Casablanca Tries to Build Its Brand

At Rick’s Café in Casablanca, among the Moorish arcades, palmettos, and elegant, well-heeled patrons, a piano man plays As Time Goes By on an old Pleyel. The establishment features a mahogany bar, lamps with stained-glass shades, and a popular fig-and-goat-cheese salad. It wouldn’t seem out of place to find Humphrey Bogart surveying the room, or Ingrid Bergman requesting a song from Dooley Wilson, who played Sam in the 1942 film Casablanca. But the role of Sam is here played by a local Moroccan pianist named Issam. Everything about Rick’s, which former American diplomat Kathy Kriger opened in 2004, is designed to channel the film’s glamour, radiating nostalgia for an imaginary past.

Alas, the moment one exits the café and emerges onto a dusty sidewalk, surrounded by crumbling facades and the rusting Peugeots known as petits taxis that wind through the garbage-strewn streets, the illusion evaporates: Casablanca meets Casablanca. With Minister of Youth and Sports Moncef Belkhayat talking up a seemingly quixotic bid for Casablanca to become the first African city to host the Olympic Games, in summer 2028, Casablanca’s leaders are hoping the city can claim the Hollywood glory it never had.