Avoiding partisan conflicts of interest by involving himself in the Allied resistance, Rick runs and desiccates in the Cafe Americain in Casablanca, the point of no return for many wishing to escape the long arm of the Reich and its ill effects. So when old flame Ilsa walks into, "of all the gin joints in all the world," his, she brings more than the warm scents of a Paris springtime, she also brings the memory of everything that he once was and is no more.

You must remember the first time you saw a movie about a doomed love affair, and if it was Casablanca, you may have seen the best. Time and again, it lands a distinguished place on the "best ever" lists that circulate among industry people, filmmakers, and critics, like a cultural lazy-susan. Among the younger, less-established independent and foreign film lovers, though, a doubt festers that perhaps the film only appeared great in retrospect and that such a latent appreciation may have catapulted its status until it became an irreplaceable classic that wouldn't have been so otherwise. It raises questions, too, concerning the importance of love stories from other countries that haven't been given the same attention.

And yet, Casablanca remains an American film only quixotically. It chases ideals of freedom, the Bohemian notion that we should do as we please, especially when charged by fascists not to. An international cast, a Moroccan setting, and an enlightened view of humanity peppers the film's legacy as something beyond not just the gangster films of the state-side 1940s, but also beyond the scope of many war films. Practically arbitrary, the positioning of the movie in a town few Americans had ever heard of or thought about spells brilliance. Stuck between the desert on all sides and the fist of the Reich from above, what else would a card-carrying, former freedom fighter do but drink? Well, if you're Humphrey Bogart, you also own the joint so you don't pay extra to drown your sorrows in someone else's whiskey glass.