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Best of DVDs...with M.V. Moorhead

Casablanca

Valentine's Day is upon us, and a love story is in order. But which specimen of this, arguably the greatest and most varied of all movie genres, to choose?

For many Februarys now, my wife and I have opted for the touching Merchant/Ivory production of Room With a View, with its sweet and funny characters, its luscious Italian and English settings and its happy ending.

The hugely underrated Meg Ryan/Kevin Kline romantic comedy French Kiss  is also among our favorites, as are The Shop Around the Corner, Sabrina  (both versions), When Harry Met Sally,   Four Weddings and a Funeral and Kenneth Branagh's version of Much Ado About Nothing.

It's worth noting, though, that some of the most satisfying love stories don't have happy endings. Some—Romeo & Juliet, Love Story, King Kong—end in death, while many others—The Way We Were, Annie Hall, Shakespeare in Love—end with their lovers parting.

In this latter category is, possibly, the all-around best love story that Hollywood has ever produced: the 1943 Casablanca, a wartime thriller that hinges on a heartbroken man's moral choice—will he get the woman he loves and lose his soul, or lose her to another man and save it?

Put that way, it sounds like heavy going, but Casablanca has delighted audiences for more than 60 years because it's just the opposite of heavy. The tone is far closer to wisecracking comedy than doleful drama. Based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's, the film focuses on a bustling nightclub run by cynical Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), in the Moroccan city.

When Rick's former love Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), who unceremoniously left him shortly after the Nazis invaded France, shows up in Casablanca married to a Czech freedom fighter (Paul Henried), it falls to Rick decide whether or not he'll give them the letters of transit they need to escape to Lisbon, and from there to America.

Around this dilemma, the movie crackles with energetic humor and intrigue and suspense, with Max Steiner music, and with some of the most famous dialogue in all movies:

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world...”;

“I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here...”;

“I came to Casablanca for the waters, we’ll always have Paris;”

“Here's looking at you kid...”;

and the endlessly misquoted, “Play it, Sam.”

Another famous line—“Round up the usual suspects”—might apply to the cast of archetypical character actors who play the film's gallery of shady characters: Peter Lorre as the hapless people-smuggler Ugarte; Sydney Greenstreet as the sly rival saloon-keeper Ferrari; Conrad Veidt as the menacing Nazi officer; and the priceless Claude Rains as the lecherous, cheerfully corrupt French police captain.

In Rick's café are representatives of the great peoples of Europe and America arrayed against the Nazis: Madeline LaBeau as the sad French beauty at the bar, Leonid Kinsky as the passionate Russian bartender, Hungarian S.K.Sakall as the headwaiter and Dooley Wilson as Sam, the piano player who superbly sings As Time Goes By. There are innocent Bulgarian newlyweds, and even a glimpse of a good German couple fleeing the Reich.

Potently glamorous as Bogart and Bergman are, it's this exciting world which director Michael Curtiz and screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch built around them that makes Casablanca deeply romantic—it places romantic love in a context of friendship, patriotism, sacrifice and courage. It's easy to imagine how heart-lifting this film must have been to its original audiences.

The DVD: The current two-disc edition of Casablanca is loaded with goodies. There are two commentary tracks, one by critic Roger Ebert and one by film historian Rudy Behlmer, and two documentaries, one on the making of the film and one on Bogart's career.

Both are hosted by Lauren Bacall, and both are quite good. There's also a brief documentary in which Bogart's son and Bergman's daughter reminisce about the film.

For hard-core geeks, there are fragments of deleted scenes, and terrific alternative takes of Dooley Wilson's songs. There's a 1943 radio adaptation of the story, with Bogart, Bergman and Henreid reprising their roles, and, oddest of all, an abridged episode from a (justly) forgotten 1955 Casablanca TV series.

Finally, there's Carrotblanca, a Looney Tunes send-up in which the Bogart role is played by that other great Warner Bros. anti-hero, Bugs Bunny.

Smaller kids will be unlikely to follow the convolutions of the plot; otherwise, Casablanca is top-drawer family entertainment. But your kids shouldn't be around when you're watching a Valentine movie, anyway.

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