Reviews

I have never seen the Best Actor winner that year, Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine, but I have seen the film that did win Bogart an Oscar, The African Queen and that award had to be a consolation prize for not being honored for his tortured Rick Blaine.

If anything, I think this time I appreciated more how seamlessly it moves between romance and drama to adventure and thrills; from the bitterness of Rick to the perfect comedic timings of Captain Renault (Claude Rains); from the romance between Rick and Ilsa to the powerful "La Marseillaise" scene.

Casablanca is many viewer's gateway into the films of Humphrey Bogart and classic films in general.

Review: I love that photo of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) as to me, it encapsulates the movie's emotions.

What's so great about Casablanca is that it's central focus isn't even the romance despite it being a romantic film, in fact I felt more interested in every other interaction between the characters but the two leads, don't get me wrong I still felt very gripped by the chemistry of Ilsa and Rick and ...

As you probably already know, the film follows Rick Blaine, an American living in Casablanca during World War 2.

While the love triangle between Rick, Ilsa, and Victor Laszlo - played quietly but, as a result, powerfully by Paul Henreid - is the necessary backbone for this film that works incredibly well in most aspects, it doesn't consume Casablanca.

Most of them -- gamblers and refugees, Nazis, resistance fighters, and plain old crooks -- find their way to Rick's Caf m cain, a swank nightclub owned by American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart).