Classic American Cinema

Rating: 8/10 (18 October 2010)

Strictly speaking Casablanca is not about WW 2. It is not about living in a foreign land and not knowing if you will ever get to a better place. It is also not necessarily a love story, at least not in the sense that it is about whether or not to people will fall in love and end happily ever after. At it's core Casablanca is about the effect that two people can have on each other and what effect the crossing of two paths can do. In almost every conceivable way Casablanca was one of the best technical cinematic works ever made. Every shot was elegant and extremely thought out. Weather it was a scene with one person in a dark room or a crowded street in the bright of day, nothing is out of place. Nothing is over or under done. While the story is well done it is also, in a way, boiler plated. I don't mean to say this negatively, rather as a complement to how timeless this story truly is. It could conceivably happen anywhere or any time in history. With all this said, I believe the most compelling and significant part of this movie is how it helped vault the American cinema to the top of the world.