'Casablanca' (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Title: 'Casablanca'

Release Year: 1942

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains.

Plot: In the heat of the World War II, Casablanca was a traverse city that was used to arrive to Portugal, and then to America. But for Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund it's the place where they recover and lose a love estranged by war time.

Review: Hollywood's Goledn Age love story. And maybe the most important of all cinema history. Casablanca will always be remembered as the smoky town which saw the impossible love of Bogart and Bergman.

To understand this review is very important watching the movie first. If you don't do it, you won't see what makes people love this movie. And that is the film itself. The story on its own is beautiful, yes. And the characters live their love while fighting agains the circumstances. He plays the tough man role while the past hits him when she arrives by the hand of another man, secretly still in love with him and with her heart split between heading to America or staying. That's the kind of love story people falls in love with, even with his coldness and her lack of directive, but it's not what finally hits you, at least, not after having watched it and recalled it, which is what it's done with good classic cinema.

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as lovers stranged by war, in their mysterious yet romantic characters

What hits you is the atmospheare; everything that sorrounds casablanca is impregnated with it; a melancholic yet powerful feeling of watching the love story of a lifetime. It intoxicates you and no matter how things may turn, you end up being absorved by the story.

Its a difficult feeling to explain, as many other created by good cinema, but when you think of the film and recall 'As the time goes by' in you head, you can't heap but feeling a weird sensation, this iconic, classic, smoky sensation that the picture spreads throught its whole run.

"Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'"

That's Casablanca. And its iconic scenes, and its quotes ('Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship' has transitioned to popular culture, for example, marking the bond between Bogar and Rains' character's). That's why it remains as Golden Age's love story, because its the tragic love that stayed in the city when she left and was tied to its essence. An impossible one, tied forever with film history as Bogart pronounced his famous words, after all, We'll always have Paris.

Bogart and Bergman's farewell is still remembered as one of cinema's most famous and beloved scenes