At the height of World War II, the North African nightclub known as Rick’s Café serves as a symbolic purgatory for its visitors—a halfway house with gambling, liquor, and jazz, located somewhere between salvation and damnation. Displaced souls drift in and out of the port city of Casablanca, hoping to make it to the next step, longing for a taste of freedom while avoiding persecution, captivity, and surrender to the enemy at all costs. Angels and demons lurk by the bar or at surrounding tables, doing all they can to influence fate, but Rick himself (Humphrey Bogart) is neither good nor bad. “I stick my neck out for no one,” he declares more than once in this film. His shrewd ambivalence is locked in place until Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) walks through the door on the arm of Victor Laszlo (Paul Henried). Suddenly, our neutral gatekeeper finds himself an unexpected player in his own transient setting.

Before I continue, a brief explanation of a minor technicality, so you don’t think there’s a typo in the year: Casablanca had its premiere in New York City on November 26, 1942, to coincide with the Allied Forces’ invasion of North Africa and the capturing of the French-controlled Casablanca. All marketing and military strategies aside, Motion Picture Academy rules state that a movie must open within the city of Los Angeles and run for a minimum of one week before it is eligible for Oscar consideration. Casablanca didn’t go into wide release (including L.A.) until January of 1943, so that was the year it competed, and the award wasn’t handed out until the 1944 ceremony in March, a full year and two months after its debut in New York.

This delay in accolades helped the film find a growing audience and gain momentum. Casablanca was an A-list release from Warner Bros., but it wasn’t intended to be a monumental achievement or nurtured as “Oscar bait.” It was simply a product of Hollywood’s well-oiled studio system, one of the many pictures cranked out in any given year. In this case, the planets aligned for impeccable timing, cast, story, direction, and every other aspect of production. This movie often shows up near the top of the list of the finest films ever made.

Casablanca has terrific pacing and a lean, tight screenplay. For me, that’s the real star. Apart from the principal roles, dozens of memorable characters are given brief vignettes that resonate. The economy of words paired with strong performances combine to create just the right tone and atmosphere. Full confession: it took me several viewings to warm up to this film, perhaps because I was exposed to so many parodies as a child—everything from The Carol Burnett Show to Bugs Bunny to Laugh-In. Countless quotes found their way into pop culture, and by the time I watched the entire movie as an adult, I could recite whole sections before I’d even seen them. With each additional screening, I began to shrug off the clichés and embrace the movie. Some moments are so impressive that it took me a long while before I could step back and see them from a broader perspective.

A fateful encounter in Rick’s Cafe with Humphrey Bogart (Rick), Claude Rains (Louis), Paul Henried (Victor), and Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa).

I can only imagine the reaction to this movie during World War II. In a sense, Rick embodies America itself, a neutral capitalist for as long as can be managed, with political opinions under wraps until a surprise invasion occurs on his own turf. An emotional bomb is dropped when Ilsa walks into his club. Now he is personally involved and invested in the outcome. Casablanca “the war picture” becomes Casablanca “the romance,” and I give Bogart much of the credit for handling this transition so well. He takes audiences on a journey from cynical indifference to patriotic compassion.

Ingrid Bergman is perhaps never lovelier, more mysterious, or more glamorous than in this movie. Her Ilsa seems wounded at first and victimized until the truth comes out about her motivations and the difficult choices she’s had to make. It’s strange that Bergman wasn’t nominated for this performance, her best known of all. She won her first of three acting Oscars the following year for Gaslight, and she was nominated for a different film the same year Casablanca was honored. A change in rules after the initial ceremonies now denies actors and actresses an opportunity to be nominated for more than one performance in the same category during the same year, unlike other Oscar categories, which I find odd and somewhat unfair.

Music plays a key role here as well. Composer Max Steiner wanted to replace the lesser-known 1931 song “As Time Goes By” with either an original tune or something more familiar to audiences. Once he learned that it was mentioned by name in the dialogue and Bergman had already left the studio to start her next project at Paramount, he embraced the choice and composed a brilliant score around this melody and the French national anthem “La Marseillaise,” using both as leitmotifs throughout the story. Next to “Over the Rainbow,” “As Time Goes By” is considered by many to be the best film song in history.

Humphrey Bogart and Indrid Bergman.

I also find it fascinating that there is no villain in the love triangle between Rick, Ilsa, and Victor. Each is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to see the person they love truly happy. In Ilsa’s case, due to the fate of war and the unfortunate misinformation she received, it’s both men. This makes the outcome a mystery, and it’s hard to know who to root for. Ingrid Bergman later revealed in interviews that they shot two separate endings for the film, so even the actors weren’t sure how it would turn out. The ultimate conclusion, of course—with Rick’s final speech to Ilsa, followed by him walking away with Louis (Claude Rains) at the airport—helps to create one of the most romantic finales in cinema history. Spoiler alert: as with other classic Best Picture–winners Gone with the Wind, West Side Story, Out of Africa, Braveheart, Titanic, Gladiator, and Shakespeare in Love, the main couple doesn’t end up together.

Casablanca resonates long after the closing credits fade on the screen. It’s a movie and a “place” I can visit again and again. I find more moments of pure wisdom, clarity, humanity, wit, and passion in this one film than from decades of others. It’s a well-deserved Best Picture in any year.

Casablanca