The writing, the character actors, the lighting, and then, for dessert, some romance, too. Oh, and America goes to war at last.

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2009)

Casablanca (1942)
When Rick (the inimitable Bogart) says to Sam (the inimitable Dooley Wilson), "If it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?" he's announcing to everyone that this is a movie about Pearl Harbor. That is, it is about this hardboiled, pre-noir American type, who sticks his neck out for no one, and his growing need to go to war.
Need and desire. That's part of the compelling mood of the movie--everything feels like it has to be so. Americans are (by implication) really good at heart, and of course we'll come to the air of pretty Norwegians trapped by love and reluctant Frenchmen trapped by circumstance and all those very interesting lovable refugees (some real refugee actors), trapped by Nazi meanness and brutality, plain and simple.
The romance? That, in a way, is the MacGuffin, not the other way around. Certainly, the famous end to the movie leaves the romance in the dust. Casablanca is a call to arms, for all the best reasons, and it appeals across the decades, too. In fact, the movie premiered on Thanksgiving, 1942, so the U.S. is fully in the war by the time people see it. And it resonates as a confirmation, and almost as prescient. We trust Bogart, by now, to be the right kind of man in every circumstance, just like our own men, husbands, fathers, brothers on the field.
These great things don't make the movie great. Not as a movie. The writing, above all, does that (the Epsteins labored and were as inspired as they were gifted in this, with Howard Koch). But the filming is gorgeous, every scene filled with dense layers foreground to back, including layers of light, and often moving light, from searchlights and passing cars, or in the café as the lights move from piano to band and so on. Actors move across the screen in fluid conversation, sometimes for a laugh, often for a drink, eventually to see Rick, or to fret about getting out, getting to Lisbon, getting to America. It's all idealized and frightening at the same time. The bit actors are astonishing, the direction by the seasoned but unexceptional Curtiz is compact and elegant. Bogart is perfect.
There isn't much to say new, or old, that's worth the time here, with everything out there so well said already. Just Google the movie and read away. Or better yet, watch it again. If you think you've seen the movie enough, look beyond plot and really listen to the writing, and watch the camera-work and lights. It's not a great film by accident, and it doesn't hide why it's great. There are better films, I suppose, of course there are, depending who you ask and on what day. But not many.