Casablanca

Directed by: Michael Curtiz

Written by: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch (screenplay); Murray Burnett, Joan Allison (play)









Roger Ebert's Great Movies #1

There's not a whole lot I can say about Casablanca that I haven't already said to most of the people who would be reading this.

I love this movie. Everything about it is great. Everything.

I can't remember how many times I've seen this movie, but it's easily one of my favorites

I first saw it and immediately fell in love with it in my Senior year of high school. My dad and I were wandering around the hometown Blockbuster (back when there actually were Blockbuster video stores around), and they had a display up of the most recent "AFI Top 100 Movies" with most of them underneath. Citizen Kane was already out, so we grabbed #2 - Casablanca - and headed home. At that time and at that age, I shouldn't have been interested in this film. But from the introduction after the opening credits, I was hooked. The next day, I watched it again before we returned it.

Not long after, dying to form my own unique identity in a college world filled with "unique identities," I bought my own copy of the film on DVD. I then proceeded to watch it and all the special features included. Whenever people tried to talk about movies to show off their intellectual and artistic personalities, my go-to reference was Casablanca. I knew it backwards and forwards and everything I could about it's history. (Sadly, most of what I once knew is now reduced to a few bits of trivia - I need to watch those special features again.) It was old. It was cool. And, always to my dismay, it was mostly unwatched by people I knew. Of course, to resolve that issue, I forced all my friends (and many people who were not my friends) to watch it.

Now, Casablanca has been a part of my life for longer than it wasn't. I've watched it with my friends. I've watched it with students. I've watched it with my family. I've watched it with my wife (though she might add "too many times"). I'm not afraid to admit, I've watched it by myself.

Each time I watch it, I catch something new. Or I understand a new nuance that I didn't catch before. Or I just have a new insight.

For example, when watching it with my students, it finally came to me exactly how complex Rick's plan at the end had to be. It involved him lying to everyone. It even involved lying and saying that Elsa was lying when she said she was in love with him. At the end, he manages to be a step ahead of everyone else in understanding what was at stake and what needed to be done. He has planned for every possible contingency, and everything he's said and done in the past few scenes - both the casual encounters and the big moments - have been to carefully calculated to make sure his plan is executed flawlessly.

The next time I watched it, I realized the complexity of Rick's plan should have been evident from the start. The moment we first see him, he's playing chess - a notoriously complex game of maneuvering and counter-maneuvering, in which the most successful players are able to see and plan several moves ahead of their opponents. Its a