Film Forum

(1942, Michael Curtiz) “Here’s looking at you, kid.” From unproduced play, to just another Warner B melodrama with Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan, to Bogart/ Bergman star vehicle, to multiple Oscar winner, to cultural icon. The dialogue, which fans can now reel off by the yard, was often handed to the cast minutes before shooting, as re-writes proliferated, with the question of whether Bergman ended up with Bogart or Paul Henreid left to the final day of production. The Allied landing in North Africa, just before the premiere, made it a prequel to history. Academy Awards® for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Director. 35mm. Approx. 102 min.

Reviews

“In the entire history of American cinema only a few other movies—Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Godfather—have been loved as much and as well as Casablanca… The most familiar movie in the world is still fresh… The universal adoration has been produced by an unrepeatable combination of impudent wit and doomed romanticism, all of it held together by voluptuously emotional anti-fascist sentiment… the general level of craftsmanship and Burbank Orientalism is superb… what André Bazin called ‘the genius of the system.’”
– David Denby, The New Yorker

“Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over familiar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like.”
– Roger Ebert