Towering masterpiece of American cinema

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 1999)

Quite possibly the greatest, if not most entertaining, motion picture ever made, Casablanca shines like platinum. Perhaps it is Bogart's indelible Rick Blaine: cynic on the outside, humanist on the inside. Perhaps it is the writing: unforgettable from "Here's looking at you, kid" to "We'll always have Paris" to "This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Perhaps it was just the serendipitous combination of assembled personnel once cameras began to roll on the Warner Brothers lot during WWII. Rick's internal conflict, so simply presented in the movie, conceals an existential dilemma that stands at the heart of Casablanca's enduring legacy: the difficulty of taking the morally responsible action even (or rather, especially) when it is at the expense of personal desires.