The Casablanca Connection

You must remember this… ah, the ambiguity of the serviceable lyric.  I don’t suggest for a moment that it's in Sondheim’s league, but it’s a good fit for its melody and seems to mean something.  But what am I being besought to remember and why does it matter?  A kiss is still a kiss – was I on the point of suggesting that actually, in these brutal times, a kiss has become a dislocated hip?  A sigh is just a sigh, maybe, but much depends on the context.  But what of that initial entreaty: is it – surely you haven’t forgotten, perhaps that particular kiss in 1969 when the Bee Gees’ “World” was spinning away on the radiogram?  I never forget the music – perhaps you just remember the kiss?  Oh come on, darling, you were there!

Or is it a more direct imperative: here is something I command you to retain for easy recall?  You must remember this, or you’re in trouble.  I’m playing a detective in a farce in May, must get learning my lines, and above all the timing on which parts of the outrageous storyline depend.  I mustn’t see the briefcase with all the stolen money in it.  I need to turn away just before it briefly pops out of its hidey-hole.  I must remember that.

In “Casablanca” Rick is haunted by memory.  He cannot help remembering the road he didn’t take which is forever coming to mind, making him the cynical survivor that we see in the first few scenes.  There's a certain song that the bar pianist is forbidden to play or it will bring everything back. Then into his gin-joint, out of all the others in all the towns in the world that she might have chosen, walks Ilsa, the woman he once loved and thought would be his for ever, united by that song among other things, so she gets Sam to play it again.  Rick is furious; he remembers being dumped for reasons she couldn’t explain at the time.  But now she can; so that’s kind of all right, because they’ll always have Paris.  Rick will always have his memories to keep him warm and for quite a while it seems he’ll have Ilsa as well; husband Lazlo is a marked man.

At the film’s climax it seems that Rick and Ilsa will fly into the sunset together but no: happy ever afters all around ain’t possible when there’s three in the relationship.  Something has to give and it’s Rick: why?  Because if Ilsa comes with him, her memories will be all wrong: she’ll regret it “maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”  So she stays with her husband; while for his happiness Rick embarks on the “beautiful friendship” with Louis, in one of cinema's great exit lines.

Happiness has to do with getting your memories to behave themselves, learning to feed on what sustains, to discard what drains and distresses you.  In mental health work I constantly meet people tormented by toxic memories.  With dementia patients it’s important to do the reminiscence work, find out what they can remember and help them to feel at home in those parts of their mind where they’re safe and don’t fall through the holes into chaos and disorientation.  I can’t tell my father aw, come on, you must remember this: but I will explore with him what he does remember.  While he still can.  

Casablanca has to be one of the most quoted-from films of all time, the memorable sharpness of its script is part of the poignancy that makes it one of the world’s favourites.  C’mon, you can all think of a few lines…. Here’s looking at you kid.  Play it, Sam.  You must remember this.  There are some other blogs with the same name even.