Casablanca

Dir: Michael Curtiz, 1942, bw (10*)

Best Picture (AA)

AFI and Time Mag Top 100

Even though a soapy melodrama, Casablanca is the best of that type that you'll find, as it transcends that genre by blending film noir style, anti-Nazi politics, and suspense and intrigue into what is basically a non-sentimental love story. Humphrey Bogart runs an American style bar called "Rick's Cafe Americaine" in Morocco, and in walks Ingrid Bergman and her husband, Jewish resistance fighter Paul Henreid, wanted by the Nazis. What follows is a combination rekindled lovers and escaping fugitive story that is still popular to this day, to the point of being parodied in many films (best is Woody Allen's "Play It Again, Sam", a line which was never spoken in this movie regarding the song "As Tears Go By"). Dooley Wilson steals scenes as Sam, the piano player, Claude Rains as well as Louis, a sympathetic French officer, and Peter Lorre is typically weaselly as a scared criminal. Everyone's favorite romance. 3 Oscars

Quote: Of all the gin joints in the world, why did she have to walk into mine. (Bogart)

Quote2: The problems of two measley people don't amount to a hill of beans in this world. (Bogart)