Movie Reviews

I bought Casablanca on DVD a while ago without ever having seen it. I picked it up mainly for the fact that film-critic Roger Ebert -- whom I have a lot of respect for in terms of his knowledge and love of film, and his ability to communicate those thing -- does a commentary track on the disk. The previous DVD commentaries he's done (for Dark City and Citizen Kane) have been really interesting, and I was looking forward to hearing another. I suspect that if there was no Ebert commentary on the DVD, I probably wouldn't have bought it -- it's universal acclaim as one of the best films ever notwithstanding.

So after buying it, Casablanca just sat there on my shelf for months, and I never bothered to watch it until just recently. I don't really know why it is, but I often find it hard to work up enough of an interest in old movies to actually watch them -- even though I know that many older movies I've seen are flat-out excellent, and better than most of what gets released these days.

I'm glad that I finally got around to watching it; it's really good. Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, owner of a popular nightclub in the Vichy France-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca. The Nazis are on the advance, and many Europeans sought refuge in America. To get there though, they first had to go through Casablanca; they also had to obtain an exit visa, which could be a very difficult piece of paper to acquire. On their way out of Europe, coincidence leads two new characters, Ilsa and Victor Laszlo, to Rick's place, where we discover that Rick and Ilsa were once lovers and that the flame is not necessarily doused completely.

The Laszlos don't have an exit visa, owing to Victor's position near the top of the Nazi's 'most wanted list' as an underground anti-Nazi leader. Coincidentally, Rick might just be in possession of a piece of paper that could solve their problems (yeah, that's two fairly major coincidences driving the plot, but they're not obtrusive, and isn't coincidence often the force behind the many of the best stories?).

And so, from that brief plot description, you might be able to discern that there's a lot of interesting things going on in Casablanca (the film and the city), not the least of which is the war-time intrigue, the French/German cooperation, and the love triangle between Rick, Ilsa, and Victor.

Best film ever? I wouldn't say so. It's a nice, tight story with great acting, but it's not anything extraordinarily exceptional. Still, I'm now really anxious to watch it again and listen to what Roger has to say.