There are films you watch once, enjoy, and set aside. There are films you recommend because they are well made. And then there are films that remain in the room after the credits, as if someone had left a conversation unfinished on purpose. Casablanca belongs to that last group.

It is easy to call it a love story, because it is one. Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund meet in Paris, lose each other, and meet again in a café where every exit is watched and every drink is a way of delaying the next choice. But the film is also about a harder plot: what a person does when a private happiness and a public duty can no longer share the same ending.