Why this was history’s Best Movie Ever — until now
For decades voted one of the top two films of all time, for my money Casablanca long ago beat out Citizen Kane as history’s Best Movie Ever.
Audience reviewers at RottenTomatoes.com appear to agree, too — giving Casablanca 95% approval to Kane’s 90%.
The screenplay is profound and witty, while both patriotic and romantic. Just one example of the ingenious writing: Fearful that the predatory police chief wouldn’t deliver on his promise of a visa in return for sex, a tender young newlywed asks Humphrey Bogart what the chief is like. Bogart casually observes, “Like any other man, only more so.”
And consider: How many lines can most folks recognize from Citizen Kane? In contrast, Casablanca’s “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “Round up the usual suspects” and “I’m shocked – shocked! – to find that gambling is going on here!” are still familiar phrases in society’s lexicon.
Most importantly, Casablanca – which came out just as America was gearing up and girding up for World War II – is about everything noble and important: love, loyalty, patriotism, service, sacrifice and, of course, the start of a beautiful friendship. Another immortal line.
Plus it features history’s best movie ever moment, arguably the most suspenseful, satisfying one, inside one of history’s best movie scenes ever: When a rogue Bogart turns on his friend, police chief Claude Rains, and is simultaneously forced to shoot the Nazi who’s about to ruin everything, the police show up seconds later – and Rains must decide in a flash what to tell them. The fateful seconds that ensue will decide his and Bogart’s fate – and, we’re left to presume, perhaps the course of the war in Europe.
Screenwriting brothers Julius J. & Philip G. Epstein struggled mightily to find just the right words to come out of Rains’ mouth at that pivotal moment. As the story goes, they were idling at a stoplight on famed Sunset Boulevard when they suddenly turned to each other and, perhaps as only twins could do, blurted out the line simultaneously.
It’s a deeply resonant line, one that springs from Rains’ fateful realization that nobody other than he and Bogart had seen what happened to the dead Nazi – and, at that moment, the blow-with-the wind police chief becomes instantaneously resolute, in a split second having joined Bogart in the fight of the century.
There it is. Love, loyalty, patriotism, service, sacrifice and, of course, the start of a beautiful friendship.
What more is there?
Well, for years I didn’t think there was anything more. Then came the film that ended up surpassing Casablanca as history’s best movie ever.
Stay tuned.
