A simple formula never done better

Rating: 10/10 (25 March 2014)

It's almost axiomatic that a "prestige drama," the kind that contends for awards and aims to join the canon, must combine a love story with a weighty historical plot line. Best Picture winners "The Deer Hunter," "Out of Africa," "The English Patient," "Titanic," as well as countless films that didn't take the Academy's top prize, all fit neatly into this category. It is probably too simplistic to say that all these movies are on some level attempts to remake "Casablanca," and certainly movies, not to mention plays and books, had discovered long before "Casablanca" that mixing romantic drama and historical drama makes for good entertainment. But "Casablanca" became a template and a benchmark. These facts are attested to by the number of its one-liners that became part of the cultural lexicon, and by its apparently permanent residence near the top of critical and popular lists of great films. One important element that sets it apart from run-of-the-mill, wanna-be historical romances is its humor, an ingredient many "serious" movies neglect to utilize. One moment the French national anthem brings us to our feet and tears to our eyes, and the next we are laughing at one of the funniest lines and most imitable comic deliveries in movies, Claude Rains's "I am shocked, shocked..." Every scene belongs almost to a different genre: the script rotates jokes, intrigue and espionage, a dreamy romance in flashback form, a will-they-or-won't-they soap opera in the present, musical numbers, and high-minded talk of war and freedom. But for all that, it doesn't feel like the movie is overstuffed or that there's even particularly a lot going on beneath the surface. It is tempting to read the studiously-neutral but soft-hearted American Rick (Humphrey Bogart) as a metaphor for the U.S.'s reluctance to intervene in European conflicts, and it is interesting to observe the ways this wartime Hollywood movie depicts European refugees of various ages, nationalities, and genders, but in this case it is more fun to simply be swept along by the movie as a great piece of entertainment. "Casablanca" is "just" a simple story well-told, set in an exotic and dangerous and alluring locale, and it might be that better than anything else has ever been that.