Movie Review: Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca

Note: This is #18 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Yes, it’s true. I’d never seen Casablanca, even though I’d picked up the gist of the story and all the famous lines through some kind of pop culture osmosis. Turns out I liked the movie, though didn’t think it was THAT great.

Humphrey Bogart stars as Rick Blaine, the American in exile owner of a swanky saloon in the Morocan city of Casablanca. World War II is brewing and after the Nazi invation of France Casablanca is home to many refugees, all of them seeking to use the city as a gateway to safety. When Blaine comes into possession of priceless documents that could be used to get anyone out of the country no questions asked, he is torn between selling them and giving them to a new couple who shows up in town: his old lover Ilsa Lund (played by Ingred Bergman) and her new husband, a Czech resistance fighter on the run from the Nazis. All along the way, Blaine is checked and dogged by Louis Renault, friend to the Nazis and Captain of the local police force. In the end, Blaine has to get past his bitterness over how Ilsa left him and choose between doing the selfish thing and the noble thing.

What struck me most about Casablanca was what a strong sense of place it gave you. The set pieces and photography around the Moroccan city were very convincing, and the whole thing had a kind of exotic quality to it, which contrasted sharply with both the upper class fugitives trapped there and Blaine’s establishment of “Rick’s Cafe American.” The whole romance angle between Rick and Ilsa was kind of bland to me, but the rest of the story was more than interesting enough to keep my attention.

I also liked Bogart in this movie, much more than I liked his performance in The Maltese Falcon. Rick Blaine is a morally ambivalent man for most of the movie, and this is kind of an interesting contrast to what I’ve seen so far. I have to say, though, that it was actually the crooked Police Chief Louis Renault (played by Claude Rains) who stole every scene he was in. He was the most entertaining thing to watch in the whole movie.

So, good movie, worth seeing just because it’s a touchstone of popular culture.

Also this week, Jeremy reviews X-Men Origins: Wolverine..

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