Casablanca (1943)

I saw this once before, probably 25 years ago, and it didn’t make much of an impression on me. I don’t know if I was distracted or simply too young to appreciate it, but I couldn’t remember it well enough to really know how I’d rate it today, so I thought I’d watch again. Boy, am I glad I did.

One thing that really surprised me was how much of the dialogue I knew by heart -- how, exactly, did that happen? Of course the “I’m looking at you kid” and “We’ll always have Paris” quotes are ubiquitous and always attributable to the movie, but I just had no idea how many other oft-used phrases are straight from the film -- “round up the usual suspects” is one such example. Even the less familiar dialogue was so quippy with a dash of noir...just crackling. And even when the words weren’t necessarily quotable, the story itself approached perfection.  It’s earned the praise heaped upon it.

A+