Cinema par Excellence!! CASABLANCA (1942)

"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...

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 Lisbon... 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.'

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...

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..., 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" though released in 1942 is still a masterpiece of entertainment, an outstanding motion picture, and must watch for every one.