Pure Entertainment (spoilers)

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2003)

In Casablanca what is most noticeable is the way separate filmic elements join to create a whole. Under the supervision of Michael Curtiz all the necessary ingredients to make this film successful come together magically. I use the word successful because that's what the film is. It does what it sets out to do. It's fun to watch and not high art nor the most involving and deeply moving experience in film history but it works.	Curtiz's direction deserves to be mentioned first with all the ballyhoo and trumpet-tounged praise this film receives I had never known the name of the man who directed the film. In this film not only does he construct a very well-told visual narrative but he also provide some frames that floored me, most noticeably an establishing shot of The Blue parrot including an actual blue parrot, and the shadow used to establish La Belle Aurore. His insistence on his casting decisions also made the film what it is as a landmark in Hollywood history. Changing any one of the actors would likely have made the studio's prediction of it being a flop-come-true.	Humphrey Bogart could not have been better suited for his part. For through most of the film we see Rick Blain as cool and unflinching. Only in the flashback do we see his more emotional and less pragmatic side. Slowly we see revelations he helps the Humgarian girl he also quarrels with Ilsa over their failed love affair. Even in this film we find Bogart in his persona of the heroic loner which we would find in many of his films.	In what is probably the best piece of casting was Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa. Aesthetically Bergman has one of those faces that was just made to be filmed in black and white. She is luminous. She plays Ilsa to a tee and truly makes the love affair back drop of the film both during the flashback sequence and when she pleads in tears for Rick's assistance. In every film romance both actors have to be equals and suited for one another, this pair is.	The secondary players were also crucial. In such a way they can scarcely be called secondary characters. The most artistic part of Casablanca is that Curtiz both in the beginning and towards the end takes us amongst, little vignettes, snatches of the lives of the people who live their temporary existences in this town that's merely a gateway to Lisbon, then America. With the dual story of refugees and the love stories the secondary characters take on even greater importance. Claude Rains, when he's on the screen it's like there's no one else around. His excuse for closing down the café was the only dialogue that stuck in my head after so many years without having watched it. Rains plays his character in such a way that his change of heart at the end is justified and, as written, he is the most complex of all the characters. Peter Lorre, played Ugarte, he was absent through much of the film but Lorre with that voice always leaves an impression with the audience. He also seems to exude a kind of helplessness in this part. Syndey Greenstreet seemed to be the Fat Man out of The Maltese Falcon but in the end he helps his share of people and does a good job also.	What made itself apparent to me this time as opposed to the first time I saw the film was the omnipresence of propaganda in Casablanca. Propaganda is often regarded as a four-letter word, and that's not always the case but it should always looked at with suspicion. In this film it's handled so intelligently and it's Positive-Propaganda, meaning that it's a call to action rather than a character assassination or anti-something. Rick is told "Isolationism isn't a practical policy.' He's the only American character of the major figures this is a call to action for the American public to support the US war effort in Europe. The propaganda in this film is so incisive, intelligent and organic to the plot that it shows what a powerful medium film really is. It's interesting to note also that the film was made up of cast and crew mostly from Europe, director Micheal Curtiz, Peter Lorre and Paul Heinreid (Victor Laszlo) were born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, Igrid Bergman was Swedish, Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet were English and Colonel Srasser was played by a legend of German cinema Conrad Veidt.	What we have in Casablanca is film that can be enjoyed from any angle you look at it. It is a film that will transcend generations for years to come.