Three Models of Love in Casablanca

I want to offer a reading of the classic film Casablanca through the lens of a conception of love developed in bell hooks's All About Love. In that series of essays, hooks picks up on ideas of M. Scott Peck's in The Road Less Traveled.  Peck, whether explicitly or not - I haven't read that book - is developing Aristotelian notions.  Leaving that aside, and taking a few liberties with what hooks has to say, the concept of love that I want to make use of here is roughly this: a mutual social-psychological orientation between a group of people through which they systematically contribute to each other's spiritual growth. (Here 'spiritual' can be given a more directly Aristotelian reading in terms of virtue, or others.  These differences do not matter for present purposes.) 

A few quick points: this is meant in the sense of concept crafting. That is, the claim is not that this notion captures the (all, even some) commonsense usage of 'love' but that it is a useful concept for cutting some aspects of moral-social-psychological reality at the joints. Note as well that this notion of love is not at all essentially tied to romantic love. It applies as well to friendship, parenting, political comreades, members of a close social group, etc. Importantly, this sense of love is not equated with affect or emotion, though some sorts of emotional engagement may be necessary. It is essentially measured by effect. Love is a relationship that leads to mutual growth, reinforced by the relationships that nurture it. Finally, note the emphasis on mutuality - which is not to say symmetry. A loving relationship is one in which each nurtures the growth of the others.  There may be healthy relationships that nurture growth in one direction, but that is something different, and something that is very likely to quickly become unhealthy. 

With that all in mind, let's consider a reading of Casablanca. Here, I'm not suggesting that this is what anyone behind the film had in mind, or even that every detail of the film fits the reading. Rather, I suggest that we can use the three central love relationships in that film to illustrate this, to my mind, important concept of love. The first relationship is that of Rick and Ilsa - the one most typically thought of as the central love of the film. This relationship has all the paradigmatic affect, all the passion, all the intensity of romantic love. And essentially nothing else. There is no sense of mutual growth in particular. Indeed, Rick and Ilsa are arguably bad for one another. Certainly post-Paris the relationship has harmed both, leaving Rick bitter and resentful - though never consistently so - and Ilsa a bit lost and broken. But I think there is a shallowness and selfishness to the relationship even as it is portrayed in Paris. To me it always had the feeling of an escapist fantasy: as the Nazis march into Paris, they drink champaign and look lovingly at one another. What is the plan the next day? Will their "love" matter to it? Is either changed for the better by this love? I cannot see how.

The second great relationship of the film is that of Ilsa and Victor. And here, we are told that Ilsa is essential to what Victor is and must become. (This is not the greatest moment of the film, in my view. Whereas so much is so beautifully shown in the film, this is something we have to be told, in extended speeches by Rick.) But however much this might be, there is no sense of mutuality in this relationship. Where is the growth for Ilsa? Who is she beyond "a part of his work, the thing that keeps him going?" If she doesn't go with him, Rick announces that she will regret it, maybe not today, but soon and for the rest of her life. But why, exactly? Because the man who survived the camps will crumble without Ilsa? Pah.

And finally, there is Rick and Louis. In the first part of the film, they form a sort of buddy-pair. Both, I think, are shown as damaged men. Rick, obviously so, someone hiding in booze and cynicism from a personal hurt that he cannot let go of. Louis is more subtle, and for a long time in the film one can see him as simply a common corrupt official. But in retrospect, given the ending, I think this is not plausible. There would simply be no explanaion for the sudden massive change if this was all there was before. Corrupt officials do not sudenly murder Nazi leaders and head off into the night with bartenders. And indeed, there are numerous hints throughout that there is more to Louis - that his collaboration, his self-indulgence, his corruption are masks as well. We do not know what they are masking, unlike Rick's well-developed past, but in a place like Casablanca, it is not hard to imagine that everyone has sucy a past. It is, after all, introduced as the city where refugees wait, and wait, and wait.

And it is, I think, clear through this whole period that Louis and Rick need one another. that they keep each other going in their mutual retreat from themselves as they deal with their wounds. Watch again the sly interactions, the smiles, the way Louis says "I worry about you, Rick." Or the way that Rick makes Louis into a "sentimentalist". There is a kind of care here, seeing to it that neither altogether loses his soul, despite the sense that time is needed for full recovery.

And then, of course, the ending. One can see this all as a carefully orchestrated plan by Rick, but this is certainly not the only way to read the scene. One can see Rick and Louis approaching the climax of the film together, neither knowing what they will do, both looking to the other to support the important consumation that neither can achieve alone. If one sees the climax as consisting in Isla and Victor flying off to Lisbon and later America, and the final ending as mere denouement, it is a rather lame ending. It is, after all, hard to see what possible good Victor will be to the war effort in the US. He mattered as a symbol in Europe, as a resistance fighter, but in the US?

But if we seen the climax to be the stepping away from cynicism of Rick and Louis, together, as they join the fight - this becomes a film about mutual redemption through love. They show each other the way back to right relation to a broken world. The problems of three little people may not mount to a hill of beans, but the start of a beautiful friendship... It is Victor who sees the point of genuine love: "Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win."

That, I think, is the point of the love that really matters in this film. That the beautiful friendship can bring both back to the fight. 
(h/t to Lynne Tirrel, Amy Hubbard, and Chris Crass for helping me think about this.)