Subj : Casablanca (1942) To : All From : Arelor Date : Thu Jan 06 2022 09:04:57 Hello, moviegoers! After an outstanding hiatus, your favourite movie critic is back with yet another movie review! What's more, as to celebrate, I am bringing a film which is not a stinking mound of crap (as it would be usually the case). With no more delays, enter Casablanca! Casablanca is a wartime romance set during WWII. The city of Casablanca has become neutral ground for all sort of refugees, smugglers, spies and all sort of otherwise interesting people. It is in this place where Rick, an ex-idealist who has gone sour with the years, operates a bar where all sort of illegal activities are hosted. The main conflict of the film is kicked into motion when Victor Lazlo, an anti Nazi Resistence Leader, arrives to Casablanca with the Gestapo breathing down his neck. With him, is Ilsa, her wife... and also the backstabby bitch who let Rick down in the past. Rick happens to posses the means for allowing Lazlo and Ilsa safe passage, so they can disappear from Casablanca and escape the Gestapo and continue their efforts as Resistence leaders... but what will Rick do? Take his revenge on Lazlo for stealing his backstabby bitch... ahem, his girlfriend... and let the nazies get them both, and to the hell with good honorable causes? Let Lazlo take safe passage in exchange for the bitch (I mean, Ilsa)? Swallow his pride and let them both through for the better good? I am sure you all know which option I wanted Rick to pick, but I disgres... The production of this movie is just excellent. The scenery is athmospheric and well placed, as they just don't do anymore. Rick's perdition hellhole is carefully crafted and is in fact the sort of disreputable club I'd have a bourbon in. The characters in Casablanca are plenty, and none of them seems to lack a purpose. Even small characters who exist only to add color to the movie do an excellent job at what they do. We are treated with a corrupt police officer (one of the best roles of the film), a crime lord which operates quite openly, an Italian officer who'd do anything to please his German masters (likely including the worst things you are imagining right now)... Rick himself is a very interesting character, playing neutral to both the nazies and their enemies. His most defining characteristic is that he is not willing to side with anybody who is not himself, but the events in the film will test his resolve... Rick is a good guy gone sour who does not give a damn for anybody anymore. He is the sort of person I want to be when I grow up and my girlfriend stabs me in the back. Lazlo is a bit of the opposite: he is an idealist who will stop at nothing to get the nazies screwed. He is also such a good guy and holds so high moral grounds that he is willing to pardon and understand his wife's transgressions. He is so good and heroic he makes me puke... but the performance is stellar, and that you have to admit. Then there is Ilsa, which is a bit of a McGuffin. She is the one whose knife Rick still has stuck in his back, the one Rick does not know if he wants back or sent away, and the main dilemma enhancer in the film. She is torn because she is a backstabby bitch, and she knows she is a backstabby bitch, and that pains her. But she is a repentless backstabby bitch, and nothing she says or does will ever fix the fact she likes stabbing people in the back when they are the most vulnerable and disappearing with another man. The corrupt police officer I mentioned earlier deserves an honorable mention. He is playing both ends of the war towards the middle, taking bribes from every body... and the nazies are the best payers right now. I think the best way to describe is to reproduce one of his scenes: "Why are you closing my bar?" "I am shocked, shocked! - from learning there is an illegal gambling den here!" [A croupier shows up and hands the officer a fistful money] "Your winnings, sir" "Oh, thank you very much!" If you have not watched this movie yet, go watch it, because they no longer make them like this anymore! -- gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken --- þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL .