Casablanca(1942): The Best Movie Ever Made

It is fairly easy to pick the worst movie ever made; a lot of people are in agreement that this egregious honor goes to Plan 9 from Outer Space. A task much harder is to pick the best movie ever made. There are many contenders providing a selection from which to choose by the learned critics, including works such as Citizen Kane, The Godfather, The Seven Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia, 8 ½, and others, and the process of selection is rendered more difficult as time goes by because of a historical fan-club and debate-club mentality swirling around each of these. But out of all of the movies I’ve ever seen, at the end of the night, I personally have to give the top honors to Michael Curtiz’s noirish World War II drama Casablanca. Bogey was a ruined dream, Ingrid Bergman an innocent angel of glowing light, and in their reunion wistful magic came forever, the kind of magic, well, that if you have ever lost a special love, you can understand deep in whatever passes for a heart you have left inside. 

The film is set in 1942. World War II is raging in Europe, and most of Europe is occupied by the Nazis. European refugees from many countries find their way to the town of Casablanca, which is still precariously free, trying to get “exit visas” to countries still free of Nazi tyranny. Many people are forced to wait for a long time in Casablanca in order to get letters of transit. An expatriate American named Rick (Humphrey Bogart), a man apparently with a heart of ice, runs and owns a popular nightclub, Rick's Cafe' Americaine. Many things go on at Rick’s place besides music, drinking, gambling, and other forms of entertainment as old as time; here visas are sold for money, and lust and power drive bribes which are issued while corrupt governmental officials look the other way. Many other dark deeds go on. Rick has a cold and expedient relationship with the French police Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) which insures that a delicate balance of power hovers over it all, and business, both light and dark, go on as usual.

When a man dedicated to overthrowing the Nazis, French Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), and his beautiful wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) come into Rick’s place one evening, a series of events begin to change that balance of power and a far more dramatic series of events follow. We find that Rick and Ilsa have had a not-that-long-ago love affair in Paris before its occupation, and Rick is still deeply, agonizingly in love with Ilsa, the woman he thought had been single, though Ilsa, a woman deeply in love with the Rick, at the time had discreetly declined to tell Rick that she had a husband.

Victor Laszlo desires passage to Lisbon for himself and Ilsa, where he can go on fighting the Nazis, and Rick has come into possession of visas that can make this dream happen. Only Rick has a dream of his own: a life with Ilsa, which would probably mean Laszlo would be thrown to the Nazi wolves. Even if Rick were to help Laszlo, the Nazi Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) has ordered Captain Renault to prevent Laszlo’s escape from happening. Thus Rick faces a dilemma: will he use the visas to leave Casablanca himself with Ilsa, or will he give them to Victor and Ilsa?

The story may be seen on various levels. On one level, there is the romantic drama of three people in a lover’s triangle complicated by politics on a grand scale. On another level, there is the inner conflict Rick must face: he is a cold, pragmatic businessman who suddenly confronts, with considerable rage, the reality that underneath his icy exterior he is a romantic who loves what he had assumed was his woman, yet the taking of her would mean destroying a marriage, and would probably strengthen his most hated enemies, the Nazis. There is another level also, for the world of Casablanca itself represents a limbo-like symbol of any life in which moral choices have become blurred and one must make choices that evolve out of both the deepest of human instincts and the realities thrown on the table of living like the spin of the ball in a roulette wheel falling on a number of chance. In other words, it is this third level which may, beyond the obvious levels of romance, business, politics, and the intricacies of relationships, connect and resonate with the life of the average moviegoer: how does one make the right choices in a life where every foundation seems to be shifting?

There may be other levels, but because these three levels directly make the story so identifiable to so many, I personally find the plot to be the most intriguing of any movie ever made.

Yet beyond the story itself there are many other delicacies to savor.

The credibility for it all comes best from the central figure, Bogart himself. Bogart is absolutely believable as a burned-out man coldly extracting his pound of flesh from a world he has come to despise. And yet he is also absolutely believable when he shifts into the romantic lover who is stunned into crackling silence when he sees Ilsa again, and the possibility of life and love again loom large for him. Winter has become a warm summer day, and yet he realizes that such a day is a nightmare just waiting to elude him if he makes the wrong moves. In the movie’s opening scene of him, he is playing chess, and now he must play chess with live pieces. His acting was never better.

The other actors seem born for their roles. Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman, is truly stunning; a jewel. Rains, Henreid, Veidt, Greenstreet, Lorre, Wilson, and all the others are unforgettable.

The dialogue is wonderfully wistful, and memorable: “I stick my neck out for no one” ; “Here’s looking at you, kid”; “But we’ll always have Paris”; these lines stay with you for a lifetime. I can’t remember the dialogue from the other great films this way, with the possible exception of The Princess Bride, but I can for Casablanca.

Many other things highlight the film. Dooley Wilson singing “As Time Goes By.” The lighting, especially in the empty nightclub scenes when Rick and Ilsa are alone, and finally they can be as honest as two people ever have been. The incidental music. The finely crafted humor, always spot on. And a subtle, unseen energy running from scene to scene.

All in all, Casablanca becomes a part of you, and it gets better with each re-viewing. Little layers unfold over time. And the little ironies come home to haunt you. Honor prevails, in a way you might not have expected, but which warms you.

The history of the movie as a piece of film making is almost as dramatic as the movie itself; it was never expected to become a classic. Its destiny was about like that determined by the ball rolling in the groove of the roulette wheel in the Cafe' Americaine. Yet when everything was finished, Michel Curtiz had birthed a classic among classics. This is one that will never die, and to me, when all the others are considered, it takes the prize. I know that other people will have their choices, and a lot of well-reasoned arguments to prove why, but to me this is the best of them all, as time goes by.

Five Stars/ *****