Overwhelming Perfection

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2004)

The widespread popular reverence for Casablanca is rooted not in innovation, but rather in perfection. One would be hard-pressed to discern anything particularly radical about the film's primary components. Though captivating in their own way, the story, the characters and the direction are modest and unassuming. Yet it is a modesty tightly wrapped in excellence and precision. Simply put, this is as good as conventional cinematic storytelling ever gets.
During the height of World War II, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is the impervious American owner of a Casablancan nightclub, serving as the epicenter of social unease in what is still unoccupied France. The unexpected arrival of Czechoslovakian resistance organizer Viktor Lazslo (Paul Henreid) and his dazzling wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) forces Rick to revisit his painful past and take sides in a war he had previously tried to ignore.
The alluring, cosmopolitan backdrop of colonial North Africa compliments a remarkable cast of three-dimensional characters, who exhaust and renew their humanity amidst war's cataclysmic turmoil. Negative elements, including the unfortunate absence of native characters, as well as the demeaning treatment of the nightclub's black entertainer (Dooley Wilson, condescendingly referred to as "the boy" despite his advanced age), are not strong enough to withstand the overwhelming intensity of a truly exceptional film. Seven stars out of ten.