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i haven't watched it yet but when I was a little kid I thought it was a great movie to watch if you where in love.
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It seems I have received a number of negative reviews on my interpretation of this film which is somewhat baffling to me. In fact I think 'Casablanca' is an excellent film but think its quality--and the quality is indeed superb--is largely a product of editing rather than initial planning. Surely the actors didn't think that they were involved in anything 'special'. They thought it was just another studio film being cranked out like tanks or aircraft during WWII.
This film was, I believe, released in 1945. Therefore, it is, in some ways, a fairly standard propaganda flick [and there were hundreds of them during the War] saved by the presence of Ingrid Bergman, in all her youthful beauty, and the brooding 'Rick' [Humphrey Bogart]. Bergman's beauty is a thing to behold and Bogart's agony is correspondingly miserable.
Rick's 'Club Americain' is in Vichy-French controlled Casa Blanca. It is also a hot bed for intrigue and desperate people trying to escape Nazi occupied Europe. Rick, who is a successful restrauteur, has settled into an alcoholic haze following his baffling abandonment by the haunting Bergman in Paris a couple of years earlier. Much to Rick's chagrin and surprise, Bergman shows up unexpectedly--along with her husband--in his North African night club. Rick immediately sinks into a desperate, alcohol enhanced grief as he waits for Bergman to return and explain herself. Rick's despair is truly a thing to behold and is why Bogart deserves to be rated as one of the truly great actors.
Paul Henreid, as Bergman's cuckolded husband, is just too noble for words and the Nazis are appropriately unidimensional and evil. The cynical Vichy French Inspector is indeed perfect as a man who ultimately finds where his loyalties...and soul...lies. "Arrest the usual suspects," he orders, as Bogart, walking away with him in the fog tells him, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Excellent stuff, really.
Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Conquest of Mexico
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You are a complete tool if you did not like this film. I read Julia S.'s one-star review about how the characters don't have chemistry. Hmm, well, if I'm guessing correctly chemistry to you means John Travolta and Barry Pepper in "Battlefield Earth", right? Not a chance by the way. This film is Bogey at his best, a landmark achievement to say the least. And on HD-DVD? A must-own needs to be purchased again folks.
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Aaaahhh ... Bogey. AFI's No. 1 film star of the 20th century. Hollywood's original noir anti-hero, epitome of the handsome, cynical and oh-so lonesome wolf (with "Casablanca"'s Rick Blaine alone, one of the Top 5 guys on the AFI's list of greatest 20th century film heroes); looking unbeatably cool in white dinner jacket or trenchcoat and fedora alike, a glass of whiskey in his hand and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Endowed with a legendary aura several times larger than his real life stature, and still admired by scores of women wishing they had been born 50+ years earlier, preferably somewhere in California and to parents connected with the movie business, so as to have at least a marginal chance of meeting him.
Triple-Oscar-winning "Casablanca," directed by Michael Curtiz, was and still is without question Bogart's greatest career-defining moment, the movie on which his legendary status is grounded more than on any other of his multiple successes. The film's story is based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's play "Everybody Comes to Rick's," renamed by Warner Brothers in order to tag onto the success of the studio's 1938 hit "Algiers" (starring Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr). Building on the success of 1941's "The Maltese Falcon" and further expanding Bogart's increasingly complex on-screen personality, it added a romantic quality which had heretofore been missing; eventually making this the AFI's Top 20th century love story (even before the No. 2 "Gone With the Wind"), while second only to "Citizen Kane" on the AFI's overall list of Top 100 20th century movies; with a unique, inimitable blend of drama, passion, humor, exotic North African atmosphere, patriotism, unforgettable score (courtesy of Herman Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By," Max Steiner and Louis Kaufman's violin) and an all-star cast, consisting besides Bogart of Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa), Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (Captain Renault), Dooley Wilson (who, a drummer by trade, had to fake his piano playing as Rick's friend Sam), Conrad Veidt (Major Strasser), Sydney Greenstreet (Ferrari) and Peter Lorre (Ugarte). And the movie's countless famous one-liners have long attained legendary status in their own right ...
Looking at this movie's and its stars' almost mythical fame, it is difficult to imagine that, produced at the height of the studio system era, it was originally just one of the roughly 50 movies released over the course of one year. But mass production didn't equal low quality; on the contrary, the great care given to all production values, from script-writing to camera work, editing, score and the stars' presentation in the movies themselves and in their trailers, was at least partly responsible for its lasting success. In fact, the screenplay for "Casablanca" was constantly rewritten even throughout the filming process, to the point that particularly Ingrid Bergman was extremely worried because she was unsure whether at the end she (Ilsa) would leave Casablanca with Henreid's Victor Laszlo or stay there with Humphrey Bogart (Rick).
Little needs to be said about the movie's story. After the onset of WWII, Casablanca has become a point of refuge for Jews and other desperate souls from all corners of Europe, fleeing the old world with the hope of building a new life in America. Unofficial center of Casablanca's society is Rick's "Café Americain," where gamblers, refugees, French police, Nazi troops, thieves, swindlers and soldiers of fortune come together on a nightly basis, to make connections, conduct their shady business, or simply forget the uncertainty of their fate for a few precious hours. And presiding over this mixed and colorful society is Rick Blaine, expatriate American without any hope of returning to the United States himself (for reasons never fully explained), officially not interested in politics but only the flourishing of his business, but soft-hearted underneath the hard shell of his cynicism. From Rick's perspective, everything is going just swell and the way it is meant to be: he is reasonably well-respected, has a good working relationship with Captain Renault, the local representative of the Vichy government (based on mutual respect as much as on the fact that Renault is a guaranteed winner at Rick's gambling tables and, by way of reciprocation, turns a blind eye to whatever less-than-squeaky-clean transactions Rick may be tolerating in his café, always ready to have his police round up "the usual suspects" instead of the truly guilty party of a crime if that person's continued freedom promises to be more profitable); and although aware of Rick's not quite so apolitical past, the Germans are leaving him alone as well, as long as he stays out of politics now. Until ... well, until famous underground resistance leader and recent concentration camp-escapee Victor Laszlo and his wife Ilsa walk into Rick's café, into his place "of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world" - and with one blow, administered to the melancholy tunes of "As Time Goes By," the carefully maintained equilibrium of his little world comes crashing down around him.
Like most of the more recent editions of this movie, the blueray collectors' edition features not only an improved visual transfer but also, and notably, a new introduction by Lauren Bacall, additional documentaries ("Bacall on Bogart" and "The Children Remember" with Stephen Bogart and Ingrid Bergman's daughters Pia Lindstrom and Isabella Rosselini) besides the excellent "You Must Remember This" already included on the original one-disc edition, newly-discovered deleted scenes, treasures from the production history, commentary tracks with Roger Ebert and historian Rudy Behlmer, as well as several audio documents and fun stuff like web links and the "Looney Tunes" homage "Carrotblanca."
Not only to Bogart and Bergman fans all over the world, "Casablanca" is film history's all-time crowning achievement, a "must" in every movie lover's collection, and one of the few films that truly deserve the title "classic." If you don't already own it, now is the time to remedy that omission!
Also recommended:
Algiers
Notorious - Criterion Collection
Humphrey Bogart - The Signature Collection, Vol. 1 (Casablanca Two-Disc Special Edition / The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Two-Disc Special Edition / They Drive by Night / High Sierra)
Humphrey Bogart - The Signature Collection, Vol. 2 (The Maltese Falcon Three-Disc Special Edition / Across the Pacific / Action in the North Atlantic / All Through the Night / Passage to Marseille)
Bogie and Bacall - The Signature Collection (The Big Sleep / Dark Passage / Key Largo / To Have and Have Not)
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The Blu-ray edition of Casablanca will be wonderful if you enjoy lots of postcards, booklets, and a fancy box. If, however, you're main interest is in the film itself, you won't be disappointed but neither will you be blown away by BR's enhancements.
The resolution isn't measurably better than a 2006 HD release -- after all there is only so much that can be done with a film made in 1942! But the clarity of picture and sound are worth the hefty price, especially for collectors or people who want to know lots of minute detail about the history of the movie.
My choice is always for the quality of the film and sound, which is why I am going with Blu-ray; but I'm not expecting miracles, just a very high quality, satisfying upgrade of this wonderful movie.
Bogie and Becall...clearly worth the price! Will make a wonderful holiday gift.
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