Blame it on the Bogart: Searching for Casablanca, the city that isn't like the movie
By Laura Powell
5 October 2011
Dailymail原文链接
“The thing about Casablanca is that it's so real', says Kathy Kriger, the American diplomat- turned-Casablancan landlady, standing in her bar and waving her arms around.
And this is where the problem with Casablanca begins. She is standing in Rick's Cafe, a replica of the gin joint from the 1942 film where Ingrid Bergman's character was reunited with Humphrey Bogart's.
But the film has toyed dangerously with expectations of the real Casablanca. Because Casablanca the film wasn't based on Casablanca the city. And it wasn't filmed in Morocco, but in a Hollywood studio 6,000 miles away. So Rick's Cafe - despite its enormous grand piano, roulette table and potent mojitos - is to Casablanca what Planet Hollywood is to California - a big, embellished fantasy.
And so is the love story. Real, loveless Casablanca is outside this gin joint. Just 20 steps from the bar, past two bouncers - there in all its pungent, fish-smelling, dusty high-rise and fast food-idolising glory, it is.
With a 3.8 million population, it's Morocco's biggest city and its ugliest. It could be the financial epicentre of any developed but not-quite-developed-enough country, only it is grimier and greyer, and the street reeks of mackerel (fishing and fish canning are two of its biggest industries).
And there is an alarming hairstyle trend catching on among the Casablancan men, that involves lots of gel and a quiff to make Elvis's seem tame.
Parisian-type cafes spill into the street, but the chairs are grubby and the tea oily Moroccan mint fare, potent enough to power a car, sometimes peppered with sage, always saturated with sugar.
The patrons are clusters of men - women stick to the hammam for socialising - who talk in huddles and yell 'hello baby,' at passing Western girls. The promenade would overlook a sandy beach spilling onto the Atlantic were it not a magnet for burger chains.
Streets behind the coast are boulevards of shops, though mostly empty or shuttered, apart from a neon-lit Pizza Hut with full tables. There's a Roberto Cavalli boutique, a desperate sign of wealth, but peer inside the dust-clogged windows, and the shelves are empty.
Eighty years ago, this was an Ajax-white city, with an old medina and new buildings springing up on the outskirts. And 120 years before that, Casa, as locals call it, had around 600 inhabitants and a booming trade with Europe. Traders flocked here for grain and wool, grown in the fertile plains surrounding the city.
By the early 20th century, an artificial port was built and a quarry railway was later constructed. It wasn't until French General Hubert Lyautey arrived - after Morocco was made a French Protectorate in 1912 with a grand plan to make Casablanca a financial epicentre - that the city's trademark wide boulevards and modern buildings were constructed outside the old medina, creating the two-faceted city it is today.
One of the largest of these boulevards, Morocco's Fifth Avenue, is Mohammed V. It is home to the Hotel Lincoln. Once an architectural blueprint for Art Deco, it is now a crumbling skeleton of its imperial self, with fallen walls exposing half-disintegrated staircases and families of roosting pigeons.
Even the squatters who once camped here have fled, after one was killed by collapsing brickwork. No one has the energy to begin the back-breaking task of trying to make this hotel - or much of this city - sing again.
Oddly enough, it is at this moment - on ghostly Mohammed V -that I begin to appreciate Casablanca for its funny ways. First there's its spirit to compete with the modern world. Casablancans have already built the world's highest minaret atop Hassan II Mosque - a spire that, at 689ft tall, haughtily cuts the Casablancan skyline. By day, its white granite columns and Italian chandeliers are blinding, and at night the entire mosque glows yellow on the coastline.
The city's souks are a laissez-faire take on Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna. Silver-plated teapots, leather handbags and slippers are sold flippantly in a take-it-or-leave-it style. I wander unbothered through the fish market, past the bloody heads of swordfish, rows of whiting and silvery sardines.
Beyond the sacks of saffron and cumin, I find a courtyard with an art gallery selling hazy depictions of hell in oil paints. Next door are jewelled mirrors, rusting teapots and new-born kittens no bigger than my tightly balled fist. The heat is 35C. The gutsy stench of fish creeps into the courtyard, mixes with the new fur of fresh cat, and that tea.
Were this place Marrakech, we would haggle our hearts out. Were it Hollywood' s Casablanca, some lothario might croon: 'Of all the tea joints in all the towns in all the world...' Instead, no one speaks. There's a sleight of finger over a calculator. We nod on a price. My tiled mirror is wiped with a grey rag, packaged up in brown paper and a second glass of petroleum mint tea served and swallowed.
That's all. As the original Rick said - 'This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship' - with the black sheep of Moroccan cities that is more deliciously real than the rest.
Read more
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
5 October 2011
Dailymail原文链接
“The thing about Casablanca is that it's so real', says Kathy Kriger, the American diplomat- turned-Casablancan landlady, standing in her bar and waving her arms around.
And this is where the problem with Casablanca begins. She is standing in Rick's Cafe, a replica of the gin joint from the 1942 film where Ingrid Bergman's character was reunited with Humphrey Bogart's.
 |
Place Mohammed Square |
But the film has toyed dangerously with expectations of the real Casablanca. Because Casablanca the film wasn't based on Casablanca the city. And it wasn't filmed in Morocco, but in a Hollywood studio 6,000 miles away. So Rick's Cafe - despite its enormous grand piano, roulette table and potent mojitos - is to Casablanca what Planet Hollywood is to California - a big, embellished fantasy.
And so is the love story. Real, loveless Casablanca is outside this gin joint. Just 20 steps from the bar, past two bouncers - there in all its pungent, fish-smelling, dusty high-rise and fast food-idolising glory, it is.
With a 3.8 million population, it's Morocco's biggest city and its ugliest. It could be the financial epicentre of any developed but not-quite-developed-enough country, only it is grimier and greyer, and the street reeks of mackerel (fishing and fish canning are two of its biggest industries).
And there is an alarming hairstyle trend catching on among the Casablancan men, that involves lots of gel and a quiff to make Elvis's seem tame.
Parisian-type cafes spill into the street, but the chairs are grubby and the tea oily Moroccan mint fare, potent enough to power a car, sometimes peppered with sage, always saturated with sugar.
The patrons are clusters of men - women stick to the hammam for socialising - who talk in huddles and yell 'hello baby,' at passing Western girls. The promenade would overlook a sandy beach spilling onto the Atlantic were it not a magnet for burger chains.
Streets behind the coast are boulevards of shops, though mostly empty or shuttered, apart from a neon-lit Pizza Hut with full tables. There's a Roberto Cavalli boutique, a desperate sign of wealth, but peer inside the dust-clogged windows, and the shelves are empty.
 |
Humphrey Bogart Ingrid Bergman |
Eighty years ago, this was an Ajax-white city, with an old medina and new buildings springing up on the outskirts. And 120 years before that, Casa, as locals call it, had around 600 inhabitants and a booming trade with Europe. Traders flocked here for grain and wool, grown in the fertile plains surrounding the city.
By the early 20th century, an artificial port was built and a quarry railway was later constructed. It wasn't until French General Hubert Lyautey arrived - after Morocco was made a French Protectorate in 1912 with a grand plan to make Casablanca a financial epicentre - that the city's trademark wide boulevards and modern buildings were constructed outside the old medina, creating the two-faceted city it is today.
One of the largest of these boulevards, Morocco's Fifth Avenue, is Mohammed V. It is home to the Hotel Lincoln. Once an architectural blueprint for Art Deco, it is now a crumbling skeleton of its imperial self, with fallen walls exposing half-disintegrated staircases and families of roosting pigeons.
Even the squatters who once camped here have fled, after one was killed by collapsing brickwork. No one has the energy to begin the back-breaking task of trying to make this hotel - or much of this city - sing again.
Oddly enough, it is at this moment - on ghostly Mohammed V -that I begin to appreciate Casablanca for its funny ways. First there's its spirit to compete with the modern world. Casablancans have already built the world's highest minaret atop Hassan II Mosque - a spire that, at 689ft tall, haughtily cuts the Casablancan skyline. By day, its white granite columns and Italian chandeliers are blinding, and at night the entire mosque glows yellow on the coastline.
The city's souks are a laissez-faire take on Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna. Silver-plated teapots, leather handbags and slippers are sold flippantly in a take-it-or-leave-it style. I wander unbothered through the fish market, past the bloody heads of swordfish, rows of whiting and silvery sardines.
Beyond the sacks of saffron and cumin, I find a courtyard with an art gallery selling hazy depictions of hell in oil paints. Next door are jewelled mirrors, rusting teapots and new-born kittens no bigger than my tightly balled fist. The heat is 35C. The gutsy stench of fish creeps into the courtyard, mixes with the new fur of fresh cat, and that tea.
 |
Hassan II Mosque |
Were this place Marrakech, we would haggle our hearts out. Were it Hollywood' s Casablanca, some lothario might croon: 'Of all the tea joints in all the towns in all the world...' Instead, no one speaks. There's a sleight of finger over a calculator. We nod on a price. My tiled mirror is wiped with a grey rag, packaged up in brown paper and a second glass of petroleum mint tea served and swallowed.
That's all. As the original Rick said - 'This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship' - with the black sheep of Moroccan cities that is more deliciously real than the rest.
Read more
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
