Casablanca (1942)

“As the leader of all illegal activities in Casablanca, I am an influential and respected man.” – Senor Ferrari

Number of Times Seen – 3 (1991, 1 Apr 2002 and 27 Feb 2014)

Brief Synopsis – An American saloon owner in Casablanca  must decide whether or not to help a couple trying to escape from the Nazi’s in 1941 Morocco.  The problem is that the woman was once his lover who deserted him.

My Take on it – I saw this movie for the first time as a homework assignment for a creative writing course in high school.  I had never seen it before and needed to write an essay about it.  The teacher actually assigned it to me because he wanted to let me write about something I enjoyed and that was movies.  This was actually my first assignment.

I enjoyed it back then, but as a 17 year old, I didn’t appreciate it as much as I probably could have.

The next time I saw it was in 2002 and I liked it more, but still wasn’t floored by it.

This time, I was in shock as to how good it is and also by the fact that I never appreciated it enough before.

I have always been a HUGE fan of When Harry Met Sally (1989), which is peppered with references to this movie, but never really got them.  I think I now need to re-watch it in order to fully understand those late night phone conversations between Harry and Sally.

The dialogue and plot are both great here and I was captivated throughout the whole 105 minutes.

Since I had seen it twice I recalled bits and pieces of what happened, but this was truly the first time that I can say that I understood it fully and this is a movie that if you don’t pay attention, you might miss key points.

This movie is peppered with backhand comments to so many things that you can see how well it was written.

Winner of 3 (of 8) Oscars.  It won Best Picture, Director and Screenplay.

It lost Cinematography, Film Editing, Music, Actor (Bogart) and Supporting Actor (Claude Rains).

One of the best movies ever made.

Bottom Line – Timeless classic love story. Bogart and Bergman are both excellent here.  Highly recommended!

Rating – Oscar Worthy

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