“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”

Casablanca, a city in western Morocco known as a haven for refuges fleeing the ever growing reach of the third Reich, teeters on the precipice of Nazi occupation. In the middle of Casablanca’s hazy political climate sits Rick's Café Américain, the proverbial ‘place to be.’ Within the walls of the saloon, the atmosphere of freedom and neutrality hang like plumes of smoke from a patron's cigarette . And the owner, Rick Blaine, refuses to have it any other way. Like America, Rick is a staunch individual unwilling to take sides; whether it’s with freedom fighters, Nazi’s, or friends looking for relief from a climate growing more and more constricting. “I stick my neck out for nobody,” he routinely tells people. Beautiful girls throw themselves at him, and he tosses them aside with a quick shrug of indifference.

“How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Someday they may be scarce. You know, now I think I shall pay a call on Yvonne. Maybe get her on the rebound. Hmm?”

That is, until Ilsa walks into his bar one night and asks Sam to play that ‘song’ (As Time Goes By) again. Immediately, like America after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we see the individualistic exterior Rick constructed crumble bit by bit. The one woman he loved, the one who left him in the rain at the train station in France when Nazi troops stormed the streets, has returned. You see the emotion of the past hit Bogart in the intense shimmer of his eyes. Steadily, Rick begins to choose a side in a world that has fallen around him and given him no choice but to choose a side. As Nazi occupation grows more pronounced, Rick must choose between being with the woman he loves or sacrificing his love for Ilsa by helping her and her husband (Victor Lazlo), a near modern legend in his fight against the Nazi’s, escape to Lisbon. Rick’s final decision lays the foundation for perhaps the most memorable and poignant scene in American films history. It’s at least the most quoted.

Rick Blaine, played with burning perfection by Humphrey Bogart, sets forth the paradigm of the hard-drinking, laconic, cynical man of modern American films (think Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown,” Bruce Willis in, well, pretty much every movie he’s been in, and many more). With a cigarette in hand, a half-full ash tray, and an empty cocktail glass resting before him in his first scene; Rick sets the image of a libertine content with keeping a station on the edge of the world in one camera shot. He is a brooding anti-hero full of faults and questionable morals. This was the first film I’ve seen staring Bogart and he instantly jumps near the top of my list of favorite actors.

Ingrid Bergman is grace and beauty in her portrayal of Ilsa Lund. She is the foil to Humphrey’s carefully hidden romanticism and idealism and hard living ways. Controlled and logical, llsa has stored her love for Rick away and moved on. Only in a handful of final scenes does she lose control and express the pain of her situation and her love for Rick. There is genuine chemistry between Ingrid and Humphrey.

We’ve all been Rick. At least I know I’ve, at one point in time, wanted to turn my back on the world like he did because of the feeling that the world has turned on me and disconnect from society and act as if I was someone who didn’t gave two shits about anything and everyone. In the end, it’s one of the indelible, ineffable qualities of being human which gives Rick the ability to even attempt to sacrifice his love for Ilsa. This is why Rick has remained a character people have continued to relate towards. He is a man full of imperfections who in the end is able to transcend his questionable character and limitations. We’re all full of faults, but within us we all have the ability to make a noble, selfless decision if we have that one moment and chance in life to make it. While Ilsa, with her complexities in deciding between what is morally right and what she emotionally desires, and her ambiguity in her love toward Rick and Lazlo (it’s never clear who she really loves), remains a character viewers strongly relate to as well. It’s their very human faults which bring audiences back again and again.

There are issues with the film. The music is very dated (jarring and overly dramatic) and can grab the viewer and pull them out of the flow of the film and some scenes slow the pacing of the film; most notably the long flashback. Even with that though, the dialogue is still remarkably terse, vibrant, dark, and witty. There are more than a handful of lines that are now and will forever remain a part of the American lexicon. Above all though, it comes down to the acting of the two leads. It’s simply timeless. The supporting cast does a wonderful job as well, but I’ve already written quite a bit. I will add the French captain is another soundly constructed and deep character.



“I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now...Here's looking at you kid.”

Previous Movies of the Week:
#1: Gladiator
#2: The Passion of the Christ
#3: Cool Hand Luke
#4: Fight Club
#5: American Beauty
#6: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
#7: Goodfellas
#8: Boogie Nights
#9: American Psycho
#10: Dr. Strangelove
#11: Dog Day Afternoon
#12: Unforgiven
#13: 2001: A Space Odyssey
#14: Do the Right Thing
#15: Reservoir Dogs
#16: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
#17: L.A. Confidential
#18: Big Trouble in Little China
#19: Out of Sight
#20: The Shawshank Redemption
#21: The Waterboy
#22: Field of Dreams
#23: The Godfather
#24: The Godfather Part II
#25: The Godfather Part III
#26: Network
#27: Die Hard
#28: Sin City
#29: Dawn of the Dead
#30: American History X
#31: Swingers
#32: Thelma & Louise

ingrid bergman is stunning

She's amazing

Excellent write-up JW. While I appreciate the film's brilliance, this one never really struck me as much as it should have, and I don't know why. I haven't seen it in a while, so maybe it's time to go back and rent it.

And off-topic, but do you know how to add the "previous movie of the week" links? If not PM me and I'll send you the list.

I love this movie. It's as good a films get as far as I'm concerned. I believe it to be worth all of teh hype it has ever received, and there are few films I will say that for. Some of the best characters ever written for the screen, and to think that this story was told with the war still raging and far from over, makes the moral ambiguity, and then the change to moral certainty, all that more striking.

I love the French police captain as well, one of my favorite characters ever.

"Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects."

definitely...every single renault´s line is perfect...some of the best dialogues in movie history IMO

I saw Children of Men again last night and I noticed many interesting parallels to Casablanca. The main character is a cynical, amoral, morose man who doesn’t give a shit. His dialogue is terse and he drinks and smokes throughout the film. An old flame reenters his, requesting transient papers (just as Ilsa came to Rick for papers) and reminds Clive Own of his past life as a political upstart and morally strong minded man. The love they shared in the past re-vitalizes him. I thought it was pretty damn cool.

Love this film... because of the datedness as well as the familiarity as a huge part of American culture.. this movie is more like a painting.. a tapestry... Usually I turn it on when I can't fall asleep, and it's like a comfortable blanket, even with the admitedly jarring overdramatic music... It's not that it's boring, but as a piece of culture, it's so far removed from being tense or suspenseful, it's more of a nostalgia piece these days to show us what the hollywood system was like back then when big-name actors playing themselves was the weekend escape from work for the middle class...

i like this movie and can respct it, and it does have some great lines and moments, but nothing astounding to me. The ending was pretty obvious too from the time the movie got going(parallels with A Tale of Two Cities plus other stories, but that was the one that came to mind while watching it).

Pure brilliance, love this movie.

I thought the ending was a huge surprise, and I even knew that Rick let the girl go in the end. The way Rick and Renault clean up the mess with Strasser was quite surprising, and extremely satisfying as well.

I've read a coulple times the director kept the ending a secret from all of the actors until they got around to filming the final scene. I think that's a good way of handling a flim, especially if the ending is going to play a huge factor in the storyline.

Fantastic movie. It's so effortlessly pulled off, the character dynamics, the energy, the atmosphere. Bogart is awesome and Bergman is just gorgeous. Fantastic and endlessly-quotable dialogue that still holds up today.

You know how there's the running joke about "the lost original director's cut ending to so-and-so movie"? I believe that comes from the folklore surrounding the ending of Casablanca.

I suggest you guys watch the movie with Roger Ebert's Commentary, its really informative and not dry at all. Also in the commentary he talks about the ending saying that basically the ending that is, was the only way the studio would have let it go through. The reason being that IIsa and Victor where married and it would have been extremly taboo, to the point of not releasing it, if she stayed with rick and ditched her husband. Ebert does a great job of going over all this stuff and other cool facts about the movie.

wow that last post sounds like a crappy ad.

nah

the clean up was well done, but i didn't see rick being taken away... i thought he would get away/off somehow but i did not know how. But I was referring more to the giving the girl away part was obvious, and I thought it was the most important part of the ending.

i saw this a few months back and loved it. i was afraid that all the hype might hurt my appreciation of it, but it's definitely one of the best films i've ever seen.

I just saw this for the first time finally. It was really good. I was really shocked by the ending, and the writting was great. It definitely felt dated, but most films from that era will.