US 102m Dir: Michael Curtiz Key Cast: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman
Based on: Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murrary Burnett and Joan Alison (Unproduced Play)
For a film which is perhaps cinema's most famous romantic story, it's perhaps surprising that it takes a few minutes before either of it's leads appear. Instead we're shown the context that the film takes place in, the Moroccan city of Casablanca, a key city on the route for refugees attempting to flee to America from Nazi-occupied France. Initially this seems out of place and makes for an underwhelming opening it's vital background for the story the film is trying to tell.
Humphrey Bogart shines as Rick as soon as he appears on screen. Rick is the American owner of Rick's cafe nightclub which hosts a range of guests from refugees trying to arrange visas to America to Vichy France and gestapo officials. He comes across as jaded yet totally in control of his world, happily picking up documents which the Germans are after despite the inherent danger. Then suddenly we see his face fall when former lover Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) arrives. Suddenly he loses control and we see him after closing a broken man. It's easy to consider the stereotype of the hugely masculine man who shows no emotions in cinema yet here's a 1940s film that has an emotional lead.
A flashback shows us the relationship the pair had in Paris and it's more like what I was expecting ahead of this film. It's a classic romance which Hollywood repeats time and time again because there's always something special about a well-told love story with two actors who can really make it work. It ends tragically as Rick waits for Ilsa before fleeing the newly-occupied city and is given a letter essentially saying "it's over" with no explanation. The way the ink runs in the rain is really effective and feels like the relationships itself has been washed out.
It transpires that Ilsa's husband Lazlo (Paul Heinreid) was a resistance fighter who was thought to be dead. Ilsa began a relationship with Rick believing herself to be a widow but when Lazlo turned up alive she ended it. It's a great plot and something that really only the conditions of war can provide. It's the sort of story that happened endlessly as husbands and wives were separated by the war leading to many people ending up forming new relationships. It's one of the devastating effects of the world wars which is perhaps less well remembered.
Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa is very much the secondary character to Rick and her job here is to display two emotions- love (for both Rick and Lazlo) and sadness, with occasional combinations of the two. She totally sells both relationships and you can constantly see the struggle in her as she tries to work out how to manage this impossible situation she finds herself in through no fault of her own.
The film doesn't end in a way I would have predicted but I felt it was satisfactory and really fitted with the way the characters were depicted. Rick loses some of his cynicism and having retreated to being a nightclub owner once again becomes the righteous man that's suggested he once was in dialogue throughout the film.
All in all, it's a masterpiece. It's a story which could only really be set in Casablanca during the French occupation yet it still endures so well.
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