Casablanca

The usual "shoot-em up" effects of guns, liquor, and women appear in Casablanca without seeming to be the cliches. Maybe it is because Humphrey Bogart is holding both the guns and his liquor, and maybe it is because Ingrid Bergman is the woman. At any rate, Casablanca is outstanding. Few people wear a trench coat or a frown as well as Bogie and no one can rival Ingrid in looking wistful in the fog.

Peter Lorre, as a small time peddler of happiness, this time in the form of contraband exit visas, is his usual wicked self and Claude Raines, playing a French prefect willing to go along with the Germans, is brilliantly non-committal. Striking down nothing more menacing than flies, Sidney Greenstreet portrays a man marvelously unconvincing self-proclaimed leader of "all organized crime" in Casablanca. In short, the gang is all here for the picture. The only disappointment is that Lorre is bumped off too soon.

Although loaded down with gimmicks, Casablanca is so earnestly presented that it is totally believable. Bogart, drunken and knocking over glasses waiting for a woman, is deadly impressive and even the tour de force ending made up of denoument upon denoument is almost tearfully convincing.

Tensely real, tensely heroic, Casablanca is a movie made without cynicism. It spins a story and a mood so involved and so real that on the way home, Mount Auburn Street looks cold and crooked and there is the suspicion that back of Cronin's, Bogie is smoking another cigarette and waiting.