Casablanca at 80: a golden age classic that remains impossible to resist - The Guardian

The jewel of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Casablanca is perhaps the best example of “the system works” in film history.

Produced and released at a time that was nearly contemporaneous with the events on screen, Casablanca has the elements of a second world war spy thriller, but they serve to add stakes to a romantic pairing that’s outsized in glamour and emotion, but shrinks in face of global tyranny.

Wartime love stories always have that push-and-pull between intense intimacy linking two people and the bombs that detonate around them, but Casablanca adds weight to the question of how much the pursuit of happiness matters when there’s so much more on the line.

In the end, though, the heart of Casablanca rests more with Rick and Louis, who close the film with its indelible last line.

Just as the war itself required group sacrifice and effort to win, Casablanca is our most enduring model of collaborative art, a union of talent and circumstance rather than a strong individual vision.