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Casablanca features my favorite performance by Claude Rains. Since I like Claude Rains, that’s good enough.
But Riddick hits the nail on the head when he talks about the energy of the film, the indefinable magic of it. It’s not the sort of story I usually like, yet something is just right about it. It was just another studio picture, and yet it doesn’t feel like one. Analyzing this highly subjective stuff is simply impossible. But I know I fell in love with the movie from the first time I saw it.
The dialogue crackles. It’s brisk; not at all natural and yet with perfect tempo and delivery every time. Like a perfect performance of “Who’s On First,” you wouldn’t touch a beat; a line; a pause.
The characters are all ambiguous enough to be interesting, but not in the cynical, jaded way so many modern characters of ambiguity are painted. You are not just interested in these people ... you can like them, unlike so many modern characters who live in that “gray area” between “good” and “bad.”
And the lines. So many lines! A mark of a movie that hits home is one that provides endless lines that you can spew out over a beer and people just know what the hell you are talking about. And not just “I’ll be back” catchphrases, but lines that actually evoke something.
It also helps that the film is gorgeous to behold. Deep shadows and soft whites, interesting side characters and a beautiful leading lady, great sets, wonderful close-ups. Sure, it’s not a visual feast like Lawrence Of Arabia, but it is that overly cute girl down the block who has that something that makes her as pretty as any pinup gal you’ve ever seen – better, in some vague way – even if others might call her “plain.”
All of this is, of course, subjective. Casablanca has this magic that is hard to define. We can point to very specific traits of merit in Citizen Kane, for instance, and say why they work. With so much of Casablanca, you can’t really define why ... it just works.
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