Casablanca

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Movie
Review: I just love this movie. I am a huge fan of the Not so happy ending. Imperfect love is the best kind. Oh and I am a sappy romantic with a morbid side.

Rating:
Summary: The best movie of all time!
Review: Simply put, this is a timeless classic from thee title song to Bogart's last lines "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship." The best movie of all time, beyond critisizm,

Rating:
Summary: Re.: "Mr Snerdley"
Review: People, people, people...easy now! Don't let "Leonard Snerdley" jerk your chains, it is obviously somebody's idea of a joke. I mean, just read his other reviews! Nobody is that stupid yet able to write legibly!

Rating:
Summary: this truly is one of the greatest films of all time
Review: A film by Michael Curtiz

The American Film Institute ranked 'Casablanca' as the second greatest movie of all time behind 'Citizen Kane'. I would tend to agree with 'Casablanca' as the #2 movie of all time (I just disagree on #1). This is a movie that is not only an excellent film, but also one which has entered the consciousness of a nation so much that many people only know that some lines are famous and that perhaps they came from 'Casablanca'. Lines like 'Here's looking at you, kid', 'All the gin joints in all the towns in the world and she has to walk into mine', and 'I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship' are legendary. So is the line that was not even said in the movie 'play it again, Sam' (in this case there are a couple variations said in the movie, the closest being 'play it once more, Sam'). Besides the famous dialogue, though, this is simply a fine movie and is an example of excellence in filmmaking.

The story is set in Casablanca, in French Morocco. It is 1941 and the world is in the midst of World War II. With such a grand background, this is a very simple story. Much of the film take's place at Rick's, a café that lets its patrons forget for a moment that the war is going on. The patrons can forget until the Nazis chase a runaway to Casablanca and execute him on the streets. Another runaway is traced to Rick's and while this could turn to a serious drama, it instead turns the film into a great romance and even a comedy with graceful touches. The success of this depends entirely on the characters and the actors playing the parts. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is the owner of Rick's, and he is completely (as far as we can tell) apolitical. He is just looking out for himself and his café and he isn't too worried about what happens to anyone else. But Rick is smooth and likeable, so this does not bother us too much. In walks Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), the very man the Nazis are looking for. With Laszlo comes Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). When Rick says the famous like about all the gins joints in all the towns in the world'he is talking about Ilsa. To put it mildly, they have a past.

To say more would spoil the joy in this movie, but I fear that I have not said enough and it is nearly impossible to capture the heart and grace of this movie in words written more than 60 years after it was first released. I also have not mentioned Captain Renault (Claude Rains), one of the great characters in film history, even more so than Rick or Ilsa. I truly believe that this is one of the greatest movies of all time, and that being the case I am not sure how to adequately describe this great film. Suffice it to say that from the acting, to the script, to the actors, to the direction, and cinematography, I find it exceedingly difficult to find a flaw through this movie. It is just as vibrant a picture as it was 60 years ago when it was Oscar's Best Picture in 1942.

Rating:
Summary: leonard snerdly is out of his gourd
Review: casablanca is a wonderful film presented beautifully in crisp black and white. for some reason this fool snerdley thinks old films need to be colorized. i won't even bother to explain why this is wrong, but anyone who thinks that way must be borderline retarded. in another review he bashes the black bars in widescreen presentations saying they don't let him see the whole picture. actually, that's their purpose. things presented in fullscreen crop the sides of the film. in widescreen no part of the film is removed. i just had to comment...

Rating:
Summary: Cinematic Work of Art!
Review: Casablanca is a superb film. A classic black and white masterpiece with outstanding acting from the whole cast, Bogart, Bergman, etc! I just read a recent review from some guy who says they should stop showing this movie in black and white and they should colorize it but I must say that I'm a film buff who is against colorizing black and white movies!

Rating:
Summary: Sam plays it again...
Review: Insane value. This double CD set is an essential purchase for any Casablanca fan and indeed any fan of truly great movies.

Being a total Lauren Bacall fan, the extras, including the input from Lauren, are more than I could ever have hoped to find in one CD package. It just doesn't get any better than this, folks.

The movie itself is quite simply a work of Art, and the praise that has been heaped upon it for decades is more than justified. Rick's Cafe Americain exists as a quantum pocket within the Casablanca continuum, an oasis of sanity in which Hope resides, in the face of Nazi aggression and shameful collaboration and betrayal by the hateful Vichy French sympathizers.

Casablanca is not just a laid back series of snappy one-liners, it is a powerful and passionate movie about a deadly serious struggle - a classic battle between good and evil, right and wrong, made during the War, and at a time when the outcome was by no means a forgone conclusion.

Casablanca, with its strong, believable characters, vividly captures the dichotomy between the True French, such as Resistance Leader Lucie Aubrac, who upheld the honor of France during the Occupation, and the vile traitors who sold out to the Nazis.

Beautiful, exciting, funny, sexy, romantic... just keep on going, kid, you'll get there.

Easily one of the finest movies ever made, about the triumph of the human spirit and of courage and integrity over treachery and aggression.

As for my fellow fans... Here's looking at you, kids.

Rating:
Summary: RE: Has not aged well at all
Review: To the idiot below from Tacoma, WA, who said: "I rented this waiting to be blown away. I'm still waiting. I expected a lot more action. I'm pretty sure I will enjoy it a lot more when Warner Bros finally gets around to releasing the colorized version, the way this movie needs to be seen - the world is not black and white, why should our movies be?"

Have you no respect for the Art of movies? Warner Bros. would never release "Casablanca," or any other black-and-white movie, in a colorized-only version. They have respect, appreciation, and admiration for the classics, and good, basic common sense and intelligence, unlike you. If you can't "make out a thing" watching a black-and-white movie, a colorized version is the last thing you need, trust me! (Try a new pair of glasses.) What's the point of watching a bastardization of someone's (in this case Michael Curtiz's) art, and of movies in general, the preeminent artform of the twentieth century?

For a good education on the greatness of black-and-white movies and the importance of seeing them that way, obtain the "Cinemania 97" CD-ROM (now out-of-print) from Microsoft, and click the Roger Ebert-guided tour "Why I Love Black-and-White." But then, this may be expecting too much from an ignorant twit!

For the uninitiated and misinformed, I will attempt to post a transcript of the Ebert tour, courtesy of Cinemania 97.

From Cinemania 97. © 1996 Microsoft Corporation and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved.

"Hello, I'm Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-host of "Siskel & Ebert," and I'm also right here on Cinemania. And I'd like to talk to you about why I love black and white movies.

Some people seem to think that color movies are a somehow an improvement over black and white movies but that's a ridiculous idea, especially when you consider that the majority of movies that turn up on lists of the best films of all time were made in black and white.

(continued in adjacent post)

Rating:
Summary: Has not aged well at all
Review: I rented this waiting to be blown away. I'm still waiting. I expected a lot more action. I'm pretty sure I will enjoy it a lot more when Warner Bros finally gets around to releasing the colorized version, the way this movie needs to be seen - the world is not black and white, why should our movies be?

Rating:
Summary: We will always have Casablanca
Review: From 1939 through 1941, many Europeans were wondering what ... was taking America so long to join the fight against Hitler. Keeping in mind that Rick Blaine(Bogart) is an American who refuses to get involved in other people's affairs, even with life and death on the line, CASABLANCA can easily be interpreted as a criticism of America's callous indifference to the horrors going on across the ocean. The film makers had acknowledged this as a catalyst for making this movie. And on that level, CASABLANCA is an enormous success.

But films rarely make it on just their political or social messages. What makes CASABLANCA the classic it is, is the incredible balance of top-notch acting, impeccable writing, and flawless pacing by the director. As one previous reviewer mentioned, the military intrigues and dangers are heightened by the tensions of the love story. Rick's love for Ilsa (part nostalgia, part real) is what finally gets him involved, but given his previous associations with all levels of Casablanca's society, he must be careful where this love leads him. This movie is a thriller and a sentimental love story, neither of which is overblown or corny. Bogey, Bergman, Jordan, Lorre all turn in performances which will be remembered for so long as films are shown.

Lastly, the serious nature of the plot finds relief in several moments of humor. As a New Yorker, this is my favorite bit of repartee:

Major Strasser (To Rick): Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?
Rick: It's not particularly my beloved Paris.
Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?
Rick: When you get there, ask me!
Major Strasser: How about New York?
Rick: Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.

What a wonderful film!