Noah Isenberg - We'll Always Have Casablanca - Notes

A DEFINITIVE BOOK ABOUT THE MOVIE "CASABLANCA." In a 1981 segment on the TV show "60 Minutes" I watched Harry Reasoner talk about the movie "Casablanca." He summarized the movie in four clipped sentenes like this: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back again. Boy gives up girl for humanity's sake. Pretty much it. In 1998 the American Film Institute polled 1500 movie experts on the best movies of all-time. "Casablanca" ranked #2 behind only Orson Welles and "Citizen Kane." I'm no film expert, but I say they got it reversed. The afterlife of Casablanca is long and varied. Csablancs is better than Citizen Kane.