It’s been almost seventy years since Casablanca graced cinema screens for the very first time and still the magic that surrounds this picture hasn’t diminished.
Released in 1942 this romantic epic starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
World War II Morocco springs to life in Michael Curtiz’s classic love story. Colourful characters abound in Casablanca, a waiting room for Europeans trying to escape Hitler's war-torn Europe.
Humphrey Bogart plays Richard "Rick" Blaine, a cynical but good-hearted American whose café is the gathering place for everyone from the French Police to the black market to the Nazis.
When his long-lost love, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), surfaces in Casablanca with her Resistance leader husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), Rick is pulled into both a love triangle and a web of political intrigue.
Ilsa and Victor need to escape from Casablanca, and Rick may be the only one who can help them.
The question is, will he?
It’s hard to believe that this timeless classic that is loved by generations of romantics and movie fans alike barely made A-list status when it was adapted from an unperformed stage production Everybody Comes to Rick’s.
But with the help of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman who created some of romantic cinemas brightest sparks as Casablanca became one of the greatest movies of all time.
It’s one of those very rare movies where every moment, every character and every line of dialogue matters, there really are no dead patches in this movie as it is filled with charm, wit and nostalgia.
But it’s not just the romantic aspect of the movie that makes it so popular it is also a war movie and a fight against the suppressive Nazi regime. Rick's Café is the point of intersection, the espionage centre, the background for Allied offensive, and the focal point as refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe.
From a script that wasn’t expected to do any better than any other Hollywood movie being released at the time the superb cast telling a story of love during a time of war has made Casablanca a timeless piece of cinema.
And although over the years the romantic movie has been done to death there hasn’t been a single movie that has equalled it, a true quality piece of filmmaking.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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