Casablanca 1943
Casablanca is certainly one of the greatest classic movies. It had been a while since I had watched the movie despite having it on DVD. There are so many great characters and great lines in the movie. Ingrid Bergman looks great and Humphrey Bogart was never cooler than he was playing Rick. The movie is good all the way through, with a lot of intrigue, romance, and character development. But still I have a few quibbles. Like it takes a while for Ilsa to explain to Rick why she had to leave him in Paris. How long does it take to just come out and say I thought my husband was dead, but he is still alive? And I like the hints about Captain Renault of the police not really cooperating with the Nazis, but kind of. Rick is almost the same but doesn’t really hide his disdain for the fascists. I don’t know that the sudden change in Renault is explained, but I guess some groundwork was laid for it. It just seems like he went from calling the Nazis for help to letting one of them get shot really quickly. Similarly, Rick himself sells the bar and seems to be planning to leave, but he must have known he wasn’t going to actually leave. Wikipedia says even the writers didn’t know how it was going to end for a while. That is a shame because otherwise the writing is very good. Really just about everything comes together to work beautifully, including the context of this 1942 movie with Nazi bad guys, while still not as overtly patriotic as other wartime movies.
Written: 17 Nov 2017
Owned on: UHD, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital