Why Classics Like ‘Casablanca’ Hold Up And Modern Schlock Doesn’t

Spoilers for a nearly 100-year-old movie.

In the ninth season of “The Simpsons,” Bart and Lisa uncover an old 35mm film reel containing an alternate ending to Michael Curtiz’s classic 1942 film “Casablanca.” In this version, Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund — the characters portrayed by Humphrey Bograt and Ingrid Bergman in the actual movie  — get married after Lund skydives out of a plane to kill Adolf Hitler.

“The Simpsons,” and pop culture in general, is replete with hat tips, homages, references, and spoofs of Bogart and Bergman’s performances in one of the most influential pieces of American culture ever created. Woody Allen’s “Play It Again Sam,” albeit a neurotic’s therapeutic exercise in self-expression and public effacement in which Allen’s self-insert character is haunted by Bogart’s ghost, is another such example.

This past week I had the opportunity to see “Casablanca” on the big screen for the first time. And (perhaps unsurprisingly in hindsight) other than “Top Gun: Maverick,” this was the most crowded movie screening I have attended since 2019. Why?

What makes this movie so unique that at 9:00 p.m. on a weeknight, people of all ages and backgrounds come out to see it? Why is it that an 80-year-old movie still holds audiences when Hollywood, in general, has received a precipitous drop in support?

Why Does It Hold Up?

During an interview for “Casablanca’s” 50th-anniversary re-release, Murray Burnett, co-author of the play the movie is adapted from, said the story is