In 1942, Hol­ly­wood churned out over 500 movies, most of which, nat­u­ral­ly enough, you will have nev­er heard of (unless you hap­pen to be a pro­fes­sor of Film Stud­ies spe­cial­is­ing in the for­ties, which is unlike­ly). When they were mak­ing Casablan­ca in that year, nobody was think­ing that this was going to be the movie that would become an endur­ing clas­sic still appear­ing near the top of “great­est ever movie” polls eighty years lat­er. What makes Casablan­ca so great?

You already know the syn­op­sis: it’s set in 1941 in Vichy-con­trolled Casablan­ca just before Pearl Har­bor and Amer­i­ca is stalling about enter­ing the war. The Ger­mans’ hold is tight­en­ing, and everyone’s fates are uncer­tain. Every­body is want­i­ng to get out before it’s too late. Against this back­drop, Amer­i­can ex-patri­ate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bog­a­rt) runs a night­club and gam­bling den, Rick­’s Café Améri­cain. He also has pre­vi­ous as a fight­er in the Span­ish Civ­il War, so he’s no slouch, and he knows a lot of peo­ple. He has also come by two “let­ters of tran­sit”, valu­able and authen­tic doc­u­men­ta­tion that would allow the bear­ers to make their escape through Ger­man-occu­pied Europe.

Rick’s for­mer lover, from when they met in Paris dur­ing the fall of France, Isla Lund (Ingrid Bergman), walks into his club. Her hus­band Vic­tor Las­z­lo is a linch­pin in the Czech resis­tance; they need those doc­u­ments to escape to Amer­i­ca and con­tin­ue his work. When Isla con­fess­es that she still loves Rick (she’s no hussy though: when they’d met in Paris she had thought her hus­band dead) we come to the nub: Rick’s moral dilem­ma is to decide between his love for Isla and the good of the world. He makes the right choice, and at the end of the film (sure­ly this is no spoil­er) sends Isla and Las­z­lo off, with their papers, to fight the good fight.

Let’s talk cin­e­matog­ra­phy; it’s full-on film noir by Michael Cur­tiz. The use of light and shad­ow is used to dra­mat­ic effect: the moral­ly torn Rick is often seen half in light, half in shad­ow. Las­z­lo, the bright hope for the future, is almost always in full light. Isla’s flaw­less and pearles­cent skin is accom­pa­nied by eyes sparkling impos­si­bly by the use of tiny lights. The venet­ian blind is a handy way to cast prison bar-like shad­ows on the pro­tag­o­nists.

The nar­ra­tive is eco­nom­i­cal; there is no detail that doesn’t mat­ter to the plot, no scene that is wast­ed. Sure, there’s corn (more corn than Kansas and Iowa com­bined, said its screen­writer Julius Epstein) but it’s Hol­ly­wood, what do you expect? And sure­ly it’s no coin­ci­dence that so many clas­sic lines were thus spawned: “Here’s look­ing at you, kid”, “We’ll always have Paris”, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”. I know that you already know that the line “Play it again, Sam” was nev­er actu­al­ly said, so we need­n’t men­tion that!

But let’s look at that clos­ing scene when Rick sucks up his per­son­al loss and deliv­ers that clas­sic part­ing speech to Isla, to the emo­tion­al orches­tral accom­pa­ni­ment of As Time Goes By. It is pret­ty mar­vel­lous stuff, isn’t it?