Casablanca

Rating: 4/4 (Great lines, music, Bogart and Burgman make this a must watch!)

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

So says Rick when he sees his old lover Ilsa walk into his bar. The movie is Casablanca, the time is early World War II and the place is Casablanca in Morocco, Africa. Casablanca is teeming with European refugees who have run away from their countries desperate to obtain an exit visa from here (unoccupied French territory) and get into America. They are all running away from the expanding Nazi armies.

Rick (Humphrey Bogart) escaped from Europe after the woman he loved ditched him, he has now settled in Casablanca and runs a bar. Fatefully, he gets his hands on two transit letters that allow any two people to get out with no restrictions. Incidentally, the same day his old lover Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) walks into his bar with her partner. Ilsa’s partner Victor Lazlo turns out to be a guy working on a resistance movement against the Nazis, a cause that Rick himself is sympathetic to. But, Lazlo and Ilsa are denied exit visas. To complicate matters, the German influence is already growing in the city and the Nazis are sure to send Lazlo to their concentration camps if they catch him. In these desperate situations, the couple request Rick to help them with his transit letters. Rick turns then down saying he does not care what happens to them. Will he have a change of heart?

The movie is really old, shot in B&W. The story with its elements of love during war is very intriguing. Bogart seems very stony and always talks in a monotone. Ingrid is stunningly beautiful in this movie, I just melted. The famous song As Time Goes By appears in this movie. This is certainly a movie not to be missed.