casablanca’s ‘Underground Meet’? (genuine q for people more familiar with historical European resistance to Nazi encroachment).

• How was the airport ready if Renault didn’t call them?

• Why can’t Rick return to America?

The Urgency of Telepathy

“You’d say anything now to get what you want.” Ilsa needs an activation oracle / thought-to-text. Rick cannot trust her self-reports — won’t let himself.

Social Grace

Fun obsequiousness that greases the wheals

1. “I was informed that you are the most beautiful woman ever to visit Casablanca. That was a gross understatement.”

He does not actually believe this. I did not pick this up on first pass. But it’s like charismatic people who go, “ah, two of my favorite people!” to acquaintances, playing up their affection. Prosocial

2. “It was much more than we thought to get here” — these gentle lies I never would’ve caught before. I’m quite confident they set out without enough funds from the start. But when you get yourself in a pickle, people will help you out of it — more so than if you did not leap in the first place. That’s why it’s quite important to “dive in”.

Observations

• Ilsa doesn’t tell Laszlo, but Rick does. lmaooo

• The way Rick responds to Ilsa’s crying — in Paris and in Casablanca — oh.

• “It wasn’t my secret — I knew so much about his work, and if the Gestapo found out — ”

• “You might as well question why we breathe.” Laszlo’s very death-or-liberty

• “Ilsa is Laszlo’s wife. She probably knows things Strasser would like to know.” Ah — the days this was true between spouses — before today’s security-clearances and NDAs :)

• The Germans thumping on the piano with the letters in it, OMG.

  • Putting letters of transit in the piano in front of everyone — damn.

• Lol, initially I interpreted “you are a man” as “you are a mensch” or “you’re the man, thank you”. “And if that girl did a very bad thing [for a man she hadn’t met yet]?” Concrete-abstract bias

• I also know now that one interpretation of ‘the person you love most / best’ is the person you tell everything. And Rick knows everything. But Ilsa does not tell Laszlo everything. To Laszlo she says “be careful”, not “I love you”. I genuinely couldn’t really read how her affections were distributed on first pass, bar “they all three of them love the cause more”

• It’s so campy. Renault is so campy. All of it, the resistance, everything

• “You knew what it would be like running? […] I’m settled now” aa

• Sam is an IC, the most gifted entertainer in town. The others participate in politics, the art of the possible

• The goddamn search lights in the background — how aren’t they seen?

• Ilss comes out in a curfew. She has interpersonal agency.

• You can actually do KQV self-attention over a movie on your second pass. Spoiler-free is great; knowing what’s coming is also great.

One last observation I didn’t make on first pass:

“Why don’t we get married in Marseilles?”
“That’s too far ahead to plan”
“Yes, I suppose it is a little too far ahead.”

(later chronologically, earlier in the movie):

“Where were you last night?”
“That’s so long ago, I don’t remember.”
“Will I see you tonight?”
“I never make plans that far ahead.”

• Masking interpersonal strife in the stress of the times — “I love you so much. And I hate this war so much.” It is not for the war that she cries.

Other epic / classic movies I’ve enjoyed this past year:

•⁠ ⁠⁠Gone With The Wind

•⁠ ⁠⁠The Color Purple

•⁠ ⁠⁠Brokeback Mountain

•⁠ Titanic

& screwballs that were worth watching for other reasons:

•⁠ ⁠Devil Wears Prada (1 & 2) (for inter-relatability more than for myself)

•⁠ ⁠⁠Moulin Rouge! (striking depiction of desperate camaraderie)

I still have to watch more classic Hollywood TC recommended: “Key Largo”, “Bringing up Baby”, “High Noon”, “Night of the Hunter”, “Pillow Talk”.

Claude recommended me some new shows! I loved Atonement in 2024. This whole genre also echoes Casino Royale, Miss Saigon, Evita, etc.. Also GPT’s recs (probs better / more precise).

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is just a colder uglier universe than the illustrious Casablanca, so it doesn’t do to dwell on it too much — but a few remarks:

Rights vs. Gifts

“You're not going to like that one little bit when you find out it means that your workingman expects something is his right, not as your gift!”

It reminds me of Peronism:

Eva: But to give all my descamisados
A magical moment or two

Che: To look never further than this week or next week
To have no impossible dream?

Love

Citizen Kane — what the obsessive desire to be loved will do to a person.

“Wasn’t he ever in love with her?” // “He married for love. That’s why he did everything. That’s why he went into politics; it seems we weren’t enough; he wanted all the voters to love him too. That’s all he wanted out of life, was love. That’s Charlie’s story, how he lost it. You see, he just didn’t have any to give. Oh, he loved Charlie Kane of course, very dearly. And his mother, I guess he always loved her.”

“For you and this public thief to take the love of the people of the state away from me?”

“You just want to persuade people that you love them so much that they ought to love you back — only you want love on your own terms. It’s something to be played your way, according to your rules.”

“You don’t love me. You want me to love you.”

Quotes

• “How did I find business conditions in Europe? With great difficulty.”

  “I’m always glad to be back, young man. I’m an American. Always been an American.”

• “I’ve got to make the New York Inquirer as important to New York as the gas in that light!” intelligence / information as utility. 467 employees!

• “There’s always a chance, of course, that they’ll change Mr. Kane — without his knowing it!” (when the Inquirer acquires the Chronicle men)

• “The Spanish-American war” — gosh. Just like the Anglo-French War, Russo-German War, and Sino-American War in Last and First Men. “If we hadn’t had that war, we’d have the Panama Canal.”

• Some basic, tired tropes: “Maybe I wasn’t his friend, but if I wasn’t he never had one”. // “You really like me, though, even though you don’t know who I am.” // “I don’t know what you’ll do. Sail away to a desert island, probably, & lord it over the monkeys.” // “He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own, an absolute monarchy.”

• ‘Reality is negotiable’: “That a whole audience just doesn’t want you—”
  “That’s when you gotta fight them.”

• Sovereignty: “There's only one person in the world who's going to decide what I'm going to do and that's me.”

Take me back to Casablanca any day!