General Comments on Casablanca

Rating: 8/10 (18 February 2008)

I thought this film was good, but yet still it didn't live up to the hype that surrounds it. Everyone always writes about Casablanca with a romantic view, that it is one of the best 'Classic Hollywood' films made, yet I thought that at times it could be slightly slow and dull.
For example all the main action takes place in Rick's Café Américain, which modern viewers, especially the younger generations, will find odd and it can seem boring. As we are used to action packed films where the scenery changes every few minutes and this seems very theatrical as most plays are set in the one place and this has the consistent setting of the bar and the fact that the main part of the action takes place here, makes it seem rather monotonous. This was proved, by one of my friends at least, by the fact that she fell asleep during it.
There are also elements of historical inaccuracy, as looking back at the film now and knowing what we know about what happened in the concentration camps and Europe under Nazi rule, it seems that even if Lazlo had managed to escape from one of the concentration camps, he wouldn't have looked as healthy as he does in the film. This again goes back to the fact that as a younger viewer, I find that now actors are more likely to change their appearances for their film roles, even losing vast amounts of weight. For example, as Christian Bale lost weight for his role in 'The Machinist', yet Paul Henreid didn't lose the weight to look like a concentration camp survivor.
The film is often seen as one of the most romantic films for longer than the last half a century. The romantic content is unusual, in the sense that in modern films, the couple spend the entire film trying find the other, before finally getting together at the end of the film. However, in this film, the couple have already been together and spilt up before the film has even begun (although you do see this relationship in flashbacks). Another point that makes this aspect of the film unusual is that this couple are separated at the end, where Rick tells Ilsa that they cannot be together and that she would regret it "for the rest of (her) life" if she didn't leave with Lazlo. So, as the main couple don't get together at the end of the film, it is different to many of the modern 'greats' in the romantic genre.
However, overall apart from the differences between modern Hollywood films and Classic Hollywood films, making it, in my opinion, slightly dull at certain points during the film it was still much better than a lot of modern films.