| Chapter 4: | Integrating Social Science Perspectives into Film Criticism |
|
|
For being a man’s man, the sacrifice Bogart makes at the end is a sacrifice more commonly associated with heroines. He does the right thing for the people and groups and causes he is most associated with. Like his employees in the bar when he rescues the young Bulgarian couple, you want to hug him for it.
If Rick, however, can be used effectively to explain Kohlberg, the stages of moral reasoning are, in my mind, not as effective in explaining Rick. Yes, he has a conflict between love and duty; yes, he has a crisis between integrity and despair; yes, he must be at some stage of moral reasoning. But, from our polyfocal conspectus, I think, in this instance, perhaps the most useful perspective is from Chickering’s value vectors.
Chickering talks in terms of “freeing interpersonal relationships.” As he healed from his previous loss of Bergman, only to choose to leave her again, he was experiencing a “freeing interpersonal relationship” that “involved learning to manage oneself and others to accomplish tasks requiring joint effort.” Thus, he overcame his personal despair to make his sacrifice to the war effort. Chickering also talks in terms of “clarifying purposes.” Bogart clearly develops, or at least redevelops, purpose, and because he reestablishes his integrity, his decision, like his reaffirmed life, “flows with direction and meaning,” such that while the audience is in tears at the movie’s end, he walks off into the fog with his friend Claude Rains, and he actually laughs, bittersweet though it may be.