Casablanca’s Conscience

Whalen (emeritus, history, Queens Univ. of Charlotte, NC; Murder, Inc., and the Moral Life) ruminates on eternal themes of love, betrayal, sacrifice, fidelity, and cynicism in Casablanca, the perennially popular 1942 film. Quickly made in 10 weeks, the film won three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Whalen takes the classic concerns of the movie’s characters, heightened in the context of war, and frames them with the philosophies of three World War II–era contemporaries: Hannah Arendt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Albert Camus. Whalen asserts that the film’s favor among repeat viewers might come from helping audiences envision themselves as they would want to behave under war conditions, rather than how they actually would behave. He argues that Casablanca still packs a positive message today, although constrained by the film’s dated views of gender and race.