Could You Make Casablanca Even Better?

If you were to ask me how Casablanca might be improved, my response would be slack-jawed incomprehension. Improve the greatest movie ever made? That’s crazy talk! Or is it?

The very notion is beyond daunting. What, does anyone think they could assemble actors today who would improve upon the best performances turned in by the best actors of a golden era? Only Bogart could be so vulnerable without losing his tough-guy armor. Where would you find a leading lady more intelligent or more beautiful than Ingrid Bergman? It’s greedy to even contemplate.

How about a soundtrack better than that composed by Max Steiner, who all but invented incidental music in film, and who is at his best with Casablanca? Would one have had anyone other than Dooley Wilson sing and pretend to play the piano?

Then again, there is Sydney Greenstreet. One could argue he’s the film’s one weak spot. The great fat man, who clashed so compellingly with Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, Greenstreet is not utilized in Casablanca to his full capacity for duplicitous menace. That said, Greenstreet’s frequent on-screen sidekick, Peter Lorre, is at the peak of his weaselly, cringing smarm.

No, the film is as close to perfection as any film has ever come. Thus, I was delighted to learn that on March 5 and 8, Fathom Events will be showing Casablanca on big screens at theaters across the country.

I learned this not from a newsletter or email blast or other modern promotion device but through that traditional movie tease, the “trailer” shown at a