The movie that inspired Michael Caine to start acting
Having carved his name into the long tapestry of British cinema history while simultaneously making significant waves over the Atlantic Ocean in the United States, Michael Caine has achieved a level of brilliance and fame that so many other performers could only ever dream of accomplishing.
Giving wildly impressive performances in a wide range of productions and genres, Caine is a true hero of the cinematic medium. From his iconic early roles in The Italian Job and Zulu to his later efforts in The Cider House Rules and The Dark Knight, Caine always came through with the acting goods.
But like any actor, Caine had to be turned onto the profession by a particular work, and it seems as though there were few films that left as big an impression as the classic 1942 romantic drama Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid.
The film is certainly Caine’s favourite movie of all time, and he once told Entertainment IE, “Casablanca would be my one; I love some of the lines in it”. Many consider Casablanca, which sees Curtiz transport audiences to the backdrop of the Second World War and the titular Moroccan city, to be one of the all-time great works of cinema.
Remembering his first experience of seeing Casablanca and its deep inspirational power, Caine noted, “I’m probably one of the few people here who saw this film when it came out. I was a young man who wanted to be a young actor, and Humphrey Bogart was and still is my favourite actor of all time. I’d seen many Bogart movies, and even at the time, I thought this was one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen. And to this day, it still is.”
Casablanca sees Bogart place Rick Blaine and Bergman Ilsa Lund, two lovers in the midst of an inner battle of morality. Tasked with helping Ilsa and her husband, the resistance leader Victor Laszlo, escape the terror of the Nazis, Blaine must confront his romantic feelings, and the film simmers with utterly memorable lines of dialogue as Caine professes.
“It’s one of the great romances of our time,” Caine noted. “And, the leading lady and the leading man didn’t really like each other and didn’t hit it off at all. I know a great deal about the movie from later because Howard Koch, who was one of the writers, was the boss of Paramount when I got there. He was the man who green-lighted Alfie and The Italian Job“.
Check out the trailer for Casablanca below.
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