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"Casablanca" (1942)
Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid.
 Rivers of fine Champagne flow in this short list candidate for the best American film ever, and even better, nobody pays the tab.
This film established Bogart -- previously best known for playing gangsters and tough guys -- as a romantic lead, catapulting him to the superstardom that still lingers today. Then-bigger stars George Raft and Ronald Reagan reportedly turned down the part of saloon keeper Rick; the former is barely remembered, and the latter's continuing fame is hardly because of his acting career.
Much of the film was written on the fly during production; Bergman did not know, during filming, whether her character would ultimately choose Bogart, her cynical onetime lover, or her husband, Henreid, the crusading rebel. Director Curtiz told her to "play it in between."
"Casablanca" has some of the best dialogue ever written. One of the best lines comes after Bergman reminds Bogart that the last time they met was the day the Nazis marched into Paris. Bogart: "I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue."
Claude Rains, as the jolly French policeman Capt. Renault, specifically orders 1926 Veuve Clicquot, "an excellent French wine," for the Nazi Maj. Strasser. Rains and Henreid also enjoy Champagne cocktails.
But Champagne's finest moment comes during the flashback to Bogart and Bergman's romance in Paris, when they're drinking bubbly in a cafe. As Bogart's faithful friend Sam (Dooley Wilson, a drummer in real life) plays "As Time Goes By" on the piano, Bogie says the cafe owner "says to finish this bottle and then three more. He says he'll water his garden with Champagne before he'll let the Germans drink it."
Wilson then says, "This ought to take the sting out of being occupied," before Bogart makes cinema's most famous toast, to Bergman: "Here's looking at you, kid."
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