There are many different things happening in Casablanca, both the place and film. In the place, many people flee from the famous city of Casablanca in Morocco to other countries undisturbed by war, and since it was occupied by Nazis, the atmosphere was ridden with uneasiness. No one was allowed to leave the country without permission, and as shown in the start of the film, local policemen were shooting a man with illegal papers. Other people who feared of fretting for their lives go into Rick’s nightclub to escape the worries as the world outside fell into chaos and corruption. However in the film, there were more underlying themes that support a major platform; politics, government, war, crime and corruption, all remained subplots to Casablanca’s noble story of love and sacrifice. At its core, there’s a heroic deed in Casablanca about how sometimes people sacrifice love for the greater goodness and nobler purpose.

Humphrey Bogart plays as Rick Blaine, owner of the renowned nightclub where the famous steers into and even the cowards hide. When we first see him, he was in an immaculate white suit with a cigar in his hand (a legendary movie icon); he was tough, determined and “doesn’t stick for anybody”. But when an escape Czech Victor Laszlo enters the bar, he brings along his wife Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). She asks for Sam, the piano player, to play “As Time Goes By”, and along the tunes, she falls into a deep reminiscence with tears in her eyes. Rick, on the other hand, hears this and stormed into Sam “I told you not to play that song here again!” then suddenly sees Ilsa in front of him. This movie moment is shared not only between these two people, who had a common understanding, but with the audience as well. We discover that both Rick and Ilsa were once lovers in the sweeping landscape of Paris. Ilsa was married to Victor Laszlo but she believed that he was killed by war and fell in love with Rick. But at the last minute they were leaving Paris when it was captured by the Germans, all Rick received in the train station was a note from Ilsa saying she was sorry, she couldn’t make it, and found out that her husband was alive. It was Rick who was tormented, standing in the rain, feeling foolish and destitute.

And there was the line “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine” was uttered by the hopeless and disappointed drunk Rick; an alter-ego of what we have seen in his common self. Ilsa comes back for comfort but Rick yelled at her and she runs away. He learns then that she still loves him, and him on the same state to her. “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Evidently, he utters this three times in the film, and his love was much greater than the way he looks at her.

However such a melodramatic love story was stifled for a bit to give way for an interesting mixture of comedy, suspense and drama, with Rick acquiring a transit paper that permits two people to leave the country without question from the black-marketeer Ugarte (played by Peter Lorre). Officials were hunting against the person holding such illegal papers, and Rick had a clever plan. In order to run away together with Ilsa, he would surreptitiously give the papers to Laszlo to put him into blame. But the question of who ends up in the plane doesn’t matter in this film, for Casablanca is more than that. We are supposed to ask they why’s: why Rick let go of something he ever craved for long, why Rick chose not to go to that plane, why Rick told Ilsa that he couldn’t be with her. When Ilsa told him “We don’t have each other”, Rick told her “We always have Paris”. For this film serves a purpose of something nobler, a love that’s selfless. The makers could actually choose to make Ilsa and Rick go together happily ever after, but Casablanca is a choice to make. This is not a tragedy, nor a tragic love story; it glorifies in tears and the ideology that sometimes we have to let go of some things we love, not because we’re tired of them but because there is a thing called sacrifice. Rick never followed his idea to put the blame to Laszlo, he gave it to Laszlo for them to escape Morocco with Ilsa. Rick remained in Casablanca to face the Nazis.

It’s absolutely no doubt a great film. Probably only a very few knew at that time they were making this that someday, this movie would become something that the world would truly treasure – a gem of rarity, complexity and difficult to overcome; a picture that would resonate to the ages. Maybe this film was so great because in the first place, it never thought to be great. Like the performances of Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, the hard-drinking but vulnerable when it comes to the heart owner of nightclub, and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund, the captivating portrait of perfection troubled by the remnants of an old flame; both of their performances were so complex that one could actually tell that both the characters and actors don’t know how was it going to end, and who ends up in the plane away from Morocco. It suddenly felt real when Ilsa heard from Rick about his decision, the emotional intensity in her face as though Ingrid Bergman couldn’t accept the fact that she had just received a script that tells her character wouldn’t end up with Rick at all.

Not a single scene is wasted, also the film enjoys the fact that it’s one of the most well-made movies of all time, probably goes up to all top five’s of every critic in the whole world. The melodrama is flawless, the restoration of black and white picture to digital clarity is astounding – Casablanca is that rarity that couldn’t be found during these days. An elemental piece of classic cinema-making where every line uttered is quotable, every single scene is iconic, and the storyline transcends amongst the decades. Whilst everything else in it is movie history.

Rating: A+