I recently watched Casablanca (1942) for the first time. It is a war movie in the truest sense. Not only is it about World War II, but it was also filmed during it, from the relative security of California.
The basic story, which I hardly need tell you, is that of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), an American expatriate and night-club owner in Vichy-controlled Casablanca, who becomes caught in a love triangle with Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid).
The romantic backstory is that Lund, who believed herself to be a widow after her husband Laszlo was caught escaping a Nazi concentration camp, met Blaine in Paris, and the two fell in love. The couple planned to flee Nazi-occupied France together, but Lund learned that Laszlo was still alive, though very ill, and left Blaine heartbroken at the train station to care for her husband. When Lund and Laszlo end up in Casablanca seeking safe passage to America, Blaine faces a dilemma of his own: whether to behave selfishly or selflessly for love.
Many of the scenes are melodramatic. Though they probably wouldn’t have seemed that way to a wartime audience for whom every day brought new uncertainties and death lurked around every corner. Such conditions bring out the best and the worst in people. You see both at play in Casablanca, which is brilliantly written and acted. I now understand what all the fuss is about.