I saw this back in aught-three, and while I keep thinking that I really liked it, here’s what I actually wrote back then:

Casablanca, which also falls victim to the whole overhyped-old-movie thing. Decent enough movie, I guess, if a bit overwrought, but super-duper-classic? Enh. Any random year probably sees 2-3 movies better than Casablanca. Definitely full of iconic moments, though.

Watching this again now, I agree with precisely one sentiment from that, which is that it is full of iconic moments. Like, if you ask people to say a line from a classic Hollywood movie, they’re either going to say “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” or else they’re going to quote one of a half-dozen lines from this movie.

But beyond that, it’s just a great movie. The characters are richly drawn and complex, having made their lives in the gray areas of the world and balancing their daily survival against their essential humanity. The writing is sharp, with those characters deploying ironic sophistication as a doomed defense mechanism — those iconic lines are iconic for a reason. The mood of the thing perfectly captures this kind of end-of-the-world decadence leavened with the smallest amount of hope.

And since I’m watching this as part of the AFI list, where I’ve already seen Bogart in like three other movies (The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), I’m comfortable putting this in the upper echelon of his performances. I was saying before that it was ridiculous to have so much of his stuff on the list, but I will allow two, because I don’t want to get rid of either this or Sierra Madre.

Really, if there’s a criticism of this movie as an all-time great, it’s that it is an AFI-style movie, a Hollywood romance that isn’t especially daring formally or doing anything innovative, but is just a straight-up larger-than-life story. But a) that’s not entirely true — this really is evocatively shot, with lots of shadows and smoke in a way that borders on film noir; and b) even if it were true, it justifies its greatness on the strength of the execution. Highly recommended.