The most famed for many and one of the greatest movie ever realized

Rating: 8/10 (9 November 2005)

Casablanca is deemed by many to be the biggest picture ever made and one of most famous movies of all time . It's a masterpiece produced in 1942 that was thought as a run-of-the-mill studio production . It was only afterwards which it became clear that it would be a landmark cinema . Humphrey Bogart's forty ninth film , would transform the studio contract player into a superstar and to be the first in a whole string of Warner Brothers's classics in which he would play the leading role . Producer Jack Warner assigned the Rick's role for George Raft , however Hall B. Wallis wanted to Bogart who luckily obtained the important character , but he previously played only mobster roles and afterwards romantic protagonists , besides tough main lead. It's an extremely romantic film converted in cinema history with images (Rick and Ilsa embraced) , moving scenes (final farewell in the airport) and dialogs have been used or imitated in other films, spots and television programmes .
Casablanca is homaged with fascination as in ¨One from the heart¨ (by Francis Ford Coppola) or from irony as ¨Play it again Sam¨(Herbert Ross). The movie has immortal images with memorable quotes and the best scenes ever written , such as the exciting final when Bogart bids Bergman farewell at the airport with ¨Here's looking at you kid¨still has audiences choking back a tear. All film originates unforgotten characters as makes with Wilson, the piano player to whom Ingrid Bergman says : ¨play it Sam¨. Bergman is enticing and wonderful , stunningly photographed by Arthur Edeson , she was fortunate to have Orry Kelly an hugely talented designer costume to dress her. His shone as radiantly as Bergman's luminous beauty who never looked lovelier. Along with a fabulous plethora of secondaries such as : Claude Rains , Paul Henreid , Conrad Veidt , Peter Lorre , S.Z.Sakal, Madeleine Lebeau , John Qualen , Dooley Wilson , among others . And a large number of extras , as in the famous scene where the "Marseillaise" is sung over the German song "Watch on the Rhine", many of them had real tears in their eyes ; they were actual refugees and Jews who had escaped from Nazi persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and were overcome by the emotions the scene brought out . The motion picture with sensitive score by Max Steiner was very well directed by Michael Curtiz . Well worth seeing for everybody and specially to the classic cinema lovers.