Casablanca

I understand completely the reason for the phenomenal success of Casablanca during its premiere. Ingrid Bergman was a beautiful and respected star and Humphrey Bogart, who broke through just two years earlier, became desirable as a representative of tough charismatic men at the time of Casablanca's release due to the war. Casablanca combined exoticism, love, adventure, and wartime commitment, i.e., all ingredients appreciated by the audience of that time. It was part of the genre of popular melodrama, and the premiere was cleverly timed for February 1943, shortly after Churchill's and Roosevelt's Allied conference, when the city was in general awareness due to media interest. I no longer know what enchantment Casablanca holds today and I am simply immune to it. I see in it only an average period melodrama, where Hollywood screenwriters demonstrate their usual ignorance towards reality. The love triangle does not work because the relationship chemistry between Bergman alias Ilse Lund and both lovers is negligible, and one could say that it is the complete opposite of the couple Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep, where the relationship chemistry worked perfectly. The only thing that can be appreciated with the benefit of hindsight is the relationship between Bogart's cynical bar owner Rick Blaine and the crafty police chief, played by Claude Rains. Their sparkling dialogues full of hidden meanings are a lively and decorative element of the film. Perhaps worth mentioning is also the rogue played by Peter Lorre. Everything else deserves to gather dust. Overall impression: 40%. (07/19/2017)

So now I've got this cult masterpiece under my belt as well. Nice. Really. A very well done romantic film that seemed to catch a lot of tears from romantic souls in the middle of the last century :-) Well, it didn't get mine because it didn’t end up the way I wanted it to. I did think that Ingrid Bergman overacted here and there and I had to chuckle at it, which probably spoiled the overall impression a bit. But why not? For film geeks, this should be required reading. (03/17/2009)

I like to remember some movies, and "Casablanca" is one of them. It's an eternal story of a love that couldn't be fulfilled. On the other hand, this is a great conversational drama with absolutely perfectly polished characters that are so stylized that they simply have to enchant you. Bogart, Bergman, Rains, Lorre, and Veidt, these are names that create tremendous quality in one film. Simply something that a movie fan should see. (09/09/2014)

The film features the Swede Ingrid Bergman, Englishmen Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet, Germans Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Italian Paul Henreid (playing a Czechoslovakian with a Hungarian name), Madeleine Lebeau and Marcel Dalio from France... and many others under the direction of Hungarian director Manó Kertész Kaminer. What could be a more Hollywood classic? It’s a paper-rustling romance that, due to fate, became something much more. Perhaps it is because of the paradox of the way in which the exiles mixed themselves into the story of exile. (02/04/2009)

A film that reeks of sentimentality just like its title. Casablanca, the gateway to paradise and a better tomorrow, away from the horrors of war and the deadly Nazi tentacles. Casablanca, Bogart and Bergman, whose paths had previously diverged, but fateful attraction and the events around them tighten the noose again. Casablanca, a happy ending as inevitable as Adolf Hitler's fate after the Normandy landings. Casablanca, I am under its spell, I admire the performance of the mesmerizing Bogart and the beauty of Ingrid Bergman, I devour every line of dialogue and the notion of a film classic comes to me literally from every shot and cut. The film ends and I rate it with four stars, not because I see in it a cult classic, a dazzling idea or a creative revolution, but simply because I found so very pleasant to watch, that the sentimentality did not tarnish the final quality and that Casablanca is..... well, in short, a very special place:-) 80% (08/25/2013)