The Best Classic Movies You Have to See

It’s the height of the Second World War, and we’re in Morocco, where Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine runs a popular—and pointedly politically neutral—bar, frequented by Nazis and refugees alike. Amid the chaos and violence, Rick’s old lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) walks back into his life accompanied by her new husband, a leader of the Czech resistance, and then everything is thrown up in the air. Brimming with one-liners that have gone down in pop-culture history—“We’ll always have Paris,” “Here’s lookin’ at you kid,” etc.—with a deeply human heart, Casablanca just swirls with romance, all while taking in the ultra-stylish, ultra-chic milieu of Rick’s Café Américain. It’s the performances you keep coming back to; Bogart was seldom better than as Blaine, the tough guy softened by love. Recommend this to anyone who somehow hasn’t watched it before, and you’re guaranteed the start of a beautiful friendship.

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)