There are a number of films that consistently (and deservedly) make the "best films of all time" lists. Casablanca is one of them, along with the Godfather, Schindler's List, 12 Angry Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Granted "best of all time" is extremely subjective, but there are elements that these films share that set them high above the pretenders. Casablanca has has many threats to it's number 1 position, but Bogart's best film is not going to be dethroned any time soon.
The story is basically a man named Rick, disillusioned by life and the loss of love, sits out World War 2 in Casablanca, Morocco, serving drinks to whomever has the money. He himself spends a lot of time in the bottle, having given up on any hope or happiness for himself. That is until "she" walks in the saloon. She is Ilsa Lund, Rick's ex-love who abandoned him years before at a Paris train station, and without explanation. And the slow boil starts.
Casablanca is not a complicated story, but there are enough twists and turns to keep the viewer engaged. What is exceptional is the characterization of each leading player, their individual journeys, their interactions, the cinematography, the dialogue- it's all a Master Class on perfect film making.
Bogart and Bergman play their parts to perfection, as Paul Henreid sides Ilsa's as her thought-dead, freedom-fighter husband, Victor Laszlo. Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre join Bogart again, playing smaller parts than they had in Maltese Falcon, but playing them perfectly, none the less. Claude Rains and Conrad Veidt round out the top cast as a Police Captain and Nazi Major.
What makes the movie a "lightning in a bottle moment", one of those rare films where everything comes together beautifully, is just that. The legendary status of the film could have been derailed by bad casting, bad screenwriting, bad directing, bad performances, bad chemistry- any number of the details could have crushed it's potential. And you see those exceptional elements in films like Godfather, Angry Men, Mockingbird,Schindler's. They are films with very few peers.
Sidenote: Casablanca has been listed as one of the greatest war films of all time. I take exception to that because Casablanca is not a war film. It a film set in the time of a war, World War 2 to be exact. The film is set in Morocco in North Africa, an area occupied with Vichy France, and cooperative with the Nazis. But the war itself is only the backdrop. The same story could have been told at time of political unrest. For example, if the film were set in South Africa during the worst time of Apartheid and Laszlo was a freedom fighter for the Africans (no war here), we could have told that same story. Not so with a film like Schindler's List, where Oskar Schindler's direct enemies are the War and the Nazis, and he fights them directly, albeit not with guns. It's a small but important distinction.
If you are a fan of film and haven't seen Casablanca, well.. I would say you don't know if you are a fan of film at all. See Casablanca, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Godfather and Schindler's and see if your appreciation for film making isn't raised more than a few notches. Those five films, along with a handful of others like On the Waterfront, Chinatown, The Hustler, show what film can be at its best.
Oh and my apologies, most of the films I mentioned are black and white, with no car chases, no explosions, no nudity, no whiz-bang special effects, and no F-bombs. Sorry. Not sorry.
IMDB says 8.5/10. Aaaaand no. It's a solid 9.5/10, maybe a bit more.
It's one of the few perfect films.
Comments