An extraordinary film from start to finish

Rating: 10/10 (17 February 2018)

What I found most extraordinary about this film is the way it manages to engage right from the start. Within ten minutes, the plot had me enthralled, the characters had me emotionally committed and I was fascinated by the moral questions.
How will Viktor Lazlo escape the Nazis? How complete is Rick's moral degradation? Is there any limit to the depravity of the Vichy regime's representative in Morocco? What happened in Paris between Rick and Ilsa? These questions are all addressed simultaneously as the action unfolds with hypnotic acting by both Bogart and Bergman and brilliantly tight plotting.
Some of the other actors are not quite up to the standard of the leads, but I think this is the way films were made at the time, with broader acting by minor parts than we usually see in films today.
So much of this film is now cliche, but that's because it defined modern Hollywood cinema and thus had a tremendous impact on Western culture. With some essential cultural artefacts, this ubiquity can make them seem a bit tired or over the top, but Casablanca is so perfectly pitched and moves along at such a wonderful pace that it transcends its own transcendence to be what Hollywood has always aspired to - pure entertainment.