In Casablanca (1942), Humphrey Bogart played Rick Blaine, an American expatriate who runs Rick’s Café Américain in wartime Morocco, a meeting place for refugees, spies and lovers. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the film follows Rick as his former lover Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman, arrives with her husband Victor Laszlo, a resistance leader, and asks Rick for help escaping the Nazis.
Bogart gave Rick a cynical surface and a tender heart underneath. He was a man who claimed to stick his neck out for nobody, and who, in the end, gave up love for a greater cause. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and its dialogue became part of everyday language.
Casablanca remains a signature Bogart role because Rick Blaine was the perfect Bogart hero: tough, funny and, when it mattered, noble.