Casablanca : #2

If you like being chased by German’s and if you like romance movies, Casablanca is for you. It’s directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Casablanca is about a lady named Llsa who’s husband (Victor Laszlo) is put in a German concentration camp, so she thinks he’s dead. Victor is the leader of Czech Resistance and is on the top of the Nazis’ most wanted list. When she is in Paris she meets this nice handsome man named Rick Blaine and they both fall in love with each other. It’s not really my type of movie but I enjoyed it and recommend it to old people and girls.
The plot involves Victor and Ilsa running from the Nazis. They end up in Casa Blanca, French Morocco. Everyone there is trying to get somewhere, like Lisbon, so they can then go to America. They go to Rick’s cafe Americain and they bump into the piano player, Sam, played by Dooley Wilson. There is a lot of drinking and music in the film because most of it is in a bar. Even at the airport we see them drinking. I think drinking must have been more accepted in French Morocco than we accept it. The song Sam keeps playing is “As Time Goes By,” and that is how Ilsa and Rick meet again. I recognized that the song kept playing every time Ilsa was in the bar. I thought it was a good plot because it was dealing with what was happening at the time.
World War II was going on while this was made in 1941. It was popular then and it is a classic now. It has a lot of quotes that you always here. At one point, Rick says to Ilsa, “Here’s looking at you kid.” Then he repeats it over and over, and says it in Paris where they first met. Another famous quote is, “Play it again, Sam.” which Rick doesn’t say quite like that but it’s close. There is also “Of all the gin joints in the world, why does she have to walk into mine?” She says that if she knew he was in Casa Blanca, she wouldn’t have gone there.
I thought it was a good romance with a plot that is hard to follow the first time you see it. There were not too many sets or changes of scene. There was basically Rick’s cafe, the marketplace, the police office and the airport. It didn’t look quite real to me. Some of it looked like green screen. I wish there had been more action. I hate films in black and white. They give me a headache. During this movie, I forgot that it was in black and white after about ten minutes. That must be a sign that it was a good fillm.