Michael Caine’s single favourite movie of all time: “My one”
When it comes to naming the biggest icons of British cinema, it’s difficult to look beyond Sir Michael Caine. His position in some of the most iconic roles in cinema means his face has been burned on to the history of cinema forevermore, making him a cultural heavyweight before one even considers the breadth of movies he has made in his longstanding career.
The London-born actor has a startlingly impressive filmography, with over 160 movie credits, and has received several highly coveted awards throughout his career, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA, and three Golden Globes. It’s the kind of resume that makes most actors quiver with fear. Thea ctor found his way to the top of the acting pile after overcoming life as a working class performer, an unusual position from which to start an acting career when he started.
Making a name for himself with his iconic Cockney accent, Caine came through with his roles in the films Zulu, The Italian Job and The Ipcress File in the 1960s. He followed up on his initial success in the 1970s with The Man Who Would Be King, The Eagle Has Landed and A Bridge Too Far, which were each released one year after the other.
However, it was Caine’s later work for which he began to win the most coveted prize in acting of all: an Academy Award. For his performance as Elliot in Hannah and Her Sisters, directed by Woody Allen and released in 1986, Caine won the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Award at the Oscars, a feat he followed up on in 1999 for The Cider House Rules, in which he played Dr Wilbur Larch.
When reflecting on the pictures and projects that helped inspire his own creative vision, Caine once went on record to name his favourite film of all time during a feature with Entertainment. It’s a classic of cinema that is widely admired by film fans worldwide and across the ages; a World War II romantic drama that has bestowed itself into the hearts of audiences since its release in 1942. The movie can be considered one of the finest ever made and perhaps the ultimate rainy afternoon picture. A black and white beauty drenched in the very essence of what made cinema such an alluring prospect for audiences across the world.
“Casablanca would be my one,” Caine said. “I love some of the lines in it. It was during the war, and Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman had a romance, and at the end of the movie, he says to her, ‘Do you remember Paris?’, which is where they’d been lovers, you know, and then he says ‘The Germans wore grey, and you wore blue. That’s how I remember Paris.'”
The film was directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in what many would consider to be their respective most significant roles. It was filmed during World War II and used the conflict as its setting, telling of an American ex-pat who is faced with a difficult decision.
Bogart’s character, Rick Blaine, must choose between helping a Czechoslovak freedom fighter named Victor Laszlo to escape from the Moroccan city of Casablanca so he can fight back against the Germans or pursue his own love for Victor’s wife, Ilsa Lund.
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