MOVIEGOER

"Casablanca"sounds as though some of the movie masterminds saw a good thing in the AEF's sortie in North Africa, and turned out a hurry-up job in the hope that the name would bring on a box office rush. If that was the original idea, it hasn't panned out, thanks to the noteworthy efforts of Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart and a supporting cast that really supports.

The setting is a peculiarly American Cafe American in Casablanca, before it became a meeting place for conferring diplomats. The traffic in human beings that serves as the backdrop of the story makes for interest per sc. But when it is combined with the Gestapo pursuit of a Czech underground leader, whose wife is enamoured, Continental style, with an American style, last-time-I-saw Paris lover, the plot, as the saying goes, thickens.

Tough guy Bogart, who couldn't play this sort of role wrong if he tried, is right in character as a guy named Rick, except that something new has been added. Besides an ill-concealed strain of sentimentality, Bogart, the soldier of fortune, has acquired a social consciousness under his callous shell which, we are told, caused him to do his usual tommy-gunning with the Loyalists in Spain and which finally causes him to become the martyred lover. Miss Bergman, possessor of the kind of sensitive, intelligent charm that makes most of Hollywood's leading ladies look like female cigar store Indians in contrast, contributes a refreshingly different crotic appeal and some acting, to boot. Paul Henreid is a very credible Czech patriot, with just the right amount of anti-fascist fervor.

The secondary characters, an international conglomerate which might easily have slipped into run-of-the-mile Hollywood caricatures, manage, with the aid of some smooth dialogue to over shadow the big three on numerous occasions, Claude Raines, as the boot-licking, opportunistic Vichy chief of police is at his best. Conrad Veidt plays a Gestapo chief who, unlike the usual blustering buffon that Hollywood Nazis usually are, is more sinister than laughable. Peter Lorre, an unseen corpse after the first few scenes, and Dooley Wilson, playing "As Time Goes By" to repair broken hearts, complete the list of ingredients in this North African melting pot.

Judged by the imposing dramatis personnae and the very timely name, Casablanca smells of a Hollywood business agent's attempt to capitalizes on the newspaper headlines. Actually it is one of the best pictures to come out of the west in some time.