Casablanca

There are literally hundreds of comments about this movie on IMDB. Many of them exhort its greatness. I don't disagree with them.

But I'd like to add a suggestion to those of you out there who haven't seen this film. I'd like to tell you HOW to watch it.

The people who made this movie didn't think they were producing a masterpiece. Bergman left the shoot disgusted. The screenwriters were on salary for Warners, writing half a dozen movies a year, and this was just one more. Bogie was punching the clock in the middle of a workhorse career.

So as an audience member, you can't sit down expecting gilded greatness.

Don't have a Casablaca party. Don't watch it on your first date, hoping it will lend that "Romantic Touch." Don't watch it as part of your "I need to watch the Best 10 movies of all time" Film School project.

Buy this movie on DVD. Have it at the ready. And then, one Friday night, when your plans fall through and you find it's 10:30pm and there's nothing on TV that's any good, open a six pack of beer, or pour yourself some wine, and watch this movie in a darkened room.

The characters in Casablanca are absolutely devoid of sentimentalism. Every one of them sees the world without a hint of rose color in their lenses. As Rick says, "Three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this big old world." If you're in a mood where you understand what he's saying, watch this movie and it will transport you.

There is no single movie that deserves to be called the best movie of all time. Because movies, when all is said and done, don't amount to a hill of beans. They are meant to entertain us, not for us to worship THEM.

But no movie has ever known this fact like Casablanca.

If you watch Casablance this way, with no expectations, with no "hype," you might catch 10 percent of its greatness on one viewing. And that will be enough to start you on your way.

Happy viewing, kid.

"Casablanca" remains Hollywood's finest moment, a film that succeeds on such a vast scale not because of anything experimental or deliberately earthshaking in its design, but for the way it cohered to and reaffirmed the movie-making conventions of its day. This is the film that played by the rules while elevating the form, and remains the touchstone for those who talk about Hollywood's greatness.

It's the first week in December, 1941, and in the Vichy-controlled African port city of Casablanca, American ex-pat Rick Blaine runs a gin joint he calls "Rick's Cafe Americaine." Everybody comes to Rick's, including thieves, spies, Nazis, partisans, and refugees trying to make their way to Lisbon and, eventually, America. Rick is a tough, sour kind of guy, but he's still taken for a loop when fate hands him two sudden twists: A pair of unchallengeable exit visas, and a woman named Ilsa who left him broken-hearted in Paris and now needs him to help her and her resistance-leader husband escape.

Humphrey Bogart is Rick and Ingrid Bergman is Ilsa, in roles that are archetypes in film lore. They are great parts besides, very multilayered and resistant to stereotype, and both actors give career performances in what were great careers. He's mad at her for walking out on him, while she wants him to understand her cause, but there's a lot going on underneath with both, and it all spills out in a scene in Rick's apartment that is one of many legendary moments.

"Casablanca" is a great romance, not only for being so supremely entertaining with its humor and realistic-though-exotic wartime excitement, but because it's not the least bit mushy. Take the way Rick's face literally breaks when he first sees Ilsa in his bar, or how he recalls the last time he saw her in Paris: "The Germans wore gray, you wore blue." There's a real human dimension to these people that makes us care for them and relate to them in a way that belies the passage of years.

For me, and many, the most interesting relationship in the movie is Rick and Capt. Renault, the police prefect in Casablanca who is played by Claude Rains with a wonderful subtlety that builds as the film progresses. Theirs is a relationship of almost perfect cynicism, one-liners and professions of neutrality that provide much humor, as well as give a necessary display of Rick's darker side before and after Ilsa's arrival.

But there's so much to grab onto with a film like this. You can talk about the music, or the way the setting becomes a living character with its floodlights and Moorish traceries. Paul Henreid is often looked at as a bit of a third wheel playing the role of Ilsa's husband, but he manages to create a moral center around which the rest of the film operates, and his enigmatic relationship with Rick and especially Ilsa, a woman who obviously admires her husband but can't somehow ever bring herself to say she loves him, is something to wonder at.

My favorite bit is when Rick finds himself the target of an entreaty by a Bulgarian refugee who just wants Rick's assurance that Capt. Renault is "trustworthy," and that, if she does "a bad thing" to secure her husband's happiness, it would be forgivable. Rick flashes on Ilsa, suppresses a grimace, tries to buy the woman off with a one-liner ("Go back to Bulgaria"), then finally does a marvelous thing that sets the whole second half of the film in motion without much calling attention to itself.

It's not fashionable to discuss movie directors after Chaplin and before Welles, but surely something should be said about Michael Curtiz, who not only directed this film but other great features like "Captain Blood" and "Angels With Dirty Faces." For my money, his "Adventures Of Robin Hood" was every bit "Casablanca's" equal, and he even found time the same year he made "Casablanca" to make "Yankee Doodle Dandy." When you watch a film like this, you aren't so much aware of the director, but that's really a testament to Curtiz's artistry. "Casablanca" is not only exceptionally well-paced but incredibly well-shot, every frame feeling well-thought-out and legendary without distracting from the overall story.

Curtiz was a product of the studio system, not a maverick like Welles or Chaplin, but he found greatness just as often, and "Casablanca," also a product of the studio system, is the best example. It's a film that reminds us why we go back to Hollywood again and again when we want to refresh our imaginations, and why we call it "the dream factory." As the hawker of linens tells Ilsa at the bazaar, "You won't find a treasure like this in all Morocco." Nor, for that matter, in all the world.

Probably the most legendary movie of all time, I finally got to see it, it was a great hole in my movie-viewing history. And finally I got to understand why a classic movie like this has made its mark in history. The intricate political plot comes first, and sets the movie on a melting pot of the second world war, where everyone hopes and dies for an opportunity to reach the USA via Lisbon. This would provide sufficient material for hundreds of movies, but enter Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, magnificent cinematography, role model storytelling, a perfect supporting cast, some of the best dialogue ever commited to celluloid and Dooley Wilson singing THAT song, and history was made. More than 60 years of jaw-drops are sufficient to give the sceptics a good reason to make them understand that this is probably the greatest classic movie of all times, and one of the best ever made in the past, present and future.

While my personal Bogey favorite is still his Sam Spade in 'The Maltese Falcon', his cynical nightclub owner, Rick, in 'Casablanca', is also a standout. Rather than some "off the cuff" comments, I'll quote instead from my article on Claude Rains (from March 2000 issue of CLASSIC IMAGES) that pretty well sums up the film:

"It was 1943's 'Casablanca', bustling with melodramatic wartime intrigue, that really put him (Claude Rains) in the forefront as one of the screen's smoothest character actors, almost--but not quite--stealing the film from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, as the uniformed Captain Louis Renault who investigates the goings-on at Rick's notorious cafe.

Nobody associated with the film guessed that it would become a screen classic, least of all its director, Michael Curtiz, the prolific WB director to whom it was just another assignment. It went on to win the Oscar for Best Film of 1943 with an award for Curtiz' taut direction.

Oddly enough, the film's memorable airport ending was written and conceived just shortly before filming wrapped up, with neither Bergman nor Bogart knowing whether or not she would leave him for husband Paul Henried. Wartime audiences loved the film. Sydney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt, Victor Francen and Peter Lorre all gave sterling performances and Rains was again nominated for Best Supporting actor."

And by the way, I disagree with a former comment indicating the black and white photography of this film was primitive as compared to today's. Incredible nonsense!! As a matter of fact, the film's black and white cinematography was nominated for an Oscar!

Ingrid Bergman was at the peak of her radiant beauty in this one--and Bogey was firing on all six cylinders. Great chemistry!

As time goes by, we still have 'Casablanca'...

While there's not anything new to be said about "Casablanca", it's good to see one of the classics still getting some attention. By most standards it is at least very good, and there are good reasons why so many still remember it so fondly. Not everyone who watches it today shares the opinion that it is a classic, but it's still good to see fans of modern movies giving it a try for themselves.

The cast is one of its main strengths, not just Bogart and Bergman but also the fine supporting cast. Rains, Greenstreet, Lorre, and the others are indispensable to the atmosphere and the story, and each has some very good moments. It does have its imperfections, but it was not expected to be a classic or blockbuster - everything you read about the production suggests that it was made in a rather slap-dash fashion, under constraints that would have wrecked most other films. It's not hard to see the little ways that this affected the finished product, such as the times when the plot strains credibility a bit, or the characters seem to behave somewhat oddly. (In particular, it might have been even more satisfying if Bergman's character had been a little stronger - Ilsa is charming, but that's entirely thanks to what Bergman does with her; the character herself as written seems somewhat shallow.)

But it turned out anyway to be an excellent combination of actors, characters, and story, a combination that more than makes up for everything else. Different viewers probably remember and enjoy "Casablanca" for different reasons, because it seemingly has a little of everything. While perhaps not perfect, it is well worth remembering and watching.