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A Bit Of Luck: Casablanca (1942)
Review Copyright Roger Zotti, 2003
Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is the owner of a Casablanca nightclub. He's a former soldier of fortune. He's bitter and disillusioned with life. An old flame, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), reappears. To escape from the Nazis, she and her husband, Resistance hero Victor Lazslo, need letters of transit. They turn to Rick for help.
Claude Rains plays dapper Louis Renault, chief of police. Like Rick, for most of the film Renault won't stick his neck out for anyone. In Round Up the Usual Suspects, Aljean Harmetz says that Renault's character is "Rick's ambiguous double, moving from mocking disengagement to commitment...Renault has most of the best lines, and they are deliciously delivered by Claude Rains, with a tiny crust of corruption staining the corner of his lip."
Rains's verbal sparring with Rick establishes him as the American's friendliest adversary. For instance, when he tells Rick why Laszlo has come to Casablanca, Rick replies, "Louis, where did you get the idea I might be interested in helping Laszlo?" With the voice that critic Stanley Kaufman said was "one of the great actors' voices...by itself an attraction," Rains's Renault has the last word: "My dear Ricky, I suspect that under that shell, you are a sentimentalist."
During his long career Rains was nominated for best Supporting actor four times. He never won. In A Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson praises him: "Rains had few equals...as time goes by, is there anyone more watchable, more delicate or acidic?"
Casablanca is one of the luckiest motion pictures ever made. Originally, Ronald Reagan, originally considered for the role of Rick, was replaced by Bogart. It was luck, too, that while production was underway Howard Koch replaced the original screenwriters, Julius and Philip Epstein. Another stroke of good fortune was that the actors didn't know how the story would turn out. It kept the spontaneity of the film alive.
In Cult Movies, Danny Peary writes: "But the luckiest break of all is that the this picture, which was shelved by Warners after a brief run in 1942, was re-released in 1943 for no reason other than to capitalize on the headline-making Roosevelt-Churchill summit in, of all places, Casablanca."
Casablanca passes the test of time because it contains elements viewers treasure. There's action. There's courage. There's patriotism. Friendship, humor and drama, and romance are prominent themes. Sprinkle in a touch of sentiment, too.
Also, there are those great lines we love to hear over and over:
"I stick my neck out for nobody."
"Play it once, Sam. For old time's sake."
"Of all the gun joins in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine."
"Here's looking at you kid."
"Louis, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."
Add several magnificent supporting actors - like Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson, Conrad Veidt, and the incomparable Rains - and what you have is sheer screen magic.
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