Movie Review: Casablanca

I know, right? Like you need me telling you about Casablanca. The movie is older than your grandparents. Only dopes like me have gone this far in life without actually seeing it.

Well, LAY OFF, OK?!

Sorry. Anyway, yes, it did take me more than 28 years to see the movie that is universally beloved and wound up as No. 1 on my Greatest Movies of All Time? list. Not only that, but unlike a lot of "You've never seen THAT?" movies, I didn't even know what it was really about. I mean, I know Darth Vader is Luke and Leah's father, I know Rosebud is a sled, and until a few months ago, I knew a bloody Rocky would go all "yo, Adrian" from the middle of a boxing ring. But I didn't even know what Casablanca was about. I'm a terrible member of society.

For anyone else who has been living under a rock for the past 71 years, let me sum up. Casablanca is a town in French Moracco and during World War II (post-Paris invasion, pre-Pearl Harbor), served as kind of the docking station for people trying to escape Nazi-occupied France. Except a lot of people got as far as Casablanca before getting stalled due to a lack of transmit papers to get them to the U.S. or wherever.

Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is an American who owns Rick's Cafe Americain, part restaurant, part bar, part night club, part casino. At the beginning of the film, Rick comes into possession of a pair of transmit papers that will allow two people to escape the war zone. Around the same time, Major Strasser shows up looking for a Czechoslovakian revolutionary named Victor Laszlo, who has spent time in multiple concentration camps while devoting his life to fighting Nazis.

Laszlo also shows up, joined by his wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). Ilsa just happens to be Rick's ex-girlfriend; the two had a fling and meant to escape together when the Nazis invaded Paris but she ditched him without explanation. Let's just say Rick's a little bitter.

The rest of the film is spent learning just what type of guy Rick is - is he the gruff loner he portends or does he have a heart of gold underneath? - as well as what, exactly, Ilsa's problem was all those years ago (hint: she has a pretty good excuse). What will become of Laszlo, not to mention Rick's secret transmit papers?

Casablanca was impressive for a lot of reasons but the one that stuck out to me was its scope. So many movies and TV shows from that time period are centered around white WASPy guys. And while Rick certainly fits that description, Ilsa's character is a complicated and intelligent person. Only three actors - Bogart, Dooley Wilson as Rick's trusty nightclub performer friend Sam, and Joy Page, the young Bulgarian wife trying to afford transmit papers for her and her husband - are American, and one is a woman and one is an African-American man. It really is  League of Nations.

Anyway, like I said before, you don't need me to tell you Casablanca was a good movie. FYI, To Kill a Mockingbird was a pretty OK book, too. So let me tell you how it was ranked No. 1 on the GMoAT? list.

• Oscar winner for Best Picture in 1944. (It also won for Best Director and Best Writing, although that didn't go into consideration.)
• No. 2 ranking in the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Greatest Movies list in 1998.
• Held on for a No. 3 ranking 10 years later.
• No. 32 ranking in AFI's 100 Years, 100 Cheers (i.e. most inspiring movies).
• Counted for six of the AFI's most memorable quotes, by far the most quoted movie in the bunch (Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz tied for second with three). They are:
• "Here's looking at you, kid." (No. 5)
• "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." (20)
• "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" (28)
• "Round up the usual suspects." (32)
• "We'll always have Paris." (43)
• "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." (67)
• Oscar nomination for Best Actor for Humphrey Bogart.

Before I leave you, I want to drop one other fun fact learned from IMDB.com's Trivia page.  In the 1980s, someone sent the script to Casablanca to a bunch of studio executives under a different name (the original title - Everybody Comes to Rick's). A few people recognized the script, but the rest complained that it was "not good enough" to make a good movie, was "too dated," had "too much dialogue" and "not enough sex." I don't really know about what that says about the state of movies today, but I thought it was interesting.