"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine",

Rating: 8/10 (21 January 2008)

Casablanca (1942)
Number 1 - 1943
Top 10 - 1940s
Perhaps the most loved American film of all time, if not, then definitely the most talked about film. Casablanca has been analysed, re-analysed and evaluated over and over again. No doubt this is a great film and one of the finest achievements of early cinema.
Featured in hundreds of top ten lists and reigning in the AFI's top 5 films of all time. I am not sure whether people have so much appreciation and respect towards this undisputed classic, or whether it is placed so highly out of sheer cinematic affection, love and respect towards its status. In my opinion 'Casablanca' is vastly overrated. While a great and often powerful film with great characters and old style over the top acting, I cannot see this film in the top 5 of all time. There are countless films I could mention that have a harsher, colder, funnier more powerful message and display it equally and better than 'Casablanca'.
'Casablanca' very much belongs to the old, glamorous times of Tinseltown a film that could have been the best at its time but not anymore - not in the modern order of cinema, where gritty, uncompromising pictures dominate the industry (along with a collection of other forgettable trash), where performances move and shatter human emotion. Anyway, it is unfair to somehow criticise the importance and quality of this film, because it is still an entertaining and very good film.
Humphrey Bogart plays Rick who owns the most successful joint in Casablanca, Morocco. 'Everyone comes to Rick's', corrupt officials, business men, locals - entertainment and gambling are at full force in Rick's place. Little note - Count the number of cigarettes that Bogart smokes during the film! A story of love, complex feelings, vivid characters under the shadow of war all in Casablanca. Watch it, enjoy it, cherish it. Casablanca is great and yes a masterpiece, but no way one of the top 10 or 20 films, but then again it is personal opinion that is what makes film so wonderfully beautiful.
9/10