In many respects, Casablanca is an accidental masterpiece. The script was unfinished when production started, with not even the screenwriters knowing how the story was going to end. Certainly, no one involved was under any illusion that the picture would amount to anything more than any other studio release, most of which were rolled off the production line and into the cinemas and forgotten just as quickly. But Casablanca, which is screening at the Rooftop Cinema tomorrow night, has not been forgotten, and it's highly unlikely that it ever will be. This is not merely because of its iconic line —"Here's looking at you, kid", "We'll always have Paris", "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" and the rest—but also because it is, to some extent, what critic Manny Farber once described as "termite art". On the whole the film is characterised by a "buglike immersion" in small details—Yvonne's face, say, during the famous 'La Marseillaise' sequence, or Peter Lorre's short but memorable performance as Ugarte—and this means that the picture rewards repeat viewings: there's a wealth of detail here, festering all over the screen, the result of the filmmakers' sense from the beginning of production that the picture was a lost cause. As Farber put it in a famous essay: "Good work usually arises where the creators seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavour that isn't anywhere or for anything." And that, in other words, is precisely how an accidental masterpiece is made.

The Australian, 15 January 2010