Essay: We'll Always Have Casablanca

It's still the same old story. The Lisbon plane always descends like a kid's toy landing on the living-room rug. Stick-figure Nazis in animal faces (Strasser a wolf, his aide a fat little pig in glasses) come strutting off. That night at Rick's they chorus Die Wacht am Rhein, the stein-swinging bully song that is the Nazis' idea of a good time in a nightclub. The defiantly answering Marseillaise stirs the soul and raises its Pavlovian goose bumps for the 15th time. They still pronounce "exit visa" weirdly: "exit vee-zay."

Casablanca is exactly 40...

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