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Casablanca
Casablanca is at the top of my list of favorites. As was pointed out, for a studio system product that was designed to play for a week or two at the local Bijou and then make room for the next title, Casablanca connected with an America drawn into a global war. But thoughtful movies or message films were not the goal of the studios: it was making movies that made money. In order to that end, movies had to be entertaining. That's why Casablanca has romance, comic relief from a sprawling cast of character actors with wild accents (unPC by today's standards), hissable villains, exotic locales, etc. Being made in an America not yet rocked by the horrors of WW2, for audiences that were not comprised of returned veterans, we have adultery hinted at rather than shown, we have Ilsa flying off with her husband, we have Colonel Strasse firing first so Rick could shoot him as a defensive move, and so on.
Obviously I love this movie. My wife got the dvd for my birthday and I as I watched it I recited the dialog along with the characters.
One note: the remark made by Renault, about the Americans blundering into Berlin in 1918: the Armistice was signed while the armies were still in the trenches. Afterwards the troops packed up and marched home. No GIs in Berlin.
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