On the film Casablanca

John Anderson, "Best Enjoyed, Not Dissected: How the iconic ‘Casablanca’ came together almost as a series of accidents—or, at the very least, undistinguished circumstances," Wall Street Journal

image from article, with caption: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in ‘Casablanca’

Even movie fans who don’t consider “Casablanca” Hollywood’s crowning achievement have to agree it’s among a handful of the most beloved movies the studio system ever created. It’s a tale of redemption. A hero’s journey. A heartbreaking love story. A fount of deathless dialogue. The Best Picture winner on Oscar night. And a Manichean face-off, made when the world was in the middle of one.

One reason it all works, despite what Pauline Kael once described as its “appealingly schlocky romanticism,” is the architectural wonders of the script by the Epstein brothers, Julius and Philip, and Howard Koch. Another is the direction of Michael Curtiz, who was never regarded as an auteur but who, over a storied career that included such disparate gems as “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “ Mildred Pierce, ” always served the material. The Koch-Epstein screenplay is all fat-free forward motion. Curtiz puts it on a treadmill.

Beginning with the newsreel-style intro—breathless, urgent and providing all one needs to know about Casablancan politics—the film never stops moving: One of the usual suspects is shot and dies under a poster of Marshal Petain. There’s a survey of Rick’s café, which establishes the desperation of the dispossessed. Rick is revealed at first only by his hands, signing a tab, playing chess; by the time the camera reaches his face, we know who he is.

Curtiz is great at this kind of shorthand, and he has a cast of almost cartoonish character actors abetting him: the tubby/avuncular S.Z. Sakall as the waiter Carl; Leonid Kinskey as the “crazy Russian” bartender Sascha; the corpulent, lordly Sydney Greenstreet, whose Signor Ferrari has one of the best lines in the film: “As the leader of all illegal activities in Casablanca, I am an influential and respected man.”

But Curtiz also knew the power of the lingering close-up: Rick’s tortured grimace at first seeing the evanescent Ilsa in his bar; Ilsa’s shattered look when Rick denies her the letters of transit; the two saying a final, silent goodbye with their eyes, Ilsa angelically mouthing “God bless you” before larking off to Lisbon. Laszlo? He may as well be a waiter hurrying champagne cocktails to underage Bulgarians.

But to try to reverse-engineer “Casablanca,” to figure out exactly what elevates it from mere movie to masterpiece, is to disbelieve in movie magic. Of course it’s greater than the sum of its parts—the best films are. And like no small number of them, “Casablanca” seems to have come together almost as a series of accidents—or, at the very least, undistinguished circumstances. It was based on a play no one had actually produced; it starred an actor ( Humphrey Bogart ) no one had really known how to cast. And yet, as sometimes happens, an unlikely collection of parts—think of a Frank Gehry building, or certain Mahler orchestrations—adds up to something ineffable and sublime. To study it too closely, in fact, is to risk bursting a delicate bubble.

That said, there remains something very basic about the now-75-year-old “Casablanca,” which premiered in New York on Nov. 26, 1942. For all its glamour, heroism and patriotism, “Casablanca” also speaks very intimately to the idea of belonging—not in the sense of nuclear family, necessarily, but in a manner classic films have often explored.

The poignancy of “The Wizard of Oz,” for instance, isn’t about Dorothy returning to Kansas, but about having left behind, in Oz, the characters she (and we) really love. In “The Searchers,” John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is left to wander in exile, not by virtue of word, deed or a lack of family, but through an existential inability to connect with his fellow man. “Citizen Kane” is haunted by its protagonist’s ruined childhood and the birthplace he’s always, perhaps subconsciously, longed for.

In “Casablanca,” the tears we shed for the hopeless romance of Rick and Ilsa are certainly genuine. But there’s also a pang for what we leave at Rick’s Café Américain: an idealized sanctuary—chic, cosmopolitan but somehow democratic—led by a strong (American) male, a benign despot, perhaps, but one whose rough exterior masks a heart of gold. Rick’s nightclub is also a mirror of the America to which so many minor characters are trying to flee. Only three of the principals were American-born; of the other 70-odd players, many had actually fled Europe as Hitler rose to power, and the fact that refugees are actually playing refugees gives the movie a genuineness of tone—and some genuine accents—it would otherwise have lacked.

Not everything in Casablanca makes sense. Those letters of transit taken from the murdered German couriers and signed by Charles de Gaulle ? (“Cannot be rescinded. Not even questioned.”) Why would the Germans have honored letters signed by Gen. De Gaulle? Why does the French prefect of police, Capt. Renault ( Claude Rains ), sound like an Englishman? Why are Rick and Sam ( Dooley Wilson ) perfectly dry when they board the train leaving Paris, after having waited for Ilsa ( Ingrid Bergman ) in a drenching rain?

But, in the end, it’s a bit like the question Rick asks, drunk and mourning for Ilsa: “If it’s December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?” Not everything has to be right to be poetry.

—Mr. Anderson writes on TV for the Journal.