The Death of the Romance Movie

By Brian Long

There is an occurrence in film history that I call “the death of a genre.” This is when a film, or series of films, is released that perfectly encapsulates everything great about that particular type of movie that it sets an unreachable goal that other movies of this ilk strive to reach, but often fail. Why do you think Westerns are pretty much nonexistent in modern movies? With the release of the Sergio Leone “Dollars” movies, the standard for westerns became impossibly high. That high tension style and camera work was often replicated but never with recreated the same emotional resonance that Leone mastered. Sometimes a genre dies because the tropes become overworked and cliché: in any detective story, we know that the murdered husband’s wife will seduce the detective to cover up the fact that she killed/paid someone to kill/had her identical twin kill her husband. Or, a genre gets beaten to death by a consistently, mind-numbingly awful output (it was nice know you, spoof movies).

I want to sit you down and break the news to you of the death of another genre. The romance. The cause of death? That would be the reason stated above. A film has already been made that makes any other romance movie seem insignificant. That movie would be Casablanca. And here is the forensics report:

1. Love vs. Nazis

For those of you who have never seen or heard of Casablanca, let me be the first to welcome you after your emergence the cryogenic chamber you must have spent the last 80 years sleeping in. How crazy is this internet thing, huh? The plot of Casablanca is as follows: Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is an American expatriate who has resigned himself to living out the rest of his days in the Moroccan city of Casablanca while running a night club called “Rick’s” which is pretty much the Dave and Buster’s of the Mediterranean. Rick is a surly gentleman with a heart of gold who wound up in Morocco after the Nazis goose-stepped his punk ass all over France. Rick got out of town and planned to take the woman he had fallen in love with, Ilsa (Ingrid Berman), away with him, but she vanishes, leaving only a note saying she cannot join him. Let’s face it, dumping someone on the day the Nazis took over their hometown is pretty cold, so you can forgive Rick for not exactly being sunshine and lollipops when Ilsa strolls back into his gin joint years later. Especially when he discovers that she had been married this whole time to an Austrian freedom fighter by the name of Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid). Almost every romance has some kind of antagonist. Someone who is trying to keep the two lovers apart: douche exes, crazy friends, in-laws, sharks, the list goes on. Casablanca utilizes the ultimate evil: Nazis. Casablanca reminds us that true love can conquer all, even the greatest evil the world has ever seen.

2. Humphrey Bogart

C’mon ladies, look at that panty-melter up there. He’s like twelve Channing Tatums on a Bradley Cooper sandwich.

3. The script makes Shakespeare’s work look like American Pie: The Naked Mile

Look. Shakespeare. Love him, great guy. What’s amazing about his work is that, over the course of his career, he created popular phrases that people use almost every day. Pretty impressive, right? Yeah, Casablanca did that WITH ONE MOVIE. If you’ve ever said or heard the following phrases “play it again, Sam,” “we’ll always have Paris,” “round up the usual suspects,” “this looks like the start of a beautiful friendship,” “here’s looking at you, kid,” you can thank Casablanca. It also invented high fives. Don’t fact check that, I’m right.

4. The Ending (I’d say spoilers, but seriously, this movie is over 50 years old)

The film ends with Rick telling Ilsa that she needs to go with Victor. She’s the woman who, as Rick puts it “keeps him going,” and without her, Lazlo would perhaps give up on his cause and the world would lose a great man when it needs it most. Would Ilsa truly have been happy staying in Casablanca with Rick? Hell no. The guy runs a second rate Caesar’s Palace in the sandy butt crack of the world that’s really only popular because anything is better than watching camels have a pissing race or going to the Blue Parrot (their mozzarella sticks are TERRIBLE). Nowadays we can’t seem to handle it when the couple doesn’t get together in the end. That is why we go to the movies, I suppose. We want to live in a world where we get the girl or guy in the end and live happily ever after; which is why the next Nicholas Spark’s adaptation “I Forgot How to Love”, where a woman gets into a bumper car accident and forgets how to wear hats until a handsome haberdasher teaches her how to put them on again…and so much more, will make a billion dollars at the box office. Casablanca understands that the real world isn’t like the world of the movies. Instead, our hero lets the girl go. He understands that the happiness of others is more important than his own happiness. And if you’re gonna lose the love of your life, that’s a pretty ballah way to do it.

So please, Hollywood. Spare us all the awful romances that you have in production, thirty of which no doubt star Gerard Butler, and let us watch Casablanca in peace. Oh, and give up on romantic comedies too, Annie Hall has that market cornered.