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Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid

Directed by: Michael Curtiz

Casablanca is a film that has really walked far away from time and has sort of made its own place in history. There have been so many references of the movie in recent years that it will surely be really hard for people to forget the movie. Looking at the reactions of the initial audiences they were more drawn to the stars of the film than what the story had for them.

Don’t be fooled by the really uncanny name given to this beautiful love story. There is not much in it but just the place where everything really happens. The film was used as a ploy to give a message to the Germans that the Americans are on to them. But time really stands still every time the lovers are in their arms while the director tries really hard to make his presence felt.

This is why the story really doesn’t matter in this film. You could have bombs blazing while these two actors Bogart and Bergman just standing there and making contact you would still have something special. Ingrid Bergman is an actress who is one of the few who have an acute sense of time. This is surely something complementary of many of her contemporaries like Liv Ullman and Bebe Anderson. It almost felt like she has been living the character for ages and fits into her mind like a glove. One of the most beautiful moments in this film is the meeting of Sam and Lund who tells Sam to play time goes by. The song is a fitting parallel to how both protagonists play their roles.

I was really intrigued by the character sketches in this movie. It is surely something most of you might have never seen because of the aura the pair characters create every time they are around each other. It almost encompasses the hard work done by the director who plays second fiddle to the writer.

Bogart plays a cynical sentimentalist who has sort living a lie for quite sometime because of a woman who left him on the crossroads and he could never come to terms with that. But many of his traits have really made people think whether the man has ever changed. The film is more like a moral commentary on what he will do as a person and will he take decisions that will jeopardize his own understanding of the world around him. He sort of becomes his own by the end of the movie but the several dialogues that have just made him beyond just a hero is what makes this movie worth the watch.