Umberto Eco on Aesthetic Mythopoeia (4): Casablanca
from: Umberto Eco, "The Cult of the Imperfect," The Paris Review, October 28, 2019:
According to the traditional aesthetic canons, Casablanca is
not or ought not to be a work of art, if the films of Dreyer,
Eisenstein, and Antonioni are works of art. From the standpoint of
formal coherence Casablanca is a very modest aesthetic product.
It is a hodgepodge of sensational scenes put together in a rather
implausible way, the characters are psychologically improbable, and the
actors’ performance looks slapdash. That notwithstanding, it is a great
example of filmic discourse, and has become a cult movie.
[...]
When we do not know how to deal with a story, we resort to stereotypical
situations since, at least, they have already worked elsewhere. Let’s
take a marginal but significant example. Every time Laszlo orders a
drink (and this happens four times), his choice is always different: (1)
Cointreau, (2) a cocktail, (3) cognac, (4) whisky—once, he drinks
champagne but without having ordered it. Why does a man of ascetic
character demonstrate such inconsistency in his alcoholic preferences?
There is no psychological justification for this. To my mind, every time
this kind of thing happens, Curtiz is unconsciously quoting similar
situations in other films, in an attempt to provide a reasonably
complete range.
[...]
Obliged to invent the plot as they went along, the scriptwriters
threw everything into the mix, drawing on the tried and tested
repertoire. When the choice of tried and tested is limited, the result
is merely kitsch. But when you put in all the tried and tested elements, the result is architecture like Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia: the same dizzying brilliance.
Casablanca is a cult movie because it contains all the
archetypes, because every actor reproduces a part played on other
occasions, and because human beings do not live a “real” life but a life
portrayed stereotypically in previous films. [...] Casablanca stages the powers of narrativity in the natural
state, without art stepping in to tame them.
[...]
When all the archetypes shamelessly burst in, we plumb Homeric depths.
Two clichés are laughable. A hundred clichés are affecting—because we
become obscurely aware that the clichés are talking to one another and
holding a get-together. As the height of suffering meets sensuality, and
the height of depravity verges on mystical energy, the height of
banality lets us glimpse a hint of the sublime.
