There's one particular screen romance that remains the golden standard after years, but funnily enough, it's more like wartime propaganda than it is any sort of romance. Regardless, this golden oldie of golden oldies is just about as romantic as wartime propaganda gets.
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Dooley Wilson, Conrad Veidt, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre
Rated PG for mild violence.
Availability: Rental on most streaming services, including Amazon Prime, and some retailers
It would be unreasonably difficult to argue against CASABLANCA's status as the definitive screen romance. The most famous screen romance. The most beloved screen romance.
Ironically, this is no love story where lovers will give the world for each other, in fact, it is exactly the opposite, as world politics triumph and our heartsick lovers realize that they must put aside their personal feelings for each other and fight the good fight instead (sorry about that major spoiler there, but the movie has been around for over 70 years now and endlessly imitated and parodied, so you should gotten around to it by now).
The central character of the film and the film's central love triangle is Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), American expatriate and one of the most successful businessmen in Casablanca, French Morocco in December 1941. As the Nazi Party's Third Reich sweeps over Europe like a dark cloud, its political and ideological opponents are forced out of their nations to seek freedom in the New World, but the inability for a direct route has resulted in a roundabout refugee trail in which Casablanca plays a key role. However, for many unfortunate souls, Casablanca acts as a purgatory from which they cannot leave as exit visas are scarce and Nazi influence in Morocco is growing. So Casablanca has become a mixing pot of all sorts, with French and German officers, expatriates, refugees and the native population, as well as those who have sprung up in industry to service and exploit the burgeoning population of undesirables. The best of these businessmen is Rick, a professed neutral and cynic who owns and runs the most popular nightclub and gambling den in the city: Rick's Cafe. With the best piano player in town, Sam (Dooley Wilson), and the cooperation of Vichy French local authority Captain Louis Renault, people from all roads of life meet at Rick's with hopes of arranging passage out of Africa, to conduct official business, to gamble with anything that yet holds some value or simply to escape the darkness of their lives. Rick, a hard-boiled cynic who sticks his neck out for no one but who secretly has a history of fighting for the underdog in earlier conflicts, watches coolly as the sleazy criminal Ugarte (Peter Lorre) is taken to his doom by Nazi officers the night after he entrusted Rick with holding highly valuable letters of transit he'd obtained from murdered Nazis. But with the letters of transit in his possession, Rick now finds his defining neutrality challenged, because a renowned leader of the Czech Resistance, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), has come to Casablanca in hopes of reaching America, where he can continue the good fight, and Nazi officer Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt), has also arrived in Casablanca for the specific purpose of ensuring that Laszlo never leaves. The real kicker is that Laszlo's wife, Isla Lund (Ingrid Bergman), is a woman Rick knows all too well and is the reason for his bitterness. So while the Laszlo requires the letters of transit to leave the city and Captains Strasser and Renault are on orders to locate the letters, Rick and Ilsa are caught in the throes of a romantic history of passion, betrayal and heartbreak, and time is of the essence.
It's intriguing to consider the experience of such a film in its pure state when released in 1942-1943, back before the intense scrutinization and analyzation, the cultural saturation, homages and copycats. Even people who haven't seen it know the lines so well, or at least think they do; "Play it again, Sam," is never actually said in the film, but it's been derived from the line, "Play it Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'," a theme which is almost as famous as the dialogue. Other lines such as, "Here's looking at you kid," "We'll always have Paris," "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," "Round up the usual suspects," and "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walks into mine," have all entered the annals of popular culture and repeated in all mediums. And those are just the most remembered lines; it is a script chock-full of excellent dialogue.
Naturally, the filmmakers could not have known the enduring legacy and immense acclaim the film would receive for decades to come when it was in production, but it is one of the rare films still recognized as one of the "truly great" films that was popularly appreciated at the time of its release in the Golden Age of Hollywood. It won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay, received critical acclaim and was a substantial box office success.
Despite its status as the "great Hollywood romance", CASABLANCA's marketing campaign was closer to that of an adventure film, emphasizing the exotic locale and pictures of Humphrey Bogart wielding a pistol (as he does in one scene of the movie) emblazoned across the posters, and the film's director, Michael Curtiz, was best known for his work in swashbuckling epics starring Errol Flynn, such as CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935), THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) and THE SEA HAWK (1940). CASABLANCA was largely a propaganda film though, a rallying cry for world unity against fascist imperialism in World War II. Rick starts out as an isolationist American, he sticks his neck out for nobody, in his words, but as the film comes to climax, he changes his tune; "I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Released almost a year after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, this wasn't any longer so much of a controversial message, at least not in America, but it was an inspiring, invigorating message. It made people feel good. Furthermore, it appeals through characters who are made in shades of gray, and thus more relatable and sympathetic. Rick is a hard-boiled S.O.B., but we love him because we understand why he's that way; Ilsa is less than faithful and Renault is a sleaze who extorts sexual favors from pretty young refugees in exchange for his assistance. They're all far less pure than the average protagonists of any other film from that era, all except for Laszlo, who is noble and thus uninteresting. He's more a plot device than a character, representing an ideal that the film's selfish characters eventually decide to sacrifice and strive for. Harry and Sally, of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, argued whether or not Ilsa actually loved Rick or Victor, but the film doesn't seem especially interested in the the truth of that matter; it acts opposite of most screen romances, encouraging a higher ideal to sacrifice individual desires. People watching it don't care though, they can barely get over Paris, which they'll always have.
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