Casablanca endures

I'm watching Casablanca for the umpteenth time, this time on TCM. I own it; I can watch it any time I like. I ought to go to bed: I have to get up early. Yet here I sit, enjoying every well-remembered moment.

"You played it for her: play it for me!"

"You despise me, don't you?" "If I gave you any thought I probably would."

These and a hundred other lines are so well-known, they ought to come off as parody in the original. Yet they don't: they're as meaningful and emotionally resonant as the writer and director intended them to be.

It's a brilliant film that has outlasted the norms of acting and storytelling that it so beautifully showcases. Why? I don't enough about film to say. I'm just delighted it has.