s you all know, Casablanca is the story of Rick Blaine—a man who loses his soul when he loses The Woman He Loves and finds it again when, out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into his. The Woman, of course, is Ingrid Bergman, and, frankly, losing her would have sent me to Morocco, too.
      Coolly considered (which, of course, is next to impossible), Casablanca is Grand Hotel in the Sahara. Except that it isn’t. Sure it is Hollywood’s wacky, wartime version of cosmopolitan melodrama-cum-message-movie, with all sorts of desperate types, high and low, from every corner of the world, rubbing elbows, looking for Letters of Transit, and getting their pockets picked and their hearts broken and mended. But somehow all the malarkey gets transmuted—by the Epstein brothers’s incomparably witty script (Rick: “I came to Casablanca for the waters.” Louis: “The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.” Rick: “I was misinformed.”), Max Steiner’s fabulously romantic score, Arthur Edeson’s ultra-romantic, noir-tinged cinematography, and, above all else, Bogart’s great performance.
      As exquisitely beautiful as she is, it is not Bergman we think of first, when we think of Casablanca. (Which is not something one would say about her Maria in the near equally great For Whom The Bell Tolls.) Of course, we do think of her, and can spare a thought, as well, for Claude Rains’s wonderful Louis (Rick: “And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.” Louis: “That is my least vulnerable spot.”), for Paul Henreid’s stalwart Victor Laszlo, for Dooley Wilson’s gentle Sam, for Conrad Veidt’s snaky Major Strasser.
      No, it is Bogart’s Rick we think of first, and last. Not just because he is on camera the most. Not just because the memories of the fateful love affair with Ilsa are filtered through his mind. And not just because he (and that bon vivant and closet Republican, Louis) gets the best lines, though he does. (In some ways Casablanca is as a much a triumph of the droll over the dreadful as To Be or Not to Be.)
      Rick is one of those iconic creations who transcends the film that contains him. Like Gary Cooper’s Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls, though with greater subtlety and certainly more humor, he is a quintessential American—a little bit Sam Spade (in fact, a lot Sam Spade), but with a crucial leavening of heart and soul that makes him a more fully human tough guy. Where Sam Spade will, maybe, get over Bridget after a few bad nights—and maybe he won’t, but he’ll still go on—Rick has never gotten over Ilsa. He has not gone on. Instead, he has retired to an obscure corner of the world, to tend bar, to keep out of other people’s business, and to keep them out of his, while the world tears itself apart around him.
      Rick doesn’t make others suffer for his heartbreak. Nor does he show them any special sympathy, though he is capable of kindness. Mostly he shows a cool self-possession, charismatic because it’s so unflappable, so complete. Women fall all over themselves for Rick, even though his cynicism isn’t an “act” intended to snare them. Men, like Louis, are simply fascinated by it. In the midst of a war that is testing everyone’s hearts and souls, Rick comes across, charmingly, as a man without either, when he is in fact a victim of the death of both.
      It takes Ilsa’s return—and, of course, the explanation of why she vanished so completely from his life in the first place—to make Rick whole again, to restore the capacity for love and hope she took away with her, seemingly for all time. With the recovery of this—and the tacit acknowledgement that he lives in the world and not apart from it—Rick rejoins the human race and the fight against those who would destroy it.
      It is all very pat allegory for an America on the verge of a bloody war that would require, and already had required, heroic engagement and self-sacrifice, and yet it is also incomparably moving, because Bogart makes it so. Like Sam Spade, his Rick Blaine is a role not so much played as embodied. From the indescribable look of pain on his face when he first sees Ilsa again—and how did he manage that look?—to his last moments in the fog, when he tells her that they will “always have Paris” before he gives up, this time willingly, all that he loves, Rick is a creation we like and believe in entirely. And because we believe in him, we believe in her, we believe in the possibility of heroic self-sacrifice, we believe in the burden and glory of the past.
      Warner’s new restoration of Casablanca, like its restoration of Citizen Kane, is a wonderment—absolutely the best print of this film I have ever seen or ever hope to see.
      The many extras are fascinating, and well done. The commentaries are interesting. In sum, the DVD of the Year.