Action, amazing dialogue, a love triangle, what doesn’t Casablanca have… well except color.
Made in 1942, Casablanca is a film about an American expatriate who runs a club in Casablanca, Morocco. The plot of this film is simple but has inspired many filmmakers today.
The film follows the American expatriate, Ricky, and his journey in transporting his former lover, Ilsa, back home safely at the beginning of World War II. The only problem is that to do so, Ricky must not just protect Ilsa, but her husband, Victor.
This film is a character study of Ricky and how he has become so callous. At the beginning of the film, he receives these letters that he deems irrelevant, but those letters are revealed to be the papers that Ilsa and Victor require to travel to America to continue Victor’s work.
The audience watches Ricky as he withholds the papers from his ex-lover to spite her new relationship until she holds him at gunpoint requesting the papers. This is where the audience discovers that Illsa is still in love with Ricky.
She explains to him all that she has gone through. She believed that Victor had died in the war and she had moved on. Once she learned that he was still alive, she was bound to him.
There is also another plot threaded within this movie. Victor is being hunted by the Germans for his work as a Czech resistance leader. It is within this plot that we see Ricky finally evolve into an entirely new person. At the end of the film, a German officer named Strausser is accosting Victor. With Victor’s removal, Ricky has the perfect opportunity to escape with Ilsa to America or to convince her to stay in Casablanca, for them to live their lives together, but instead, Ricky shoots Strausser and tells Victor to go with Ilsa to America.
Besides watching tremendous character growth, this movie has fantastic cinematography. I am absolutely in love with the way this movie looks!
My family is from Morocco, and I have visited almost every summer. I am always sure to make a trip to Casablanca to pay homage to this movie.
This film will always have a special place in my heart not just because it is one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time, but because it is so well perceived and was created in a country most people cannot even point out on a map (trust me they cannot).
Almost anyone can enjoy this movie because it has just about everything from action, a plot, to drama. I always tend to bash on older films, Citizen Kane is not my favorite, but nonetheless, Casablanca holds up. I don’t know whether it is my affinity for the 1940s and the World War II theme, the fact that it was based in the country my family is from, or if I just like the plot, but Casablanca might be the best film ever created.
