Editing Casablanca (film) (section)

== Interpretation ==
''Casablanca'' has been subjected to many readings; [[Semiotics|semioticians]] account for the film's popularity by claiming that its inclusion of [[stereotype]]s paradoxically strengthens the film.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pontuso |first=James F. |title=Political Philosophy Comes to Rick's: Casablanca and American Civic Culture |publisher=Lexington Books |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-7391-1113-0 |page=79 |chapter=Casablanca and the Paradoxical Truth of Stereotyping |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gb2MJdqN2owC&pg=PA79 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160516134800/https://books.google.com/books?id=gb2MJdqN2owC&pg=PA79 |archive-date=May 16, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Raleigh |first=Henry P. |date=April 2003 |title=Archetypes: What You Need to Know About Them |url=https://www.arttimesjournal.com/film/archetypes.htm |url-status=live |journal=Art Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110707172751/http://www.arttimesjournal.com/film/archetypes.htm |archive-date=July 7, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Morrow |first=Lance |date=December 27, 1982 |title=We'll Always Have Casablanca |url=https://time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,923243-2,00.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604054834/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C923243-2%2C00.html |archive-date=June 4, 2011 |magazine=Time}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Clayton |first1=Jay |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3bzpxp_FHj8C&pg=PA32 |title=Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History |last2=Rothstein |first2=Eric |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-299-13034-3 |page=32 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429181456/https://books.google.com/books?id=3bzpxp_FHj8C&pg=PA32 |archive-date=April 29, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> Umberto Eco wrote:

{{blockquote|Thus ''Casablanca'' is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control. And this is the reason it works, in spite of aesthetic theories and theories of film making. For in it there unfolds with almost telluric force the power of Narrative in its natural state, without Art intervening to discipline it&nbsp;... When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach [[Homer]]ic depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.<ref>[[Umberto Eco|Eco, Umberto]], ''Travels in Hyperreality'' (1986)<br />- {{Cite web |last=Eco, Umberto |author-link=Umberto Eco |title=Casablanca, or, The Clichés are Having a Ball |url=http://shipwrecklibrary.com/eco/eco_casablanca.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090308125514/http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_casablanca.html |archive-date=March 8, 2009 |access-date=May 20, 2009 |df=mdy}}</ref>}}

Eco also singled out sacrifice as a theme: "the myth of sacrifice runs through the whole film".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Eco, Umberto |title=Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers |date=1994 |publisher=Bedford Books |editor-last=Sonia Maasik |editor-last2=Jack Solomon}}</ref> It was this theme that resonated with a wartime audience who were reassured by the idea that painful sacrifice and going off to war could be romantic gestures done for the greater good.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gabbard |first1=Krin |last2=Gabbard |first2=Glen O. |author-link2=Glen Gabbard |date=1990 |title=Play It Again, Sigmund: Psychoanalysis and the Classical Hollywood Text |journal=Journal of Popular Film and Television |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=6–17 |doi=10.1080/01956051.1990.9943650}}</ref>

Koch also considered the film a political [[allegory]]. Rick is compared to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gambled "on the odds of going to war until circumstance and his own submerged nobility force him to close his casino (partisan politics) and commit himself—first by financing the Side of Right and then by fighting for it". The connection is reinforced by the film's title, which means "[[White House|white house]]".<ref>{{Harvnb|Koch|1973|p=166}}</ref>

Harvey Greenberg presents a [[Freudian]] reading in his ''The Movies on Your Mind'', in which the transgressions that prevent Rick from returning to the United States constitute an [[Oedipus complex]], which is resolved only when Rick begins to identify with the father figure of Laszlo and the cause that he represents.<ref>Greenberg, Harvey (1975). ''The Movies on Your Mind'' New York: Saturday Review Press, p. 88 quoted in {{Harvnb|Rosenzweig|1982|page=79}} and Harmetz, p. 348</ref> Sidney Rosenzweig argues that such readings are reductive and that the most important aspect of the film is its ambiguity, above all in the central character of Rick; he cites the different names that each character gives Rick (Richard, Ricky, Mr. Rick, Herr Rick and boss) as evidence of the different meanings that he has for each person.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rosenzweig|1982|page=81}}</ref>