One of the Greatest For A Reason

Rating: 10/10 (10 May 2010)

There's so many reasons to like Casablanca, it's almost immeasurable. But I'm going to try.
You've got two acting greats in Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, which play their roles so admirably and naturally you'd swear they were born for these parts.
You've got Michael Curtiz, who, besides being an filming legend, went overboard in this film. He used, instead of his great actors, the scenes and shots themselves to move the plot along, a person watching wouldn't necessarily need to know the exact happenings of the entire plot to appreciate the scene - he uses diagetic off-screen sounds perfectly, and the frame always gives you the sense of exactly what's going on in a scene instantly, a rare feat in cinema that I may have seen once or twice prior to this.
And of course, there's the thematic overview of what's going on in Europe, at the release of this film swamped in the mire of World War II, this film provides an allegory for what the United States was doing up until that point - staying out of it until they were forced to act. The movie makes it look just as noble when Bogart stands up to the Nazis (this time taking place in a music vs. music overpowering scene), then when the United States actually invades Europe on D-Day.
Simply excellent.