Cinema par Excellence!

Rating: 10/10 (28 November 1999)

Michael Curtiz's "Casablanca" opens on maps while a narrator gives a detailed exposition of the many twists and turns of Casablanca in the French Morocco, as a refugee route from wartime Europe...
The Nazi envoy, Major Heinrich Strasser puts it: 'Human life is cheap in Casablanca." Of course because a man may be executed in its crowded market before Marshal Pétain's portrait or where a charming girl may guarantee an exit visa by spending her night with the Prefect of Police...
Rick's Café is the point of intersection, the espionage center, the background for Allied offensive, the focal point as refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe seek to gain exit visas to Lisboa... The interesting club so well organized, leads to an open arena of conspiracy, counterspies, secret plans, black market transactions, in which the games and fights are between arrogant Nazis, patriotic French, idealists, murderers, pickpockets and gamblers around a roulette wheel, where a ball could rest on Rick's command against the settled number 22...
"Casablanca" is an adventure film which victory is not won with cannons and guns... The action, the fight, the war takes place inside Rick's walls rather than outside...
But who is this Rick? What is his magical power? His secret weapon? Rick is the anti-fascist with hard feelings, the former soldier of fortune who has grown tired of smuggling and fighting, and is now content to sit out the war in his own neutral territory... Even loyalty to a friend doesn't move him as he refuses to help Ugarte, a desperately frightened little courier who is fleeing from the police...
Emphatically, Rick says, "I stick my neck out for nobody." But we know he will do just that in a very short time, for into his quiet life comes a haunting vision from his past, the beautiful woman he still loves and bitterly remembers... She is married to an underground leader and she desperately needs those papers Rick conveniently now has in his possession... The cynical Rick's facade of neutrality begins to weaken as he recalls the bittersweet memories of his past love affair, memories triggered repeatedly when the strains of "As Time Goes By" come from Sam, his piano-playing confidante...
But "Casablanca" basic message is a declaration of self-sacrifice... War World II demanded all! The words stated by Rick at the airport had their impact: 'The problems of three people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.' It goes without saying that Bogart is incomparable when he seems most like himself... His way with a line makes "Casablanca" dialog part of the collective memory: 'I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray. You were blue.'
Intermixed in this intrigue are all the fascinating and beautifully acted supporting roles With his customary skill, Claude Rains plays Major Renault, a prefect of police who is like Bogart in many ways... He, too, claims neutrality, but is definitely against the Nazis... He is Rick's most devoted adversary, tauntingly calling the man a "sentimentalist" and delivering his share of cynically amusing lines... When he makes a small bet and is encouraged to make a bigger one, he remarks that he is only a "poor corrupt official."
Ingrid Bergman is fascinating as the lovely heroine, the mysterious impossible woman of an impossible love, the tender mood of every man, the love-affair, the quality of being romantic, the traditional woman enclosed by two rivals, symbol of a besieged Europe...
Paul Henreid is Victor Laszlo, the anti-Nazi resistance leader, seeking in Morocco the two letters of transit signed by General De Gaulle...
Sidney Greenstreet is the black marketeer on good terms with Rick, the rival owner of the 'Blue Parrot,' the acceptable face of corruption...
Peter Lorre is Ugarte, the racketeer, the dealer of anything illegal, the killer, driven into a corner by the Vichy police, who has given Rick two letter of transit...
Conrad Veidt is the very essence of German rigidity, unfeeling, unconcerned about life, but firmly believing in the foolish ideology of his Nazi compatriots...
"Casablanca" covers many highlights: The Marseillaise against the Horst Wessel song inspiring sequence; the blissful days in Paris; Ilsa's emotional words to Rick in occupied Paris; the champagne toast; Ilsa's request to Sam; the poetry of the magic words and the beautiful voice of Dooley Wilson; Captain Renault's words in the airport; and the farewell...
The magic that developed from the teaming of Bogart and Bergman is enough to make a new romantic figure out of the former tough guy... To his cynicism, his own code of ethics, his hatred of the phoniness in all human behavior, he now added the softening traits of tenderness and compassion and a feeling of heroic commitment to a cause... They helped him complete the portrayal of the ideal man who all men wished to rival...
One can look at hundreds of films produced during this period without finding any whose composite pieces fall so perfectly into place... Its photography is outstanding, the music score is inventive, the editing is concise and timed perfectly... Bogart's and Bergman's love scenes create a genuinely romantic aura, capturing a sensitivity between the two stars one would not have believed possible...
"Casablanca" is a masterpiece of entertainment, an outstanding motion picture which brought Bogart his first Academy Award nomination (he lost to Paul Lukas for "Watch On the Rhine") and won Awards for Best Picture of the Year, Best Director and Best Screenplay...