Casablanca

Well, this romantic war drama really had me captured beginning to end.  The 1942 movie, Casablanca, is set during World War II and is set in the town of Casablanca.  One of the man characters, Rick, owns a popular nightclub in the town.  At the time, people needed letters of transit to travel around freely in Nazi occupied territories-- such as Lisbon, from which it was easier than other places to travel from to the United States.  A man, Ugarte, enters the saloon one night with two letters that he obtained after killing two German couriers.  Ugarte intended to sell the tickets to the highest bidders, but ends up being arrested by Captain Renault, an officer who coordinated with the Nazis at the time.  Before being placed under arrest, Ugarte left the two letters with Rick for safe keeping.   When the two highest bidders show up at the bar to get their letters, Rick is taken back when he sees the one and only love of his life, Ilsa, at the table accompanied by her husband, Victor.  Here is where the love story that everyone awaits for comes in.  Victor and Ilsa need the letters to get to America in order to continue Victors work for the Czech Resistance.  Both assume that Rick has the letters and attempt separately to retrieve the letters from Rick.  The story of how Rick and Ilsa met is recounted as well.  The two met in Paris, while Ilsa was under the impression that Victor had been killed in war.  They plan on leaving on a train together, but Ilsa leaves Rick on the platform of the train station.  The reasoning, the movie reveals later on, is because Ilsa found out that her husband was actually still alive.  When they run into each other at the bar Rick owns, the old flame still is evident between the two.  When trying to obtain the letters from Rick, Ilsa confronts him at gun point.  When he denies her the letters, instead of shooting, she confesses she never stopped loving him and wants to be with him.  Rick tricks Renault into getting Victor to a plane that can take them to where he needs to go.  When this all happened, Ilsa was under the impression that she would remain in Casablanca with Rick.  However, when they get to the plane Rick tells her that the right thing to do is go. In exact words, he says that she will regret it if she stays, "Maybe not today.  Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life." She leaves with her husband and Rick and officer Renault decide that after all this, the best thing for them both might be to leave Casablanca.  The movie ends with them walking off together with intentions of joining the Resistance.

I hope you could follow that... this movie had a lot going on in it!  It is very hard to capture the right picture without giving an exact script!  It was a beautiful movie.  It had all the action and romance you could ever want mixed in to make the perfect combination of the two.  I never really get a chance to watch too many old films like this.  It is all in black and white and has an instrumental soundtrack.  After watching this, it really got me thinking about how much the film industry has changed in such a short amount of time.  In this film, there is no cursing, there is no nudity, there is nothing with any sort of profanity at all basically.  In today's day and age, that is almost unheard of unless you are watching something similar to a Disney film!  This film still captured the beauty and passion of the love between the characters without having to display them in an R-rated way.  It really shows how the media has changed their tactics on getting peoples attention.  It was a great film and could be watched by all ages.  There is some action scenes, with a little bit of violence such as shooting guns (but this IS a wartime movie afterall!).  The acting was wonderful and I really felt a connection to the characters.  It is no wonder that this film has earned a soft spot in the hearts of thousands and won the Academy Award in 1942.  It was definitely a good watch and I recommend it to anyone!  It is nice to travel back to this age.  I assure you that you will not regret making this your next movie night blockbuster!


In the words of Rick, "We'll always have Paris",


--Kirk


Sneak peak at next week's film-- get excited!
From Here to Eternity