Everybody comes to Rick's

Rating: 10/10 (3 August 2014)

Looking back over seventy-two years of film history, this one is a crown jewel. The only 'special effects' are a man playing a piano, desperate people singing the French national anthem and a simulation of a prop-plane bound for Lisbon. There is no massive body count, foul language or nudity. The super- hero's secret weapon is his conscience.
I'm no prude. I applaud this film because it doesn't insult its audience by assuming that they don't know how to think. There are subtle moments that evoke feelings that are absent in the comic book/'graphic novel' pulp fiction that overwhelms every summer movie season lately. When the young French girl that Rick's jilted realizes that a rebound liaison with a German SS officer is a futile and degrading gesture; when the Bulgarian newlywed is faced with the choice of betraying her husband to gain their freedom and Rick rigs the roulette wheel to save her from living a lie; when the French resistance operative is caught without papers and shot under the motto " Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" (which sets the tone for the story); we are reminded that this type of intelligent screen-writing is very nearly a lost art.
This and two of Chaplin's talkies (The Great Dictator and M. Verdeux) caught the spirit of the world that was in the grips of real evil. But Casablanca hits all the moral/ethical hot topics. Would anyone still care about this film if Rick had run off with Ilsa? There were many films made during WWII that exploited the issues, but this one made it very personal on a lot of levels. The Epstein brothers earned that Oscar. Bogart should have gotten one as well. And it's traveled well.
If you don't have a gut-level reaction when Paul Henreid's character risks his life to urge the house band to play "La Marseillaise", check for a pulse, because you may have a fatal heart condition, mon ami.
Pull up a chair, and let Dooley Wilson (who had a long history in vaudeville and the theater with Orson Welles) take you away--the fundamental things apply...