More than the sum of its parts...

Rating: 10/10 (7 February 2008)

CASABLANCA of course needs no introduction, being hailed by many as one of the finest movies ever made, albeit accidentally. I have to say it's been many years since I watched it and I'd forgotten just how good it is. The dialogue is slick, witty and economical and has rightly, with allegedly a little rephrasing from Bogart, spawned some of the most quoted lines in movie history. I lost count of the number of frivolously double-edged and charmingly barbed lines delivered by Rains' Capt. Renault, to whom everyone is a target at the beginning of the movie, almost as if he were unsure of exactly whose side he was on, which is most likely the case as the script was constantly being re-doctored and changed during filming. Even Bergman, who was already preoccupied with the prospect of her next film, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, had to ask which guy she was meant to be in love with. With the typical ambiguity evident in the rest of the production, she was told to 'play it down the middle'. In fact none of the actors had any more idea of how the whole thing was going to end than the audience did on first viewing.
Everything that makes CASABLANCA a great film seems to have been by happy accident. Originally cast in the three lead roles were Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan. Doesn't bear thinking about does it? Thankfully they were unavailable. The now classic 'As Time Goes By' was an established hit that was specified in the original play, but score composer Max Steiner (KING KONG, GONE WITH THE WIND) tried hard to have it replaced by one of his own compositions. Bergman however had by this time had her hair cropped for FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, which made it impossible to reshoot the necessary scenes (at least that's what they told Steiner). As it is, as the NFT said in 1974, 'the sum of all its many marvelous parts far exceeds the whole'.