Casablanca (1942) ****

Release Date: November 26, 1942

Running Time: 102 minutes

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains

Directed by: Michael Curtiz

When it comes to ranking and listing the greatest movies of all time a handful of films inevitably make virtually every list. Films like The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Gone With The Wind always seem to be toward the tops of those lists. Lists like these are of course a matter of opinion and what one person’s best movie of all time will not be another’s. With that in mind there can never be a definitive “Best Movie of All Time!” But the film that holds that distinction on most lists has to be 1942’s Casablanca, a film that was considered just another film Warner Brothers was cranking out all the time during the era. It started out as a script titled “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” and famously was first read by the studios on December 8, 1941, one day after the historic bombing of Pearl Harbor. The timing couldn’t have been better as it would have read much differently even the week before.

Casablanca tells the tale of resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and his wife Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), newly arrived in Casablanca in search for some exit visas for safe passage to America. Furnishing these visas is Ugarte (Peter Lorre), a man who killed two German couriers to obtain the visas. Before Lazlo and Lund arrive,however, German authorities and the local prefect, Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), have arrested Ugarte and the visas have gone missing, having been entrusted to Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), owner and operator of Rick’s Cafe. Rick, an American, has a mysterious past that is never revealed beyond his time in Paris prior to the French occupation. The only back story we do get with Rick is that time in Paris and his time there with Ilsa. When she shows back up at Rick’s Cafe with Lazlo it opens up old wounds Rick felt best left forgotten. 

One of the biggest appeals of Casablanca is the cast of characters. There are no weak links here. Casablanca would not be the film it is had Rick been played by the likes of George Raft or Ronald Reagan. Humphrey Bogart was not a leading actor at this time having only taken the leading role in a handful of gangster pics and once the year before as Detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. At this point in his career he was primarily a secondary character actor playing toughs. He was hand picked for the role of Rick Blaine and it would end up being his most iconic part. We see Rick at his most vulnerable, a depressed man who refrains from serious relationships and preferring his own company to that of anyone else. He never shares a drink with anyone and plays chess with himself. He’s not a ad person as can be attested to by his devoted staff, but he is a deeply sad man who has retreated into himself.

Matching him beat for beat is Ingrid Bergman who was on lone in exchange for Olivia De Havilland. Bergman emotes so naturally throughout the film that we always know what is going on behind her eyes. In her first scene we can see how troubled she is when she starts realizing who the Rick is behind Rick’s Cafe and that this spells trouble for her and Laszlo. We know immediately that there was something between her and Rick and that she still feels conflicted by those feelings. 

The closest thing we have to a weak link is Paul Henreid, hot off the set for Now, Voyager, as the leader of the nazi resistance. There is nothing inheritantly wrong with Henreid’s acting, he’s just been given an uninteresting character to play. Victor Laszlo is written to be completely noble and self sacrificing to the point that the man appears to have no flaws. We never see him frustrated or angry, just calmly resolved in his course of action. It makes for a bland protagonist especially when placed next to the conflicted Rick.

As great as Bogart and Bergman are here, they are overshadowed by a truly legendary performance by Claude Rains here as Captain Renault. Rains is clearly enjoying himself here in a performance that comes close to being over the top but never goes too far. Captain Renault abuses his position to take advantage of young women desperately seeking exit visas. This trait could make him an unlikeable character yet it’s played mostly in the background and when Rick interferes with one such prospect providing the young woman and her husband the means to obtain visas without Renault’s assistance, Renault doesn’t get upset with Rick. These affairs are only lightly touched on thanks to the Hays Code but it’s never in doubt what favors he is trading for those visas.

This is a tremendous film that rightfully deserves the accolades it still receives nearly eighty years after its initial release. Roger Ebert put it best on his exceptional commentary for this film when he said that even people that don’t like old films like Casablanca. Even people that don’t like black and white films like it. There was a time when college kids could quite Bogart films. That time is long gone but Casablanca still endures. It may not be Bogart’s greatest acting performance but it is his most iconic.